
Arts & Culture


Arts DEVO: Soon …
Bring back the arts, and the directors, and the punks, and the notebook with the handwritten open-mic poem, and the sound people, and the guest curator, and the guy who sweeps up the broken glass […]

Light up the marquee
This feature is a part of the Chico News & Review’s Bring Back the Arts campaign, an interview series featuring the leaders of Butte County arts and music venues discussing their efforts to recover from […]

Another last roundup
I’ve been enjoying the peculiar freedoms of “streaming in place,” but I’ve also been finding that, as a movie reviewer, the paths I’ve been following seem increasingly personal and idiosyncratic. Without the regimen of weekly […]

Painting hope
Iris Natividad had never painted before, but she knew that she had to try for her late partner, Andrew Downer. She picked up a paint brush on June 5, dipped it in yellow paint, and […]

Return of nightlife?
This feature is part of the CN&R’s June 2021 Business Issue. Archer Lombardi kicked off 2020 ready for big changes. After nearly a decade dedicated to establishing The Maltese as one of Chico’s cornerstone bars […]

Staging community
This feature is a part of the Chico News & Review’s Bring Back the Arts campaign, an interview series featuring the leaders of Butte County arts and music venues discussing their efforts to recover from […]

Chico Summer Jams
The song of the summer is, at its best, a great unifier, marking a point in time that all Americans all share—from anthems about waterfalls that we endeavored not to chase, to jams on old […]

Arts DEVO: Just a normal column
Ahhh … This is nice. As Arts DEVO sits down to write this column, his mug is filled with coffee and his list—the source, the sauce, the juice that powers the Energy Dome—is filled with […]

‘Inside out’
This feature is a part of the Chico News & Review’s Bring Back the Arts campaign, a weekly interview series featuring the leaders of Butte County arts and music venues discussing their efforts to recover […]

The opening curtain
This feature is a part of the Chico News & Review’s Bring Back the Arts campaign, a weekly interview series featuring the leaders of Butte County arts and music venues discussing their efforts to recover […]

Arts DEVO: Bring back the arts
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of the clubs, theaters, bars and galleries last year, Arts DEVO’s world disappeared. For 17 years, my self-imposed job description was: own the local arts scene. I poured […]

The one that got away
The Chico History Museum re-opened to the public last Saturday (May 1) after being closed for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the current exhibits is a piece of recently resurfaced […]

‘Unstoppable’ season
North State Symphony premieres To the Fore, its final show of the 2020-21 season, on May 6, and the press release boasts that the concert “includes our largest chamber music ensemble of the season.” When […]

Fig collectors’ paradise
While driving north toward Oroville for a Feather River salmon fishing trip in August of 2003, a voluminous tree beside Highway 70 caught my eye. “A fig tree!” I called from the backseat of my […]