Arts & Culture
Armchair time and space travel
As I was watching live coverage of the Tour de France in mid-July, something reminded me of the phrase “armchair traveler.” I’ve previously said a thing or two in this space about the streaming of […]
Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture
Arts DEVO: Deploy the creative corps!
It is very unusual for Butte County to get a huge influx of cash to spend on just the arts and culture of this community. So, when Arts DEVO received a press release announcing that […]
Arts & Culture
Cheese toast time machine
Every time I pass through Yuba City on Highway 99, I am struck by two sights that never fail to excite and bewilder me. The first is the wild chickens roaming and roosting along the […]
Arts & Culture
PB for lunch
To cope with the isolation and existential dread wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Youa Vang—like many other people—turned to baking. She was already an accomplished, self-taught baker and the go-to person for birthday cakes and […]
Arts & Culture
Arts DEVO: Music central
As the CN&R asks the question, “What’s up with downtown?” in this issue, Arts DEVO is pleased to report that the music scene in the city’s core is looking pretty good these days. We did […]
Arts & Culture
Meet me at the art bar
Julia Flynn started drawing and painting in public about a year ago. She’d go to local coffee shops and settle in, spreading out her supplies. At first, it was a bit nerve-wracking. Flynn was terrified […]
Arts & Culture
Self parody?
This story was originally published in the Reno News & Review. With Asteroid City, writer-director Wes Anderson continues to show he’s lost his way after his first misfire, 2021’s The French Dispatch. He’s suddenly become […]
Arts & Culture
‘Can one desire too much of a good thing?’
William Shakespeare’s words are so deeply woven into modern culture that everyone, regardless of whether they’ve read his plays or seen them performed, is more familiar with The Bard than they may credit themselves. That […]
News
‘Songs of peace’
Russian icon Boris Grebenshchikov’s music, like the man himself, is enigmatic. It is sometimes playful, often poignant, and always poetic; rebellious, yet reverential; and rooted in Russian culture, but embracive of global influences. This multiplicity […]
Arts & Culture
‘Journey of release’
As a young girl, Chelsea Smith was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, and as she got older, she found it increasingly painful trying to navigate a world that did not understand her. She suffered from coprolalia, […]
Arts & Culture
Works of women and private eye tales
The Super 8 Years: With her son David Ernaux-Briot as co-director, the Nobel Prize-winning French novelist Annie Ernaux has fashioned an unflinching, remarkably fresh filmed memoir out of her family’s home movies from 1972-1981, the […]
Arts & Culture
Arts DEVO: Noisy, but fun
Of all the Chico bands Arts DEVO could be asked to help write a bio for, XDS is probably the one for which I’m most qualified to do so. I’ve been friends with the players […]
Arts & Culture
Hot dog summer
In the not-too-distant past, downtown Chico was a wiener wonderland. It used to be possible for us hot dog fiends, at reasonable and even unreasonable hours, to find a fix within a few block radius […]
Arts & Culture
Hot tomato
It’s May, and the initial tomato frenzy has died down. The nurseries have sold the bulk of their tomato starts, and most are likely in the ground, already showing several blossoms. Your tomato plants no […]
Arts & Culture
Art in the machine
At first glance, the rows of square, ceramic tiles laid out across two tables inside Idea fab Labs (IFL) look fairly similar: saturated, black-and-white designs vaguely resembling asymmetrical Rorschach images. A closer look, however, revealed […]