The Virginia Capitol stands as proof that while long-distance relationships are difficult, sometimes they can work, even if one of the parties involved comes away disappointed. Thomas Jefferson tried to oversee the building’s design from 4,000 miles away by sending specifications to local builders with details down to 1/100 of an inch, then returned from France to view this Temple of Democracy. He commented with a resigned philosophical attitude that later generations would have to make right what went wrong.
But what went so right has influenced the design of public buildings since 1788 and on Sunday, we’ll see why.
Renowned Chicago architectural guide and commentator Geoffrey Baer came to town Thursday evening through the Virginia Capitol Foundation on a national barnstorming tour with writer and producer Dan Protess. Singly and together, Baer and Protess are promoting Chicago WTTW television’s 10 Buildings That Changed America. Baer is well known in Chicago because of his array of tours and portable podcasts that allow visitors to take him along.
He’s often seen on Chicago public television, but this is his first big, primetime PBS program, and it airs Sunday at 10 p.m. on WCVE, as well as on stations around the country.
A group of interested parties met in the splendid underground Capitol annex and entrance center to view segments of the film and converse with the engaging and eloquent Baer.
He emphasized in opening remarks that these are not THE 10 buildings that shaped America, and not a Top 10, either, but rather an attempt to point out exceptional buildings as well as the stories of the men and women who created them. Not mere mortar and glass and steel, the very best buildings are living embodiments of the people and culture that made them.
“Most people don’t think about architecure,” he said. “They walk around the cities considering buildings as a given, as if architecture was handed down from on high. If we’d not included the Virginia Capitol – it’s one of the obvious ones. Its presence, site and historical context make it impossible to ignore.” Jefferson’s shining adaptation of a Roman temple to a public role was a repudiation of imported English architecure and an announcement that a new nation had arrived rooted in, as Jefferson saw it, the verities of Greek and Roman culture. The Capitol’s descendants include the U.S. Supreme Court building, the New York Stock Exchange and scores of courthouses, banks and churches, as well as columned mansions sited on hilltops.
The intention for 10 Buildings is to get a conversation going about architecture. On the richly informative and easy to navigate website for the program, audiences may suggest their own candidates. There’s also 10 more buildings that didn’t make the program, and, indeed, Baer says the future will bring at last four more shows like this one. There's also a book and a DVD. 
People love lists, Baer remarked.
Oh, man don’t they ever. Can you say, “Best & Worst”?
Lists did very well for David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace
The 10 buildings for this show were selected by a panel of 16 architects, none of whom agreed on everything. Baer and Protess wanted to present a group of distinctive structures that are so iconic that they may even have become overshadowed by the designs they influenced. To come up with the 10, they used strict criteria: no repeats of architects, one per locality and cultural importance.
Virginia is the only state in the program with two representatives: the Capitol starting the show, and the remarkable 1962 Eero Saarinen Dulles International Airport, which adds a poetic flourish toward the end. The swooping structure with its characteristic roof that appears ready to float off like a handkerchief in the breeze is massive concrete and glass, but looks as if it wants to fly. Saarinen’s sudden death didn’t allow him to see the building completed. His vision combined a curvaceous modernism supported on a colonnade that reflects Washington's official architecture — which, by the way, resonates all the way back to Jefferson’s Capitol. After the screening Baer conversed with Capitol historian Mark Greenough and Department of General Services Director Richard Sliwoski, who shepherded the renovation and annex projects. Greenough expressed enthusiasm for seeing the Capitol appearing “as itself” after a number of television shows and films have altered it — including the recent Lincoln — to play the U.S. Capitol and the White House. The influence of the building abounds and fits Jefferson’s desire that it should be “an object and proof of national good taste.”
Silwoski spoke of a few surprises during the renovation — good ones — including that finding that the dentil work in the Rotunda was original to the structure. “We thought that it was all taken out in the 1906 renovations,” he said. Then in the west stairs on the third floor, under the tile, was found the note, “This floor was laid by,” with a signature and a polite, “Good-bye.” Baer recalled how at Boston’s Trinity Church during renovations in 2004, architects working on the tower’s interior found a multipage letter attached to a back of masonite placed there by restorers in the 1950s. The conservators wrote their own letter and returned the section as it was, with the old missive inside, too. “People become quite attached  to the buildings they’re working on and feel compelled to leave these notes to the future,” Baer said.
Before I left, Baer wanted to tell me how impressed he is by Richmond’s riverfront. He was really knocked out by what we’ve got in terms of the river, accessibility, renovation and interpretation. Baer was wowed by the Pipeline Walk  and the Belle Isle Pedestrian Bridge under the Lee Bridge.
“This should be a model for how other cities create their riverfront renovations,” he said.

The Henley Street Theatre Co. is hoisting its colors for the Bootleg Ball tomorrow (May 11) from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. The Roaring ‘20s motif (think The Great Gatsby) calls for “creative black tie.” One high point of the event is to be the announcement of productions for the Henley Street-Richmond Shakespeare joint season.
The other showstopper will involve the bestowing of the first Folio Award, planned to be an annual tradition. And this year’s recipient is former theater and arts critic Roy Proctor, who retired in 2004 after 30 years as the staff theater critic at the Richmond News Leader and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
During his tenure, he wrote a weekly theater column, Critic at Large in the News Leader and Richmond Rialto in The Times-Dispatch. He reviewed more than 3,500 productions, including all 37 plays in the Shakespeare canon. His annual Phoebe list, which appeared in a large pictorial spread each June, recognized excellence in Richmond theater. Often, the Phoebes were cited in Broadway, off-Broadway and regional theater programs. Since his retirement, Proctor has directed and written plays.
The Folio Award is named after the First Folio of Shakespeare. The Bard’s peers assembled his work in one volume, thereby saving the plays we know.
“The award name came as a natural for both companies,” says Jacquie O’ Connor, Henley Street managing director. “Basically when we came up with the criteria of someone who went above and beyond to support the Richmond artistic community, Roy came to mind. He wasn’t just a critic, he really truly loved the theater community and reached out in a supportive way. He traveled the world, saw plays, he took classes, his door was always open to conversation and he could say, ‘You know, you’re right,’ and other times he’d say, 'I hear you, but I’m right,' ” she says, laughing. “He was a great advocate for keeping The Times-Dispatch involved with the arts."
Proctor was surprised by the news. “I’m very grateful and very unworthy,” he says.
Proctor came to Richmond in 1974, but he explains that many of the 3,500 plays he reviewed weren’t here. “Back in those days, when the newspaper had all that money, we covered mainstage productions at the Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre, the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C. On top of that, the newspaper sent me to New York City once a year to attend the annual meetings of the American Theatre Critics association.” This alone provided a feast of play-going. And Proctor loved his job. “I got up every morning thinking of what new play I’d get to see today, or movie in the early days. I was paid to have fun.”
Proctor was raised in Thomasville, N.C. He started writing in the second grade. His teacher wrote on his second-grade report card, "Roy has a talent for writing if I could only keep him from wandering aimlessly around the room."
But his wandering wasn't aimless, Proctor says. “What Miss Helen Farris didn’t know is that I was wandering around trying to think of things to write.” Decades later, while composing reviews in his head, he’d wander the corridors of the newspaper building conjuring the lede. “Then I’d sit down at the typewriter and have an explosion,” he says.
His meandering and study of writing took him to the University of Iowa’s writing program where he was instructed by Philip Roth. He also attended Wake Forest, studied at the Sorbonne and went to Harvard University summer school.
Before moving to Richmond, Proctor was part of an editorial team hired in 1972 to help convert the Chapel Hill Weekly into the Chapel Hill Newspaper, “That was its name, not Bugle or Clarion, it was Newspaper. Which led to crazy conversations. ‘I’m calling from the Newspaper,’ I might say, and the response, ‘Which newspaper?’ and on it went.”
When Proctor arrived, the News Leader and Times-Dispatch fielded in-house critics for practically every art form. “They were making tons of money in 1974,” he recalls. “They had ads in the paper and not falling like slippery eels out of the Sunday edition.” He adds, “I got in at the right time and got out at the right time.”
Proctor sees theater going as remaining strong in Richmond because it’s been a tradition since 1784 through wars, fire, disease outbreaks and financial collapses. Theaters come and go, but there are always “new kids on the block,” as he would herald them in the Rialto.
“We have always had people who started up theaters as ego trips," he says. "Generally they don’t last very long. The founders of the Barksdale, they were totally determined to make that work. They did whatever they needed to do. Phil Whiteway and Bruce Miller pooled their money together, bought an old truck for touring, and we have Virginia Rep now. These are people who stuck with it and made theater for the general good and not to glorify themselves.”
In the halcyon days, Richmond had four dinner theater companies. Proctor received free admission and food. As a kind of compensation, he’d hold an annual cast party at his house for the companies. One year, Swift Creek Mill was running Finian’s Rainbow. A  kid too young to imbibe, nor seeking to, was a cast member. “He was 15 and just standing there, he radiated something, that indefinable thing we’d call presence. We spoke and that was the first time I met Blair Underwood.”
Proctor now has theatrically-inclined grandchildren. A son living in England allowed Proctor to round out his Shakespeare. Daughter Anna Proctor Young and her husband are coming down from D.C. to watch him receive his Folio. He laughs, saying, “I told them bring a camera.”

Bryce McCormick knows self-imposed deadlines matter only if you meet them. The Richmond singer songwriter of indie-rock flavored originals and inventive covers, tasked himself in 2009 with writing a song a day, culminating in a recording of the best of those and a concert release. On Friday, at 10 p.m., at Balliceaux  he’s sending out his latest Song Covers Project with a performance event. It will be a first for McCormick who as a Virginia Commonwealth University jazz music student, played in the old Bogart’s Back Room that is now Balliceaux's performance space. McCormick, 31, is maximizing YouTube, social media and playing live to get his music into the wider world.
Let It Go is a collection of the best tunes from that banner year of writing. After finessing and revising, and bringing in some of Richmond’s best players,  McCormick packed the Capital Alehouse for the January 2012 release.


If you go to his YouTube channel you’ll see an energetic and entertaining McCormick playing multiple parts for voice and instrumentation. “But, I’ll have a band with me for Friday,” he says, “and this’ll be half of my original work and half covers.”

McCormick’s family moved from Michigan to Richmond when he was seven. He went to Meadowbrook High School on his way to VCU. “I studied with Doug Richard, Skip Gailes and Bob Hallahan, same as a lot of cats in town.”

To help create and promote this effort, McCormick teamed with Dean Fields , a singer songwriter who left Richmond last year for Nashville and who has aimed McCormick into the Internet and email marketing.

During the past month he’s charted 20,000 views on his YouTube site, 10,000 of those in the United States. “YouTube is an enormous tool for guys like me,” he explains. “It’s not a huge percentage who go from my YouTube videos to the web site. It doesn’t translate into thousands, but hundreds — a handful every day. And that’s been happening over the past several days. It’s translating into sales, Twitter traffic and sign-ups."

It’s about increments, whether writing a song a day, or a few people who like his on-screen persona, voice and musicianship enough to make a purchase. Like any independent artist, the hope is that eventually, this will add up to something big.

Another difference in the strategy is that McCormick isn’t pressing a CD. This is a digital release. Thus, if you go to Balliceaux tomorrow and pay $10, you’ll see the live show and receive a digital coupon for an album of 16 tracks.

“With the cost of pressing CDs, that’ll probably be my process throughout the future,” McCormick says.

If you’ve not yet heard or seen McCormick you’ll have more opportunities. He’s planning to play the region more, here and up to Fredericksburg and over to Virginia Beach, among others locales.

He’s not played much in Richmond in part because with a regular gig, potential audience members may choose to go see the show next week. And thus the dynamic of being a 21^st century artist — the virtual presence allows you to be seen without wearing out your welcome.

Tonight’s First Fridays Art Walk includes a youth component. At 114 W. Marshall St., Art 180 has realized a long-held dream of creating an arts center for teens, called Atlas. A reception will be held there tonight from 6 to 9 p.m., for "Love: Through the Eyes of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder," which runs through May 31.

This exhibition is a Gold Star (Eagle Scout equivalent) project of 17-year-old Richmond Girl Scout Autumn Cox  in collaboration with ART 180  and the Autism Society of Virginia. 

A few blocks away, at the Richmond Public Library, is another opening reception, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.,  for Paint Me A Story, which moved from the Broad Rock Library to the Main Library at 101 E. Franklin St. The exhibit of Latiino children's book illustrations runs through May 31 in the Children’s Department.

The exhibit marks a month-long partnership of the Richmond Public Library and the Visual Arts Center of Richmond celebrating the art of book illustration by award-winning illustrators John Parra, Lila Quintero Weaver and Joe Cepeda.

In conjunction with the exhibit, mixed media artist and illustrator Sarah Hand from the Visual Arts Center will present two free youth art workshops about the making of books on Saturday May 4, from 2 to 4 p.m. and Thursday, May 16, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Main Library. The exhibit and workshops honor El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros (Children’s Day/Book Day) celebrated yearly on April 30. Call 646-7223 for details.

Consider this: In a rural North Carolina farming town, a young woman alone in a house during a storm tromps outside to uncover a not-fully-formed humanoid creature that she takes in and realizes, as days pass, that this isn't a thing but a she, who is turning into her. Such is the premise of the debut novel by Rhonda Riley titled The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope. This is a mythic, magical being dropped into a James Agee/Erskine Caldwell/Dorothea Lange world.

Riley is speaking tomorrow (Wednesday), from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the University of Richmond downtown. in collaboration with James River Writers. JRW chair Bill Blume will moderate a discussion about how Riley made the arduous journey from idea to publication by Harper Collins. The talk is free and open to the public but registration is required. 

The Junior League of Richmond (JLR) and Dominion Virginia Power will bring together six nationally recognized authors later in the evening for the 68th Book and Author Dinner. 

The JLR Book and Author Dinner is the oldest event of its kind in the nation. All proceeds directly support JLR’s work to positively affect at-risk women, children and families through volunteerism and developing women's potential.  

Kate Christner, chair for the event, says that she and her assistant chair usually go to New York in the fall and meet with different publishing houses. "They take us through the catalog," she says. "We pass out galley books, we frantically read as fast as we can, and we choose books to appeal to a wide spectrum [of people]."

Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander died, but revived and wrote about his experience in Proof of Heaven; Michael Shelden sliced open the life of Winston Churchill to show the younger man behind the bulldog with a cigar in Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill; Alaskan/Baltimorean Leigh Newman’s memoir of her culturally bifurcated life is the subject of Still Points North; Lucinda Scala Quinn’s Mad Hungry Cravings concerns preparing food that is good, good for you, and satisfies; Andrew Gross gets a suburban mom into big trouble in his thriller No Way Back; and here, too, is Riley’s debut novel.

The event will take place at The Greater Richmond Convention Center, 300 N. 5th St., beginning at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m. Authors will speak about recently published books and their experiences as writers. An autograph reception will immediately follow the dinner, with books available for purchase. A cash bar will also be available.

Individual tickets are $75. A limited number of gallery seats (seat only, no dinner served) will be available this year for $30 (preferred seating will go to dining guests). Tickets are also available for the Book and Author Luncheon on Wednesday at the Country Club of Virginia, 6031 St. Andrews Lane. Seating is limited at the luncheon, which will feature an extended book signing session and offer guests the opportunity to dine with visiting authors in a more intimate setting. Tickets are $55.