Dog gone Charlottesville

Although I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, I have never intended for this blog to be about the Charlottesville art scene. My general goal has been to give exposure – through my eyes - to the art (and art related issues) from around the country. However, I do live in Charlottesville, and I often talk about what is going on in the central Virginia region. The result has been a number of followers (from far and wide) mentioning how they have enjoyed learning about our lovely little hamlet through artPark. With that in mind, I’d like to go ahead dish out a nice resource for everyone to get a full taste of what Charlottesville has to offer.

Each year, the local arts & entertainment weekly newspaper, C-ville, publishes a list of the "Best of C-ville." In short, it’s a list of the readers’ choice for their favorite things like restaurant, music venue, coffee shop, auto mechanic, shoe store, etc. Go here for the online version. In addition to the local art tidbits I write about on this blog, "Best of C-ville" should paint you a pretty good picture of all that Charlottesville has to offer.

Now, I have to admit, this post is a bit self-serving. Yes, I’m happy to share info about my home town, but in this issue of C-ville, the theme was Top Dog. For each "Best of" category (Food & Drink, Retail, Recreation & Fitness, Entertainment, and Services) there was a dog themed photo shoot. Here’s the self-serving part… Laura’s and my newest dog, Blue, was selected to pose for the Food & Drink set. Here he is (on the left) dining with his blind-date Charlotte.

 

Self-serving reason #2: All the dogs selected for the various photo shoots are former shelter dogs. As a supporter of the SPCA (see left sidebar), I thought the dog theme was a great idea. Model dogs don’t all have to be purebred and pedigreed. The infinite variety of mix-breeds found at shelters around the country make some of the very best pets… and top models. Hopefully, the playful pictures will inspire more people to choose their next pet from the SPCA rather than from a breeder. Here are the other pictures:

  

  

To stay up-to-date on what’s going on at the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA, follow their blog. You’ll get great introductions to some of the dogs and cats available for adoption.

A special shout out goes to Karen Quillen of All Things Pawssible for pulling together this terrific group of dogs. In addition to Blue, the other models were Charlotte, Trina, Poke, Astro, Grady, Dana and Sage. All of them are worthy of their splashy magazine spreads.

And many thanks to photographer Ashley Twiggs for her patience in dealing with these not quite professional models… and for her talents in capturing each of their "good sides".