Bold Art, Bold Books, Bold Ice Cream

C.J. Knowles at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Back from four days on the road with Carrie Jane Knowles, as her book cover calls her. She and I were out on a Virginia segment of our Crazy Ladies Book Tour. What an adventure!

Here's Day One-and-a-Half:  When we arrived at 7:15 p.m. in Richmond at our airbandb lodging, which was the whole downstairs of a private home, our host, Joan Carlton, was waiting to whisk us off to her book club, which we'd learned was meeting by chance on the night of our arrival. We were there by 7:30, for champagne and book talk. A wonderful entry to the city (I had no idea how beautiful Richmond is.)

Next morning at what seemed like dawn we were ushered onto a live show on WTVR-CBS, "Virginia This Morning" to talk about our novels(Cobalt Blue and Lillian's Garden) following some rolling rollerbladers and a children's gospel choir. 

How quickly 7.5 minutes flies!  Very skilled interviewer on the show; and she clearly had read the books. (This is not always or even often true of interviewers.)  Tape is here, in case you missed it.

Then we hustled off the set, making way for the fast-rolling cart of the upcoming  chef's cooking demonstration.  And we were back on the pavement: the broadcast experience so suddenly over.  Time for a second breakfast at the cafe in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person who has been interviewed on TV can immediately afterwards eat anything she wants.  I chose two scoops of lemon crunch ice cream.  Magnificent!

It was a lemony morning at the museum, I'm now realizing.  There was also some bold and tart art.  Not just the painted lemons above, but also a controversial show  that made much of body parts.  "Pop Art and Beyond" is the work of Tom Wesselmann and we caught it in its last week. Here's a sample that was housed with the museum's permanent collection (no photography allowed in the special shows)

There was also some of the watery art I so favor, this segment from a different artist.

Then lunch at the balcony cafe: Carrie peruses the possibilities, in the background is the WTVR tower that had so recently broadcast us.  We used that as our way of locating ourselves while exploring Richmond.

Spent the afternoon getting lost looking for the James River, which runs through the city and should have been easy to find.  Then dinner at The Savory Grain, a likely looking place that we happened onto by chance, no googling at all.  The chef brought out our plates himself, stopped and stared at us in surprise.  "Were you on TV this morning…?" he said.  Yes!  it was the same chef whose rolling cart had replaced me on the set.  He had come on after us and taught central Virginia how to cook pork bellies.

 To Be Continued….

 

Categories: 2013

Tags: airbandb, Carrie Knowles, Cobalt Blue, crazy Ladies book tour, James River, joan Carlton, Lillian's Garden, Peggy Payne, Richmond, tom Wesselmann, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, WTVR