In The Guide, your page for what’s happening in and around Davidson, Meg Kimmel today reviews “Once on This Island,” a musical offering from Davidson Community Players’ Connie Co. youth theater. The show opens today (Thursday). It’s a colorful “Caribbean folktale with lessons of social prejudice, love, and fate—and surprisingly, of reality.” Read her review and see Bill Giduz’s photos.

Also in The Guide, our Davidson Weekend Calendar, with info about Davidson College homecoming, Rural Hill’s 15th annual Sheep Dog Trials, and other weekend events.

And don’t forget to check out what’s playing at Our Town Cinemas, in our movie showtimes calendar, on the right side of The Guide.

We ran into Zack, a crystal-ball juggling street performer, at the Carolina Renaissance Festival on Sunday, Nov. 7. Watch a video of his performance in The Guide, CLICK HERE> The Carolina Renaissance Festival continues Saturdays and Sundays through Nov. 21 at its site off Poplar Tent Road. Details in the Guide.

Also in The Guide today:

Davidson Historical Society is planning a Nov. 21 screening of “Our Vanishing Americana,” a collaboration by local filmmaker Scott Galloway and photographer/author Mike Lassiter.

Art News: Photographer Rachel Goldstein is the guest at Monday’s Lake Norman Art League meeting; plus other news of local exhibits.

This Week calendar column and our clickable day-by-day calendar of events in and around Davidson.

Lisa Jewel’s weekly Art Around Town column visits the The Gantt Center for African American Arts + Cultutre, where you’ll find everything from mixed-media to photography. She says it was the work of Kevin Cole that caught her eye. Read more in The Guide, CLICK HERE>

Gray Stanback (David Boraks/DavidsonNews.net)

By DAVID BORAKS
DavidsonNews.net

Gray Stanback has been drawing since he was 4 – pictures of dinosaurs, flying machines, space aliens. Now 17, he is still fascinated by those subjects and is still drawing them, usually on a magnetic drawing board that he carries everywhere.

Gray is autistic and drawing is a constant activity. “Think of it as a sort of a drainage pump for my brain,” he explained the other day.

Gray is the son of Nancy Popkin and Mark Stanback of Davidson. He was diagnosed with autism at around age 3, shortly after the family moved to Davidson.
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De Saint Phalle is a woman who grappled with her own life choices and society’s roles for her. Much of her work deals with the beauty and conflicts of being a woman, a mother and an independent life force. Her works include, painting, sculpture, film and literature. In 1991 she completed “The Firebird” (l’Oiseau de Feu Sur l’Arch) which can be seen at The Bechtler in Charlotte. To read more CLICK HERE>.

Davidson College art lab technician Austin Sheppard holds up a newly unwrapped piece for inspection. Examining the piece are (from left) visiting assistant professor Nate Rogers, senior art major Carter Eggleston, assistant collection curator Tara Clayton, and art faculty members Cort Savage, Nina Serebrennikov and Shaw Smith. (John Syme photo)

It was an early Christmas morning Monday for members of the Davidson College art department. Alumnus Jim Pepper ’65, of Miami, Fla., boxed and shipped to the college 34 pieces of art from his collection.

But Pepper did not send an inventory listing ahead, preferring that members of the department be surprised with each piece as the bubble-wrap was removed.

Surprised and delighted they were: The donations included works by Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Hofmann, Robert Mapplethorpe, a meso-American textile piece, an ancient Hellenistic amphora, and more.

- Bill Giduz

Lisa Jewel reports on a recent visit to the artsy mountain city, and the paintings of Suzy Schultz she found at 16 Patton. In The Guide, CLICK HERE>

Mimes Tanya and Tim Chartier of Davidson will help celebrate the life of the late author and mathematics “ambassador” Martin Gardner Thursday with a performance at Davidson College that uses mime to explore math concepts. Read more in The Guide, CLICK HERE>