Three Local Artists Tell a Story of Race and Solidarity

Charlottesville changed everything for me,” Pete Fanning remembered. “I guess I was naive. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t aware it was so mainstream. It really shook me.”

In 2017, when a Unite the Right counter-protester was killed on the Charlottesville Mall, the country—and those of us in Charlottesville’s backyard—was left reeling from such a public glimpse into the country’s widespread racism and white supremacy. 

“I remember turning on the TV and being floored that this was here and an hour away,” Fanning said. “Seeing the fighting in the streets just tore at my heart and stayed there.”

As many artists do, Fanning took to his craft to process the horrific events, not realizing that the basis for his latest book, Hometown, was being formed. Just a few years later when Fanning and his son attended a local high school football game and saw a racial rift between the two opposing teams, Fanning saw the full story unfold.

“My kid was too young to notice. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he said. “That’s when I wrote the first chapter.”

From there, Hometown, a young adult fiction, effortlessly flowed to the page. Fanning pulled from his memories of Charlottesville, the high school football game, and his own experiences to weave a tale about life, racism, unity, and a little bit of football. While this is a book for children ages 13 and up, Fanning recognizes that anyone can take away something from Hometown, which will be available for purchase where all books are sold in April.

“This book is for kids who want to make things better for their siblings,” Fanning said. “It’s like a passing of the guard—we’re trying to find a space for everybody.”

As he finalized Hometown and started going through edits, Fanning reached out to his friend and fellow-artist Jon Perry who had created cover art for Bricktown Boys, a book Fanning published in 2021.

“I reached out to [Jon] for Hometown. As a Black man, he has this vision. The first thing he showed me was a piece featuring the two [main characters] and a monument. But inside of the monument was a burning Confederate flag. We got into a friendly pushback,” Fanning said. “Writing this book I discovered my own little habits and the way I see things. It’s a book about unity, but he saw it in different ways that I never, as a white guy, would think about.”

Fanning and Perry connected over the story and the ways in which they each related to different characters in the book. From there, Perry created story and cover art that put into visuals the characters’ journeys from division to understanding. 

Fanning also reached out to Quincy Cunningham, a local musician, to write and produce a song for the book’s trailer, which can be found on YouTube and on Fanning’s author website.

“Quincy had just released some music on Facebook and it caught on pretty big,” Fanning said. “He had written a song about Virginia and I was blown away by it. He got back to me and was interested in doing the music for the Hometown trailer. Hearing his music, I knew it was going to be good. He’s a little younger than Jon and myself, so we have that perspective too.”

With such a collaborative effort in telling the Hometown story—from Fanning’s words to Perry’s art to Cunningham’s music—the creative process in and of itself has been a lesson in crossing lines and meeting people where they are. While the three artists come from different backgrounds, they worked together to flesh out the true narrative of the story and see Hometown from each other’s perspectives. 

“Discussions of race are so eye-opening at times,” Fanning said. “It’s one thing to write it down—it’s a story and I’m closed in an office, writing my thoughts. It’s a whole other animal to put it out in the world where we live. Yeah, it’s racial but it’s more about unity. So I’m telling the story in the best way that I can.”  

Hometown is being published by Immortal Works, a publishing house that focuses on clean genre fiction for general audiences. Hometown will be available for purchase in April via Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, Target, or online at www.petefanning.com. Fanning will be releasing another book later this year.

Julian Raven, Opens Gallery and Studio on Wards Road

When artist Julian Raven shares his story, he paints a picture as vivid and lively as the stunning works he displays in his new gallery on Wards Road.

Raven’s journey from a young English boy living in Spain with a penchant and talent for art to an internationally celebrated artist with a vast and versatile catalog of work has been full of peaks, valleys, and serendipitous moments. He seems to recall every step of his journey with gratitude for bringing him to where he is today.

Raven’s earliest memory of loving art occurred when he was about eight years old and living in Spain.

“I can remember sitting with my father on a veranda in a villa in southern Spain, where I grew up,” he recalled. “It was a sunny day, and I did a colored pencil drawing of some beautiful bougainvillea that was wrapped around a white-washed wall. It was a clear picture of my inclination towards the visual arts.”

When his family moved to Portugal when he was a bit older, Raven attended tiny international English-speaking schools and continued pursuing his passion for art. He won several art contests, but because the arts were not prioritized in these schools, Raven was not fully supported in his pursuit—that is, until the day his math teacher found him sketching in the school’s library.

“My math teacher saw me doodling in the library at the English International College and set a crushed can of Coke in front of me to sketch,” said Raven. “After I was done sketching, he basically took me by the hand and walked me over to meet David Bodlak, an artist and teacher in the art department.”

Bodlak mentored and championed Raven when the latter was in his mid-teens and continues to be a source of great inspiration to him to this day.

“He was a wonderful mentor,” Raven stated. “His enthusiasm and encouraging spirit were incredible. In an art class where you have all different skill levels, he would go from student to student and always find something redeemable about each person’s work. He has had a tremendous impact on me.”

Raven graduated high school at the age of 16 and took a year off to focus on his art. He then went on to study at the prestigious Chelsea College of Arts in London.

During his time at the College, Raven experienced a series of highs and lows. Although he “was in heaven because the facilities were huge,” he was struggling greatly with his father’s death, which happened when Raven was only 10, and with the political climate that surrounded him. He notes that he lost his faith in God and often felt hopeless and lost during this time.

Raven ended up leaving the College and going back to Spain, where he began to work in the bar business. Then, in early 1992, Raven’s life changed dramatically as he sat alone on a mountain.

“I came to faith in God in Spain, alone and sitting on a mountain, contemplating nature,” he recalled.
“That experience changed my life and led me down a spiritual journey where I began to pursue missionary work.”

This missionary work brought him to America. He originally planned to do missionary work in California for six months and then move to Mexico as a missionary, but he ended up moving to Elmira, New York, in 1996 instead. There, he met his wife, Gloria, and they started their own business: Raven’s Custom Creations. As Raven used his artistic skills to create custom-painted and decorative furniture, his passion for art was invigorated.

In addition to thriving artistically, Raven was spiritually and personally fulfilled. He and Gloria had three children, and he opened his own gallery in Elmira in 2007. Then the 2008 financial crisis occurred.

Forced to close the gallery, Raven and his family moved back to Spain for a year and a half. Ultimately, they moved back to Elmira and Raven opened a new gallery.

After entertaining the idea of RVing out west, Raven and Gloria decided to move to Lynchburg, where all three of their children still study at Liberty University. Raven knew that he wanted to open a gallery here; the challenge was finding the right spot for it. Julian Raven Artist, LLC, found a home at 2121 Wards Road and officially opened on March 25.

“I could have gotten a warehouse and been off the beaten path,” he said. “I looked at those options but decided that if I wanted to get up and running, I needed to be in an area with more movement. It’s sort of an unlikely setting for an art studio because I’m stuck between a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s, but it’s also sort of fitting because I’m a contrarian by nature. It just had what I saw as the bones to be something great.”

Raven and his son spent six weeks completely renovating the building, which houses not only Raven’s work, but also what he calls his “Renaissance Creative Palette” of services: painting parties, art classes, portrait painting and photography, and more. There is a screen-printing room downstairs and a brand-new photo studio, for which a ribbon cutting ceremony was held on June 15.

Raven says that his painting parties are a “real way to connect with people,” and adds that “seeing people who have never painted before create works of art is remarkable.” According to Raven, one gentleman came in a couple of times to paint, and after Raven shared the man’s second painting on Instagram, it sold for $100.

When it comes to Raven’s own work, he is a multimedia artist and photographer.

“I have a lot of very broad experience because my artistic hunger has made me curious to discover and try new things,” he noted. “I like to be constantly challenged. I always seem to find difficult things to do!”

That said, Raven specializes in abstract expressionism, which he says allows him “to share his inner-world experience and joy.” He recalls that an attendee of one of his shows referred to him as a “happy Pollock,” a moniker that he happily embraced.

There is no telling where Raven’s journey will take him next, but one thing is certain: he will continue to see the beauty in all things and to share his interpretations of that beauty with others.

“Beauty, for me, is so arresting,” he stated. “When I see true beauty—nature, people—I want
to capture it and share it with others. We live in some pretty serious times right now. I want people to feel lighter after leaving my gallery.”  

To learn more about Julian Raven, his gallery and studio, and his art, check out his website (julianraven.com) and Facebook page.

Charcoal Artist

Lynchburg Living: Nakila, tell us a little about yourself.
Are you from the area?

Nakila White: I was born and raised right here in Lynchburg. Growing up I tried my hand at several different hobbies and the one that seemed to stick the most—and that I really had a passion for—is art!

LL: When did that passion for art begin?
NW: Art has always played a pretty big part in my life since I was little. I used to take any piece of paper I could find and make illustrations either from my imagination or a cartoon I was obsessing over. It wasn’t until after high school that I started getting serious with what I wanted to do with it. My art teacher at the time, Mrs. McDonald, gifted me with a bigger sketchbook and different mediums to try out, which slingshot my interest in creating on a larger scale. Once I realized portraits were what I wanted to do, I focused more on trying to perfect methods and narrow down which medium I preferred.

LL: That leads us to the next question. Is charcoal your primary medium?
NW: I’ve dabbled in colored pencils, normal graphite and, very briefly, paint—however after not really meshing well with any of them I turned to charcoal and instantly fell in love. I purchase charcoal blocks in bulk, place them in a small container and crush them up myself into a fine powder. Using normal paint brushes and small eyeshadow brushes, I dip the brushes into the powder and apply it directly to the paper over and over until I achieve the tone I want. After applying details with either a charcoal pencil, kneaded eraser or mono zero eraser (which is just a very small mechanical eraser) I smooth everything out with Puffs Plus Tissues with Lotion! Puffs Plus is the only tissue that allows a light layer of charcoal to be lifted while also creating a smooth skin type texture.

LL: What are some of your favorite pieces you have created so far?
NW: Each piece I’ve created has its own special place in my heart due to the challenges each one presented that helped me to become a better artist. However my “In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue” series, which I finished in 2020, is always the one I find myself looking at over and over again. In a close second is my more recent “No One’s Laughing Now” based off Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. This was the first portrait I’ve done with a not-so-normal skin texture due to his face being covered in paint.

LL: What types of challenges have you faced as an artist?
NW: At the end of the day, I am my biggest critic. The process of drawing is long, mentally and physically exhausting and very time-consuming—from picking out a photo reference that has the right amount of expression and detail to the very end when I hang the portrait on a wall and stare at it for hours at a time finding the smallest of inconsistencies. There have been plenty of times I get halfway through a drawing and, because I didn’t make sure I was in the right headspace when I started, I ended up scrapping the entire thing and starting over.

LL: What are you currently working on?
NW: By the time this article comes out I should be elbow deep in commissions! The recent amount of love and support I’ve gotten since my art show at the Academy Center of the Arts in February is very overwhelming in the best way possible! Knowing that so many people appreciate my art to the point they trust me to draw their loved ones or favorite celebrities means the world.

LL: What advice do you have for future artists?
NW: There are no rules or regulations that need to be followed. And that’s what I love so much about it. No matter what your medium or style is, at the end of the day, if you love it, it is art. And if you’re proud of what you created, then that’s the best success anyone could ask for.