Arts

Once people figured out how to roast the seeds of the Coffea plant in the 1400s, coffee took over the world. In doing so, it fueled creativity, revolutions, new business ventures, literature, music — and slavery.

Delurk means to participate in something you only previously spectated, and the artist run Delurk Gallery invites the passive observers among us into the conversation with fresh new bodies of work exhibited every month. They're submitted by guest artists and members of the current Delurk Collective. Zac Trainor is one such artist. He's also taught a variety of courses at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art.

Sue Monk Kidd, the author of the best-selling The Secret Life of Bees, takes on both slavery and feminism in her novel The Invention of Wings. It's a story told by two women: Hetty, a slave, seeks her freedom, while Sarah, her reluctant owner, rebels against her family to become an abolitionist.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli says two new miniseries this week are worth special mention — and couldn't be more different. The Spoils Of Babylon is a miniseries soap-opera spoof on IFC; True Detective looks like the best HBO drama since The Wire.

According to Russian journalist Masha Gessen, the 2012 arrests were the start of a campaign by Vladimir Putin and his supporters against government critics. Gessen, who is also an LGBT rights advocate, recently moved to New York with her partner and their children in response to the anti-gay laws Russia passed in June.

The famous sleuth has discovered that U.S copyright law is anything but elementary. A federal judge recently ruled that elements of the Sherlock Holmes characters are now both licensed property of the Doyle estate and in the public domain. The Doyle estate plans to appeal the decision.

The Hispanic Arts Initiative provides platforms for Latino visual and performing artists; raising awareness about Latino culture, and our fast-changing social demographics. The organization's signature event is the annual Latino Visual Artists Exhibit. Punto de Vista: Latino Perspectives opens this Friday at the Womble Carlyle Gallery of the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts. Hispanic Arts Initiative Executive Director Maria Sanchez-Boudy spoke with me recently about the exhibition, and David Ford began by asking her how the Hispanic Arts Initiative goes about enhancing cultural inclusion here in the Triad.

In Little Failure, the novelist recounts his emigration from the USSR to the U.S. when he was 7. For the first few years, he says, he would sit alone in the school cafeteria, talking to himself in Russian "in this gigantic fur hat and fur coat." It wasn't long before a teacher advised, "Children won't play with you if you have that much fur on."

On Wednesday nights in Winston-Salem, there's a unique service happening at Centenary United Methodist Church. It's called Roots Revival, and it features outstanding local, regional and national musicians performing live in Centenary's newly renovated auditorium. The Wednesday night sermons are based on the song texts from that evening's performers. Each song is carefully selected in coordination with the minister, musicians, and Roots Revival Music Director, singer/songwriter Martha Bassett. She spoke with me about a new concert series at Centenary.

Downton Abbey is the most popular drama in the history of public television. And when the whole of the TV universe is fragmenting, that isn't just impressive — it's almost impossible. Critic David Bianculli ponders the hit show's unlikely success.