The Downtown Norfolk Council (DNC) is offering matching grants of up to $5,000 for local restaurants to assist them in building or improving existing streateries (outdoor dining spaces).
DoorDash is partnering with the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association (VRLTA) to bring a $450,000 grant program for Virginia restaurants as they continue to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
It was a cold and rainy day in December…
Construction is complete! A colorful 32-foot sculpture at the corner of Brambleton Avenue and Yarmouth Street, and just across from the York Street light rail stop, will announce Norfolk’s rich art culture, directing attention to the Chrysler Museum of Art and the adjacent NEON Arts District. The location will raise awareness of Norfolk arts to thousands of people passing daily through this busy corridor.
From a conversation with Artist Tommy Fox
“I honestly can’t anticipate what people might take away from the viewing the piece, but generally I hope it makes them happy. I also hope it engages the realization of a middle ground between pure realism (classical statuary) and pure abstraction (rusty steel I-beams welded at right angles). Somewhere between there is a lot of playfulness and room for material exploration. I would like the viewer to simultaneously think, ‘I could have thought of that,’ and ‘I have no idea how they built that thing.’ There is no right or wrong way to engage with it.”
See the blog post written by Thom White on the Chrysler Museum’s Torch: Stories from the Chrysler blog.
The APA (American Planning Association) Virginia Chapter has awarded the Dogwood Award — Virginia’s Citizen Planners of the Year to the Olde Huntersville Community.
WPA is excited to announce Mel will be receiving the Award for Distinguished Achievement from AIA Virginia, along with Al Cox, FAIA and Christopher Gordon, AIA.
The Elizabeth River Project is taking up position on the frontlines of the international quest to combat impacts of sea level rise on urban waterfront communities. WPA is proud to be designing the first facility on the East Coast intentionally to be constructed as a resilience model in the urban flood plain.
Work Program Architects is leading an effort to OpenNorfolk, as cities and towns around the world try to imagine living with COVID-19.
AIA Virginia’s Inform Magazine is back in action and WPA’s Thom White was interviewed for this issue’s Designer Q&A.
popblossom is pleased to present, A PUBLIC ACT, an exhibition of letterpress broadsides, posters and prints by RNR Showprint, showing Oct 18—December 24, 2019. The artists will be present at the Opening Event, Friday, October 18, 6:30-8:30pm.
By the 1990s, letterpress appeared to be at death’s door. A few decades later, a new crop of artists, designers and printers are resurrecting the centuries-old process. Among them are Ivanete Blanco and David Shields, founders of RNR Showprint, a collaborative letterpress and graphic design studio based in Norfolk, VA.
According to the Blanco and Shields, “A PUBLIC ACT presents the letterpress broadsides, posters, and prints of RNR Showprint. For nearly a century, letterpress printing was the embodiment of the loud public voice of American culture and commerce. The imposing typographic impressions made possible with wood type demanded attention as they recorded and legitimized our collective wishes, ambitions and fears. The work of RNR emerges specifically from the traditions and vocabulary of the letterpress show print, advertisements for performances of all varieties, from carnivals to tent revivals, medicine shows to wrestling matches, and particularly, concerts and dances. The exhibition is an exchange of public dispatches, the product of a traditional working print shop giving form to contemporary expressions while bending tradition to examine the old weird America portrayed in the roots music first captured during the reign of letterpress.”
