Commercial Coffee Hampton Roads

Join us on Wednesday, August 29th to hear about the most iconic riverfront trail in the country, Elizabeth River Trail. This 10.5 mile trail stretches along Norfolk’s waterfront and includes some of the City’s most beloved treasures, including Waterside Marina, Town Point Park, The Pagoda, and Nauticus. We will meet at the pier BEHIND Nauticus. Attendees will need to walk down the path between Half Moone Center and Nauticus to get to the pier. PACE bikes will be available for those interested in riding the trail at the end of the tour. The PACE bike share app is required for use. If you do not have the app downloaded, please visit the Apple App Store and Google Play. Use promo code SOCIALCNFK for a free credit for first time users.

Special Thanks to Work Program Architects for sponsoring this event!

Parking is available at three nearby paid parking garages: Town Point Garage, West Plume Garage, or Main Street Garage.

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/commercial-coffee-hampton-roads-tickets-48745610433

Imaginings!

A ribbon cutting on August 30th will realize the last piece of an exciting concept for downtown Norfolk’s Selden Market.

Already a vibrant place for up-and-coming entrepreneurs to develop and test new ideas in retail, food and art, the historic space once known as the Selden Arcade now boasts the Slover Makerspace, where anyone with a Norfolk library card can manufacture dreams. The space is outfitted with eight 3D printers, a 75-watt laser cutter, 17 Singer sewing machines and several soldering stations. The Makerspace is adjacent to Slover Library.

WPA congratulates the Slover on the space. We are excited and proud to have been a part of the process to design this place for new imaginings!

Neighborhood Rising

After three days of lively charrettes, residents of Norfolk’s Tidewater Gardens community are closer to a new envisioned future.

WPA participated in the mid-July event for the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative HUD Grant with the City of Norfolk, NRHA, The Communities Group, Ray Gindroz, and the lead architect and planner, Torti Gallas + Partners.

Meeting at the Basilica of St. Mary’s, participants advanced a plan for the St. Paul’s Area Redevelopment Phase 1 that creates a framework for new development that meets the needs of the community. The next round of community input is expected in August.

The plan includes new street connections, flooding abatement and a range of housing options from mid-rise apartments to single family, along with an enlivened Church Street to include new retail.

This most recent charrette, as with all planning efforts for the community, is guided by seven planning principles:

– Create a park system to protect from flooding and provide recreation amenities

– Create a community-wide campus with educational opportunities for all ages

– Restore church Street as the heart of the community with shops, food stores, health and medical facilities

– Create pedestrian Scale connections to opportunities in the larger community

– Build a pattern of neighborhood streets and blocks to create a framework for a mixed-use, mixed income community

– Provide a diverse mix of residential development ranging from single-family and town homes to small and large scale apartments

– Provide employment opportunities at the edges of the community for residents

 

 

 

 

 

Rendrings provided by Depiction Illustration 

BRITTON + SAUNDERS | WABI-SABI

BRITTON + SAUNDERS | WABI-SABI
Alternative Perspectives

presented by popblossom
208 East Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Showing: July 6—Sept. 1, 2018
Opening: 6:30-8:30pm, Friday, July 6th
 
popblossom is pleased to present, WABI-SABI (Alternative Perspectives). Please join us for the Opening Event, Friday, July 6th from 6:30 – 8:30pm at WPA Studio + Gallery, located in The Monticello Arcade in Downtown Norfolk, VA.
 


Sculptor May Britton and popblossom’s Lorrie Saunders have come together in a collaborative effort to explore exhibition as medium. Seeking an alternative to the traditional mode of art and exhibition-making, Britton and Saunders blurred the lines between artist and curator by eliminating prescribed or defined roles—their goal, to create a co-authored and co-produced exhibition as a single work of art. With creative energies fused and armed with a non-traditional approach, Britton and Saunders thought it fitting to construct an installation inspired by an unconventional point of view—they settled on wabi-sabi—the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature.
 
Turning to the natural world for inspiration as well as material—wild grape vine and flowers—Britton and Saunders’ installation reflects the rustic simplicity of the wabi-sabi aesthetic while acknowledging beauty in imperfection.
 
May Britton is a fine artist whose figurative and abstract sculptures and site-specific installations have been exhibited widely with many works held in both public and private collections in the US and abroad.  A registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-500), yogic philosophy and teachings continue to influence her life and approach to art-making.
 
​​Former gallery owner Lorrie Saunders is the founder and director of popblossom. She has curated over 50 successful exhibitions of various media by artists of regional, national and international acclaim and whose works are held in public, private, and museum collections.

ELIZABETH DORBAD | THE ARCADE

popblossom is pleased to present THE ARCADE, selected works from the series, ITINERANT ARCHITECTURES, by Elizabeth Dorbad. Please join us for the Opening, Friday, April 6, 6:30-8:30pm at WPA Studio + Gallery, located in The Monticello Arcade in Downtown Norfolk, VA.

In the ongoing series, Itinerant Architectures, Elizabeth Dorbad ponders the impermanence and mutability of architecture while engaging the notion of architectural time. Using abandoned architecture as subject matter and material, Dorbad produces works across a range of media including, photography, drawing and video as well as sculpture created out of the rubble of discarded mobile home trailers.

Dorbad considers architecture a transient sculptural system and recreates the structural identities of buildings through what she calls, architectural intervention, “the direct actions of cutting, superimposing or adorning,” the resulting sculpture or installation is then captured in a photograph.

Based in San Francisco, Elizabeth Dorbad’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries. Her global project, ITINERANT ARCHITECTURES, with iterations in Memphis, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, Berlin, Kassel, New York, and Los Angeles, continues with the latest iteration, THE ARCADE, in Norfolk.

MING YING HONG | CONDITIONS OF UNCERTAINTY

MING YING HONG | CONDITIONS OF UNCERTAINTY
presented by popblossom
208 East Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Showing: Feb 2—March 16, 2018
Opening: Friday, Feb 2, 6:30—8:30pm

Ming Ying Hong’s beautifully rendered charcoal and graphite drawings explore the limits of our knowledge and experience by questioning the way we define and categorize states of being. Her bodily forms—masculine and feminine, dead and alive, aggressive and delicate—her explosions—teetering on the razor-thin edge of dissolution and whole—are common themes throughout her work. According to Hong, by “combining these seemingly contradictory elements, opposites which once defined each other overlap, ultimately dismantling the system in which one definition is privileged over another.” Through this integration of forces, Hong encourages us to examine the in-between spaces of these binaries or areas of uncertainty. As a result, a more complex spectrum of experience emerges.

Ming Ying Hong is an interdisciplinary artist based in Norfolk, VA. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and in 2015, received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. She has exhibited in galleries and institutions throughout the United States, including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Ice Box Gallery in Philadelphia. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, most recently in MANIFEST Gallery’s International Drawing Annual 11. Currently, Hong teaches in the Art Department at Old Dominion University.

UPDATE: NEON Community Open Space Charrette

 

WPA led a well-attended public design charrette to determine the future use of the Cofer Lot in the NEON District at the Hurrah Players’ Copeland Center on September 19th.

The Cofer Lot, at the location of a demolished former auto dealership, is poised to be designated as much-needed open space in the District positioned in a perfect spot on West Olney Road midway between the offerings on Granby Street and the Chrysler Museum.

Some charrette participants suggested a public art space with opportunities for sculpture and performance art. Others desired a tranquil green oasis welcome to all, perhaps with a playground for small children. Voices for the skateboarding community advocated for a safe and welcoming place for sport. The challenge is to accommodate multiple uses in a small footprint, and participants seemed open to discussion and compromise.

TONIGHT: The results of the Charrette and next steps for the site will be presented at this month’s NEON District Committee Meeting, at the Push Comedy Theater in the NEON at 5:30 pm. 763 Granby Street, Norfolk.

400 Granby Street  Suite 301 Norfolk, VA 23510 Studio: (757) 227-5310

© WPA Website Maintained By

400 Granby Street
Suite 301
Norfolk, VA 23510
(757) 227-5310
© WPA
Website Maintained By