WPA Studio | WPA - Work Program Architects

BRITTON + SAUNDERS | WABI-SABI

Written by WPA on July 2, 2018. Posted in Blog, Downtown Norfolk, Event, Exhibit, Monticello Arcade, Norfolk, Public Art, WPA Gallery, WPA Studio.

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

Written by WPA on March 30, 2018. Posted in Downtown Norfolk, Event, Exhibit, Monticello Arcade, Norfolk, WPA Gallery, WPA Studio.

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.

Crawling out of the Cubical

Written by WPA on March 26, 2018. Posted in Downtown Norfolk, Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Public Art, Uncategorized, WPA Gallery, WPA Studio.

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Compensation strategies from a small firm principal

Written by maintenance@gotechark.com on March 6, 2018. Posted in AIA, Blog, Downtown Norfolk, Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Small Firm Exchange, WPA Gallery, WPA Studio.

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MING YING HONG | CONDITIONS OF UNCERTAINTY

Written by WPA on January 23, 2018. Posted in Blog, Downtown Norfolk, Event, Exhibit, Norfolk, Public Art, Uncategorized, WPA Gallery, WPA Studio.

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.

BOYER + VITALE | FADED BY THE SUN

Written by WPA on November 14, 2017. Posted in Blog, Event, Exhibit, Norfolk, Public Art, Uncategorized, WPA Studio.

BOYER + VITALE | FADED BY THE SUN
Presented by popblossom
208 E Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Showing: Nov 17—Dec 31, 2017
Opening: 6:30—8:30pm, Friday, Nov 17

Like the physical universe in which we live—immeasurable, mysterious, unfathomable—so too the personal universe each of us inhabits and like the physical realm, we have an innate longing to understand it. In their two-man exhibition, FADED BY THE SUN, Hampton Boyer and John Vitale explore the personal universe, contemplating the intimate relationship between consciousness and reality as well as pondering one’s own existence and the largeness of it.

As a source of inspiration and a vehicle for filtering ideas, Boyer and Vitale turned to National Geographic Magazine. Illustrational in style, Boyer’s compositions hint at imagery found in the magazine, albeit with a bit of humor and a pop-culture twist. His vibrantly hued paintings float on bright yellow walls, evoking the warmth and light of the sun as well as giving nod to the yellow border of the magazine’s iconic cover. For Vitale, the magazine itself becomes medium as well as representation of the ineffable nature of existence as each work’s layered composition emerges from the pages of a single issue of a bound magazine. Vitale notes that there is an element of time in the numbered pages, “individuals dissolving into environments while seeming to play with the ideas of experience and attachment” all the while moving forward in a state of wonderment.

Hampton Boyer is a Hampton Roads based artist whose works have been exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions. A self-taught artist, Boyer’s artistic endeavors manifest in illustrational style graphics, vibrant paintings and youthful murals. In 2014, Boyer cofounded 670 Gallery in Hampton, VA where he served as creative director. In addition to his gallery experience, Boyer has instructed graphic design courses at Hampton University as well as working with the Contemporary Arts Network. Since closing 670 Gallery, Boyer’s focus has been his artistic practice as well as honing his curatorial skills with Thank You Gallery in Norfolk, VA.

John Vitale is a Minneapolis, MN based visual artist. His work has been exhibited in New York, Miami, Chicago, Brooklyn, Portland, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Romania, and Scotland. A graduate of Parson’s School of Design, Vitale has worked as a published and exhibited photographer, a three dimensional designer directing creative projects for Louis Vuitton, Tommy Hilfiger, and Stella McCartney as well as received funding from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to publish zines. After briefly curating pop-up events for VA MOCA, Vitale founded the Nobile & Amundsen Gallery in Norfolk, VA which closed in 2015. He is a practicing Vipassana meditator and works as an EMT on an ambulance.

MEASURED | Peter Eudenbach

Written by WPA on August 30, 2017. Posted in Downtown Norfolk, Event, Norfolk, WPA Gallery, WPA Studio.

MEASURED | Peter Eudenbach
presented by popblossom
208 East Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Showing: Sept. 18—Oct. 31, 2017
Opening: 6:30-8:30pm, Friday, Sept 29

popblossom is pleased to present MEASURED, recent works by Peter Eudenbach. Please join us for the Opening, Friday, September 29th, 6:30-8:30pm at WPA Studio + Gallery, located in The Monticello Arcade in Downtown Norfolk, VA.

“A common strategy in my work is to remove the practical function of objects, freeing them to function as poetic vehicles, with an emphasis on conceptual scale rather than physical scale.”
—Peter Eudenbach

DECONSTRUCTING THE WHEEL

Written by WPA on March 31, 2017. Posted in Downtown Norfolk, Event, Exhibit, Norfolk, Uncategorized, WPA Studio.

DECONSTRUCTING THE WHEEL
Selected Works by Kurt Godwin

Presented by the Godwin Family
Produced by popblossom

The Godwin Family is pleased to present, DECONSTRUCTING THE WHEEL, an introduction to the late painter, Kurt Douglas Godwin, one of DC’s most accomplished artists over the last 30 years—Opening April 21 and showing through May 25, 2017. An Opening Reception is scheduled for Friday, April 21st, 6:30-8:30pm in Work Program Architects Gallery located in The Monticello Arcade, at 208 East Plume Street, in Downtown Norfolk.

How can any artist avoid physics when their tools will always consist of Time, Space, and Light? It is important to get a grip on some of the speculations on these essential elements. It has been interesting and liberating to get to a place to work that is beyond oneself—to abandon autobiography—to provoke new ways of thinking or seeing about universal quandaries that have been pondered by the great thinkers of the ages – to update the myths of ancient times and offer another analogy or parable in the continuing investigations of this universe we find ourselves in. —Kurt Godwin

DECONSTRUCTING THE WHEEL features the paintings of the late conceptual artist, Kurt Godwin. Permeating the selected works is a rich visual language. Juxtaposing emblems in alchemy with imagery from the natural world, Godwin addresses philosophical perplexities while endeavoring to understand the universe in which we live.

AIA Featured Member – Mel Price, AIA

Written by WPA on March 27, 2017. Posted in AIA, Small Firm Exchange, Uncategorized, WPA Studio.

Mel Price, AIA, is Featured Member for AIA’s Small Firm Exchange.

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SOUND STRUCTURE

Written by WPA on February 23, 2017. Posted in Event, Exhibit, Norfolk, Public Art, Uncategorized, WPA Studio.

SOUND STRUCTURE
Andrea Donnelly

Showing: Feb 20 – March 31, 2017
Artist Reception: Friday, March 24

popblossom and Work Program Architects are pleased to present SOUND STRUCTURE, selected works by Andrea Donnelly, showing Feb 20 – March 31 with an artist reception, Friday, March 24, 6:30 – 8:30 PM, at WPA Gallery in The Monticello Arcade, 208 E Plume Street, Norfolk, VA 23510.

Visual artist Andrea Donnelly weaves exquisite cloths. The intricate and time-consuming processes she uses to transform thread to cloth are the conceptual backbone of her work. She touches every inch of thread in the woven-painting-object-artifacts she creates, imbedding imagery and forming figures locked within textile structure. Donnelly paints woven cloth, only to take it apart then weaves it again. Through unraveling and rebuilding this visual language, she excavates deeper meanings in the collaboration of tool, material, and intention.

In addition to weaving, Donnelly has recently begun working in collage and drawing on paper. Reflecting the patterning and sensibilities of textiles, Donnelly’s drawings are informed by her experience as a weaver in both process and mind state.

“A common strategy in my work is to remove the practical function of objects, freeing them to function as poetic vehicles, with an emphasis on conceptual scale rather than physical scale.” —Peter Eudenbach

DECONSTRUCTING THE WHEEL Selected Works by Kurt Godwin

Presented by the Godwin Family Produced by popblossom

SOUND STRUCTURE Andrea Donnelly

Showing: Feb 20 – March 31, 2017 Artist Reception: Friday, March 24

“A common strategy in my work is to remove the practical function of objects, freeing them to function as poetic vehicles, with an emphasis on conceptual scale rather than physical scale.”
—Peter Eudenbach

DECONSTRUCTING THE WHEEL
Selected Works by Kurt Godwin

Presented by the Godwin Family
Produced by popblossom

SOUND STRUCTURE
Andrea Donnelly

Showing: Feb 20 – March 31, 2017
Artist Reception: Friday, March 24