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
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.
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.
