Calendar

National Geographic’s Planet or Plastic? exhibition showcases the global plastic waste crisis and highlights innovators working to solve this urgent issue. Featuring the work of researchers, scientists and artists, the exhibition traces the history of plastic and explores the devastating impacts of plastic pollution on our world’s oceans. The exhibition will also feature a look into the rise of single-use plastics due to COVID-19. Through powerful imagery, Planet or Plastic? makes the important case for the need to find a balance between using this material and protecting our environment.

Join us for an opening reception. Mixed media artist and Norfolk Public School art educator, Samantha Wegener combines ready made objects and pre-manufactured trinkets in a playful creative process sparked by inspiration from materials that best serve ideas quickly and succinctly. Put into a demonstratively visual language, vulnerabilities regarding labels she identifies with and labels others often bear are explored in her collaborative Labels project on display as part of this exhibition. Local artist Jazmine Sloan creates acrylic paintings that prompt viewers to think creatively, outside of the box, and beyond what they perceive. Her work represents emancipating yourself from the cage that is your mind. A founder of the Raven’s Fig Foundation, Jazmine strives to empower children and youth of color to express themselves creatively in visual arts and literature through the discovery of the African American culture.

See Bay Youth Orchestras stream of their live broadcasts on March 29. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZaYO4Jz2rA and https://youtu.be/64jL8wlhFK4

Tribute is a national exhibition that features paintings from artists from across the country. This exhibition is open to 2D fine art and fine craft in all paint mediums. In theme and content, artworks should pay tribute to a person, place, or thing of great importance to the artist. The Tribute exhibition at d’Art Center is in honor of Barbara Fulp. Barbara was a resident artist at d’Art Center who passed in 2019. She is greatly missed by all who knew her.

Opening the new performance venue will be Americana/roots music favorite Oliver Wood, familiar to many Virginia Arts Festival fans through his performances with The Wood Brothers, who performed at the Festival’s Funhouse Fest in 2018. His style has been described as a mix of folk, blues, gospel and jazz; what fans know is that his songs speak directly to their souls, with a sound that’s “truly timeless…comforting us and propelling us toward some deeper understanding” (popmatters.com).