Nonprofit Spotlight: A New Home for D'Art Artists

If you wander from studio to studio in the new D'Art Center in Norfolk, Virginia the 21 artists

	Vonnie Whitworth loves the light in her studio.

working there will enthusiastically tell you what they like most about their new home at 740 Duke Street:

• Being reunited after an explosion at their downtown Norfolk location in April 2016 displaced them for months.
• The creative energy that flows from the neighboring Chrysler Museum of Art, its hot glass studio and the new NEON arts district.
• The natural light streaming into their new home on two floors in an office building.The light is perfect for painting and creating other works of art.
  
  
  For  Carolyn Phillips, D'Art Center executive director, the move to the new D'Art at Duke "is all positive" and continues a tradition started in 1986 when the collaborative studio and gallery first opened in Norfolk. For artists like Vonnie Whitworth, a pastel artist on at least her third D'Art location, "it feels good to be here." Ken Wright, a long-time D'Art artist who creates with acrylics, likes his lighted-filled studio where he can  "focus on painting." 
  
  
  The artists moved to their new home recently with help from a recent $25,000 Hampton Roads Community Foundation grant that paid for building enhancements and moving expenses.  "To call this grant a lifesaver would be an understatement," Phillips says.
  
  
  In addition, a $5,000 grant from the Mermaid Fund helped sustain the visual art center when it had to vacate its former building. The Norfolk Arts and Humanities Commission started the Mermaid Fund at the community foundation in 2015. A $2,000 matching grant from the Business Consortium for Arts Support, which the community foundation helps fund, also helped sustain the art center while its artists were displaced.
  
  
  On March 23, 2016 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. the business consortium will sponsor an open house and benefit at the new D'Art at Duke . The center at 740 Duke Street is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 .m. to 5 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.

  

  Artist Ken Wright and Carolyn Phillips, D'Art director, are happy about the new center.

  
  

Generous Donors Create 24 Hampton Roads Community Foundation Funds

It was an extraordinary year for giving in 2015 when donors from all walks of life created an unprecedented 24 permanent named funds at the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. This was the most new charitable funds started in a single year at the community foundation, which dates to 1950.

Below are a few of the forward-thinking donors from southeastern Virginia who are the community foundation's new partners in philanthropy. Their funds will forever provide scholarships and generate grants for nonprofits that support a variety of causes. New fund holders include:

Matthew Elliott

• Martha B. Ambler of Norfolk, our retired chief financial officer, and her husband Tom, an

  

  L.D. Britt, M.D.

  attorney with Norfolk Southern.
• Carter Grandy Bernert of Norfolk, granddaughter of one of our founding board members. 
• Edward and Ruth Legum of Virginia Beach, whose family ran furniture stores in our region dating to 1937.  
• Dr. L.D. Britt of Suffolk, a new member of the community foundation board and the Brickhouse Professor of Surgery at Eastern Virginia Medical School to support a community health fund.
• The late Dr. Samuel F. Coppage Jr., a professor of information technology at Old Dominion University. The four funds his estate started will benefit Tidewater Community College, Grace Episcopal Church, St. Mary's Catholic Church and Hampton University.
• Matthew Elliott of Norfolk, a former scholarship recipient who is an ODU engineering graduate student and employee of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District. The fund he rallied donors to create will provide a scholarship in memory of two fellow Maury High School swimmers -- Carlton Dean and Joey Callahan.
• Kirkland Molloy Kelley, a Norfolk attorney who is a member of our Professional Advisors Committee
• Sen. L. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, who has represented the 18th district of Virginia in the General Assembly since 1992. 

  

  Sen. L. Louise Lucas

• The Norfolk Arts and Humanities Commission whose new Mermaid Fund will underpin the arts in Norfolk. 
• Retired veterinarian Dr. John Settle of Virginia Beach and his wife Audrey whose fund supports women in difficult circumstances.
• Retired nurse Madeline Sly of Norfolk, whose husband Don attended medical school in the 1950s with help from a community foundation scholarship. Their fund will provide scholarships for students planning careers in medicine.
• Retired banker Donald J. Trufant of Cape Charles, who was a board member of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Community Foundation, affiliate to the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. His unrestricted fund will support needs on the Eastern Shore.
• Virginia Eye Foundation, which plans to support charities helping to prevent blindness.
• Retired U.S. Sen. John W. Warner of Alexandria, his wife Jeanne and their children created a fund to support the morale of Navy personnel serving on the new Warner submarine. 

  

  Sen. John and Jeanne Warner with the new sub named for him.

  
   (The Hampton Roads Community Foundation is a regional community foundation started in 1950 as the first community foundation in Virginia. It is among nearly 750 community foundation around the country serving specific geographic regions. It is the largest grant and scholarship provider in southeastern Virginia and manages more than 400 charitable funds created by donors from all walks of life. Over the decades it has provided more than $210 million to improve life for residents living in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, including the cities of Chesapeake, Franklin, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Smithfield, Suffolk and Virginia Beach. It also serves people in Isle of Wight and Southampton counties and the Eastern Shore of Virginia, including Accomack and Northampton counties. Learn more at hamptonroadscf.org. You can click here to locate a community foundation near you. )