Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 9, 1990 TAG: 9006090035
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's Roanoke's former Jefferson High School, which the foundation plans to remodel into a center for education, social service offices and the arts, with the help of a $3.5-million bond issue.
At a meeting with representatives of arts organizations on May 25, Jefferson officials explained the project and impressed their audience with their willingness to make the remodeling fit the needs of its prospective occupants.
After her own meeting with Jefferson officials, Victoria Bond pronounced herself "very encouraged." Bond is conductor of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of Southwest Virginia Opera - two organizations that the Jefferson Center very much wants to have on its premises.
Jefferson's stage is both too small and structurally inappropriate for the orchestra and opera, and Bond has said so publicly. Jefferson officials told her they were willing to see about enlarging the stage and making other changes needed by the two musical organizations.
A feasibility study toward that end is likely, said architect Richard Rife of Horner & Associates, the firm that has been working with the Jefferson Foundation during early stages of the project. "We're going to do all we can to make it work for all of us," he said.
"I'm very encouraged," Bond said. "Jefferson Center could be the Lincoln Center of Roanoke. It would be an important statement of the area's commitment to culture."
A couple of new spaces
Gallery prowlers should be sure not to overlook Art in the Window or the new contemporary gallery of the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts.
The former is, as the name implies, a window display area that's given over to rotating installations by area artists. The window belongs to The Arts Council of Roanoke Valley and faces onto the sidewalk from council headquarters at 20 Church Ave. S.W.
The current installation is by brothers Philip and Steve Bernard. Titled "Ground Play," it removes playground equipment and topiary standards from their normal landscape context and recycles them somewhat playfully as objects of art.
The art museum's contemporary gallery is inside the bridge linking Center in the Square with Center on Church. It's a particularly agreeable room - detached; spacious; lit in part by tall, narrow windows that overlook Kirk Alley; and equipped with wall spaces that are expansive enough to accommodate the largest of paintings.
John Alexander, Frances de la Rosa, Brower Hatcher, Ray Kass and others are represented in an exhibit that runs through Aug. 12 and fits from exceptionally lucid labeling on the subject of abstract expressionism and its offshoots. The authors are Tara Tappert, Bill Rutherfoord and Brian Sieveking of the museum staff.
Berry re-elected
Tim Berry has been re-elected president of The Arts Council of Roanoke Valley for a term of one year.
Other officers are John Fishwick, first vice president; Burt Levine, second vice president; Marion Crenshaw, secretary; and Charles Downs, treasurer. All were re-elected with the exception of Levine, whose position is a new one.
by CNB