THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 9, 1995 TAG: 9501090041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Classes start today at the new Tidewater Community College Visual Arts Center, even though construction workers haven't finished remodeling the old Famous department store at the corner of High and Court streets.
The $2.6 million, 33,000-square-foot center will bring art classes from three suburban campuses under one roof in Olde Towne. About 1,000 students have enrolled for the spring semester.
``Art is coming into its own,'' TCC Visual Arts Director Anne Iott said Friday. ``We are separating from the Division of Humanities into a division of our own called Visual Arts.''
Iott and other faculty members and the construction workers will scramble to the last minute to attempt to make some order out of chaos on the second and third floors of the urban art school.
``The first floor will not be finished until Feb. 6,'' Iott said. Pottery and sculpture classes, which will be set up on the ground level, have been delayed until then.
Thirty truckloads of equipment and furniture have been hauled from TCC campuses in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Portsmouth. Today, $380,000 worth of new high-tech equipment for computer graphics and photography laboratories is expected to arrive.
The center originally was scheduled to open in time for the fall semester, but asbestos removal slowed the remodeling. Rather than wait until summer, the faculty decided to move this month even though the building is not finished.
``I have no heartburn about this,'' Iott said. ``I've been watching the work for months and I know it will be done by February.''
Jeff Bunch, project superintendent for O.K. James Construction of Williamsburg, said he and his men will continue working day and night, seven days a week, to finish the building.
The exterior will feature red columns, red and white banners 9 feet tall, and gray brick and glass.
Upon completion, the first floor, with storefront windows on two streets, will house not only the pottery and sculpture departments but also administrative offices and several gallery spaces. The galleries, containing about 4,000 square feet, will display work by regional and national artists as well as by TCC students and faculty.
``The galleries are the heartbeat of the school,'' Iott said. ``We have built the exhibit areas to meet all specifications,'' for humidity control, security and other requirements.
In addition to the computer graphics and photography laboratories, the second floor will have space for art history classes and a slide and print library.
New equipment in the library will enable the center to participate in ``distance learning'' via a community college network that will take lectures and demonstrations from Portsmouth across the state.
Painting and drawing classes will take advantage of natural light streaming through windows around the third floor, which also will house printmaking equipment. Raku pottery will be fired high above the streets on the roof of the building.
In addition to a full schedule of credit courses in fine arts and computer graphics, the center will offer a dozen continuing education classes, ranging from cartooning to Chinese painting and jewelry making.
The center is the only stand-alone division in Virginia's community college system. The idea of creating the art institute downtown came from TCC President Larry Whitworth.
``We are very much taken with Olde Towne,'' he said. ``It is visually exciting and much more attractive than any of the places the art classes have been.''
The decision to move was made by the arts faculty.
``At first they were skeptical,'' Whitworth said. ``Then, when they saw Portsmouth and what it offered, they were very excited. They made a positive decision to move.''
About 45 faculty and staff members will work in the building, which will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for students to use the technical equipment.
``Change often is difficult,'' Iott said. ``But this center really will make us more central to our service area than we have been.''
The distance to designated parking downtown is the same as the distance to parking lots on the Virginia Beach campus, Iott said. Parking decals, included in the registration fee for classes, will be issued to all students.
The college will provide around-the-clock security at the center and escort service to parking lots.
The center is a joint venture of TCC and the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which purchased the building several years ago for $270,000. The city financed the building's remodeling with loans and federal money. TCC, in return, will pay the city $132,000 a year in rent for 20 years.
The Visual Arts Center is the second major project to open downtown within a month. The new multimillion-dollar Children's Museum of Virginia opened a month ago and attracted about 20,000 visitors in its first 25 days of operation. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/
``Art is coming into its own,'' says Anne Iott, director of the TCC
Visual Arts Center. Work on the center, in downtown Portsmouth,
should be complete within weeks.
Photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/
Construction Supervisor Jeff Bunch, left, and Tim Johnson work on
the new Visual Arts Center. Classes were to begin in the downtown
Portsmouth building today, though remodeling continues.
by CNB