by Charles Hendricks | Sep 27, 2017 | artwork, community, First Friday, Local Leaders, Office Culture
I love hosting artists in our space. It gives them a place to engage fans, sell their work, and frankly makes our space look even better. It takes time and money to hang the work, feed the attendees, and host the party. It is so worth it for me! This past month our artist was able to sell two pieces during the opening on First Friday. Her work is amazing and I love that it found a home. This month our artist did an ink drawing of the depot as part of the show – how cool is that?
Please come visit us. We have free parking, plenty of food and drink, and amazing art to look at and talk about. See you on October 6th!
Official announcement:
Each month for Harrisonburg’s First Friday, we host a new artist in our building’s 2nd floor gallery at the Chesapeake Western Depot at 141 W. Bruce St. (second floor entrance is on Chesapeake). Artwork will remain on exhibit through the month. Come view the show and get a tour the Depot! We will have refreshments available!
Artist Statement – Elwood Madison
As an artist that loves this town, I try to capture the spirit of Harrisonburg in the quick strokes of the pen. There is a creative energy that I feel when I walk these streets. A vibration seeking to burst from the stone and bricks. On strictly architectural terms, the first impression might reveal little more than another small southern town but have begun to perceive a more distinguished collection of structure and space that potentially materializes from years of accumulated experiences. Rather than attempting to capture an exact photographic representation, I tend to let memories and history rise to the surface. If any of the musicality that I feel in the heart of our city is expressed in the renderings of these architectural portraits, then I suppose I have achieved some level of success with this pursuit.
Bio:
Elwood Madison is a local artist and designer with a special interest in whimsical, playful imagery. Much of his recent work is composed of unconventional ink and watercolors of both recognizable and less obvious public spaces in Downtown Harrisonburg. He currently is working as a graphic designer and illustrator for various locally based small businesses.
by Charles Hendricks | Aug 19, 2017 | artwork, community, First Friday, Local Leaders, Office Culture
Gaines Group Architects T-Shirts will be available for pick up at the September 1, 2017 Harrisonburg First Friday from 5pm – 8pm. This monthly event features a different artist each month. We offer food and drink for those attending and the artist is always available for discussions.
Harrisonburg First Friday at The Depot
For September, our artist is Barbara Gautcher. Here is her artist statement:
“I’m continuing to explore abstraction, color, and collage in my paintings. These works are taken from sketches of the architectural features when looking out windows of buildings…the expanse of a sidewalk, the angle of a roof, the curve of a path, the lights for the path, the vertical of a building edge, or the horizontal of a patio wall. To me the window has become an opening to creative discoveries and to a world yet to be explored.
These are 10 x 10 collages of design using color, line, and texture. They are rarely literal nor can one find a horizon line”
by Charles Hendricks | Dec 18, 2016 | artwork, community, First Friday, Office Culture
Christmas at the Chesapeake Western Depot
We are loving our new Harrisonburg office on the edge of downtown. This was such a great move for our firm. We still feel connected to downtown – walking distance to the holiday parade. We now have a reserved parking lot for our clients. We get amazing sunrises over the building. We have enough space that we have now grown in size to 5 people in the Harrisonburg office.
We can now host First Firday art gallery openings, which we have each Friday since moving into the building. Our friends, potential clients, and past clients all visit to see the new art work on display and hang out. It is a great chance to build community right in our own office space. We have artists signed up for some months in 2017, but do not have the entire year booked – let me know if you want to be in our space.
We get to share space with the creative minds at Estland and the construction experts at Herr and Co.
We also get to have fun making the space our own. This month Rebecca decorated for the holidays.
She found this tree at Mercy House along with a few other decorations.
She made these decorations.
We also got the guys downstairs at Monger’s to join in the Holiday fun and they hosted Santa in their space.
Of you put new Marvin Windows on your shopping list – he was checking out the details while at the space.
My little elfs also stopped by to put their mark on my office. I like where this Xmas list is heading!
Of course my annual Harley Davidson tree made it to the new office to complete the decorations!
Christmas at the Chesapeake Western Depot is wonderful indeed. Stop by this week to see the decorations or just to say hi. We love having visitors to our space!
by Charles Hendricks | Sep 29, 2016 | artwork, community, First Friday, Local Leaders, Office Culture
Gallery Opening on First Friday “Architecture of Life in Watercolors”
You are INVITED!
Each month we host a new artist in our Depot building gallery in the Chesapeake Western Depot at 141 W. Bruce St. (second floor entrance is on Chesapeake). This month we are hosting “Architecture of Life in Watercolors” by W A Berkshire. The artwork will remain on exhibit through October and is for sale. Come view the show and get a tour of the newly renovated space! We will have light refreshments available!
October 7, 2016 from 5pm – 8pm.
First Friday Downtown is a great event with businesses all over downtown becoming art galleries for this night. First Fridays Downtown is a free celebration of culture and community held in downtown Harrisonburg. During the first Friday of the month, the downtown venues host art exhibition openings, local music performers, and various arts related events.
This past month we hosted a Harrisonburg Rockingham Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting as part of our Gallery Opening. We even had the big scissors! Ray and Carla joined our Harrisonburg staff from the Charlottesville office. We had around 175 people attend through the 5pm – 8pm event.
by Charles Hendricks | Feb 8, 2013 | artwork, community, First Friday, Local Leaders, Office Culture
This week’s featured local business is Universal Design Partners.
About: Universal Design Partners is run by Scott and Sarah Pruett; both of whom are health care professionals who specialize in Universal design and accessibility. Their passion is helping businesses design things that are functional for the greatest amount of people.
So, Sarah, give us some background on your company. What do you do and why do it?
We both have a background in physical rehabilitation and made a decision to apply our skills in the community instead of in a clinical setting. I’m an occupational therapist and Scott is a therapeutic recreation specialist. Back in 1999 Scott was in a skiing accident, broke his neck, bruised his spinal cord, and has been using a wheelchair ever since. It wasn’t really one of those things he planned for and life changed quickly. Lesson learned: life isn’t predictable. I know we’re not alone in realizing that.
We’ve each worked with people whose lives have been turned upside down by some sort of physical issue, whether age, injury, or illness – speaking very generally here – that has affected ways they interact with nearly everything in their homes and communities, and we see tremendous opportunity to help make life easier for them.
We’ve chosen two things to focus on:
- Encouraging widespread use of universal design, which is about the design of things that are highly accessible and highly usable for the greatest amount of people, regardless if a health condition exists or not.
- Consulting with businesses and organizations to help make the things they offer more accessible and usable. Not only does this increase value of what they offer, but if enough businesses and organizations get on board with the idea of universal design, it will ultimately will make communities more “welcoming” and easier to access for people who live in them, again regardless if health-related needs exist or not.
There are places that people want to go and things people want to do on a regular basis that are more difficult than needed, simply because of the design. When things are designed well, whether a place, product, or program, all sorts of stuff in life becomes easier and less stressful. Who doesn’t want that?
Do you have an ideal client? If so, what do they look like?
Yup. We ideally want to work with businesses or organizations who are designing, building, or creating new things. This can include everything from residential homebuilding, commercial construction, product development, leisure service, and all sorts of things in-between. We want to work with clients that value the intellectual capital that we can provide as healthcare professionals to increase the functionality of their products and/or services.
What is your favorite success story in the past few years?
We love to travel; two years ago we were able to move to a small mountain town in Colorado for 4 months as Scott was finishing his graduate degree in Parks and Recreation Management. We rooted ourselves in Crested Butte while Scott worked at The Adaptive Sports Center – an outdoor adventure organization that specializes in providing opportunity for people with disabilities to participate in outdoor adventure sports. These sports, activities, or programs offer tremendous therapeutic value through increased physical skills, confidence, and other context-specific benefits. It was a wonderful change of pace and gave us the time to challenge ourselves both physically and vocationally. We also worked with local lodging providers to increase accessibility for participants of the center, and we saw firsthand that all that’s necessary to catalyze big results in people’s lives is a little problem-solving. It was rewarding personally and professionally as we saw positive changes as the result of our efforts.
What do you like to do for fun in Harrisonburg? Favorite Restaurant? Favorite place to spend a Saturday afternoon?
Well, Strite’s Donuts isn’t really a restaurant, but we live downtown and they conveniently park their donut truck within easy walking distance on Tuesdays and Thursdays; we love their hot and fresh awesomeness. Union Station and Dave’s are also downtown favorites. We enjoy getting away from the quick pace of everyday life and getting outdoors, whether taking a walk around the neighborhood or taking our Subaru or Jeep up into the mountains for a little off-road adventure. If we stay in for something low-key, it often includes Netflix, coffee, and maybe a dark craft beer. We’ve also developed some close friendships through our church community, and regular evenings with them provide entertainment and some borderline unhealthy amounts of laughter. I play volleyball once a week too.
What is on your (iPod, radio, phone) while you work?
It depends. Sometimes we need to work in silence, but usually Pandora is streaming something in the background. I typically work best with music from film scores or other classical music without words so I won’t get distracted by the lyrics and start singing. However, when doing mindless data entry you’ll probably hear either oldies, folk, contemporary bluegrass, or acappella music of all kinds coming from my computer. Scott’s music preferences are a little different from mine, but again dependent on what he’s doing. It’s typical to hear everything from acoustic folk/bluegrass/americana to bass-heavy uptempo stuff.
What is your favorite book?
I’m not a big reader these days, but I read Real Simple Magazine often. Scott’s a nerd and reads mostly non-fiction. His recent recommendations for business-related stuff are “The Personal MBA” by Josh Kauffman, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip & Dan Heath, and the book of Proverbs from the Bible.
What is your favorite app for your phone?
Haha, other than Facebook and Pinterest? When out-of-town I use “Around Me” to locate places to eat or get gas. I’m definitely known to play several games of “Ticket To Ride” on long car trips. Scott’s are Any.Do, Buffer, Catch, and Flipboard.
Where is your favorite place to vacation?
I like the mountains and the beach. My favorite trip was a Caribbean cruise (our honeymoon). Scott doesn’t have a favorite, but he’d likely gravitate to the mountains for something quiet. Or, on the total flip side, he’d suggest a road trip to a big city for a bit of culture change and entertainment.
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