Art At The Sandler Center

RSVP to Artist Reception

The latest Sandler Center for the Performing Arts Art Gallery exhibition highlights the return of an artist closely attached to the history and culture of Virginia Beach, featuring a collection of drawings blending ocean themes with streamlined drawings.

Daniel "Danny O" O'Connor, known widely in Virginia Beach for his 1980s series of cartoon characters that famously adorned t-shirts from 17th Street Surf Shop, which became iconic among Virginia Beach teens, surfers, and skaters, presents "One Liners," an exhibition reflecting the artist's new journey of simplifying his life and art.

"One Liners" will be on view Sept. 24 – Jan. 2, whenever the Sandler Center box office is open, as well as to event ticketholders during Sandler Center events.

The Sandler Center and Sandler Center Foundation will host a free, public opening reception for this exhibition, 6 - 8pm, Oct. 6. The Sandler Center Foundation requests those planning to attend please RSVP online in advance of the reception.

Inspired by the life work of Milton Avery, the artist selected a group of drawings for this exhibition, and transformed them from studio notes to works of art on canvas and linen. The exhibition is a nod to the intimate power and potency of line and drawing.

The artist's influences are rooted in his upbringing on Nantasket Beach down the street from an Art Deco amusement park from the 1920s, with a wooden roller coaster and a time warp of rides and mini golf. He later joined the U.S. Navy and attended Cooper Union in New York City before beginning his journey as an artist.

Danny O has recently reconnected to the Virginia Beach art scene, including being the featured artist at the 2024 Virginia MOCA Boardwalk Art Show.

On September 16, 2011, the Sandler Center dedicated Virginia Beach’s newest piece of public art. Lin Emery's latest work, Wings, is a large-scale kinetic sculpture. The aluminum artwork enhances the façade of the Sandler Center and aesthetically complements the outdoor plaza and surrounding Town Center businesses.

Renowned New Orleans artist, Lin Emery seeks to capture the energy inherent in nature in her kinetic sculptures. Not only does her iconography rely on natural shapes, but it is the forces of nature such as wind or water that set her sculptures in motion. Her latest sculpture Wings is a classic example of the sculpture’s relationship with wind and movement. The highly polished surfaces of her welded aluminum sculptures invite a dialogue between the industrial character of their construction and the organic connotations that the works evoke.

Emery begins each of her large-scale public sculptures with a scaled-down model. Ms. Emery insists on hands-on-control of every stage of the process. She works with her own crew throughout the design and implementation process. Ms. Emery’s six decades of work can be seen throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Her work has been commissioned by government municipalities, universities, medical centers, religious centers, and corporate plazas. In October, Hudson Hills Press will release Lin Emery by Philip F. Palmedo and John Berendt. The book covers the artist and her 60 years of work.

About the sponsor: "Tom Felton loved visual art, symphonic music, dance, opera, theatre, folk music, sculpture, pottery, and arts of all kinds; for this I loved him. We agreed that public art defines a city and the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts is a definitive part of Virginia Beach. A building to house all performing arts needs a magnificent sculpture as a focal point. Using the Sandler Center logo for inspiration, Lin Emery was chosen to define our city. Her sculpture, Pennant, has been defining our Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library for over twenty years. Tom and I agreed that his hometown should be a vision for the arts. The statement, “intelligence, creativity, arts,” is our legacy." — Juanita Felton

The Sandler Center has become even more beautiful as three stunning glass sculptures by internationally renowned Japanese artist, Toshio Iezumi, now permanently adorn the Sandler Center lobby for visitors and citizens of Virginia Beach to enjoy for years to come. The pieces were created by joining plates of glass and then grinding them, forming stunning, contemplative sculptures that present ever-changing moods in differing light, presenting the viewer with a different, beautiful impression upon each viewing. Captivated by the beauty and mystery of glass, Mr. Iezumi's work explores the visual potential of glass in an attempt to create flawless perfection.

Toshio Iezumi resides in Japan, where he was born in 1954. He graduated from the Tokyo Glass Institute and is both a Practicing Artist and an Associate Professor of Fine Art at the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts. His work has been exhibited in art galleries and in museum exhibitions worldwide, including 'World Glass Now' (Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 1991 & 1994); 'Venezia Aperto Vetro' (Museo Correr, Venice, Italy 1996); 'The Glass Skin' (Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Corning Museum of Glass, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 1997-99); 'Glass Exhibition' (Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum,); 'Outspoken Glass' (Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art,2003); 'Material Matters' (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2006); 'Sculpture by the Sea' (Bondi, Australia, 2007). He is represented in the permanent collections of major museums including The Corning Museum of Glass; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Newark Museum of Art; The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo.