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"Hope," by Federico Infante
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"Running Tide," by Ed Hatch
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"Hopewell Proud," by Austin "Auz" Miles
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"Bobby's Antiques," by Eliza Lamb
They’ve materialized over Hopewell streets: across from a playground, a school-aged Black girl appears in a prideful stance before a cityscape; a magnificent view of a bend in the Appomattox River overlooks parking lots; a bald eagle soars above the entrance to a shopping center. The placement of seven billboards depicting creative interpretations of Hopewell is the result of the billboard art project of the city’s Lamb Center for Arts and Healing.
Eliza Lamb organized the center to bring the arts into Hopewell’s streets and neighborhoods. The fine-art photographer grew up in Prince George County near Hopewell, and after earning degrees at the Savannah College of Art and Design and Columbia University in art education and administration she felt the pull of home. She and her husband, artist Federico Infante, moved from New York City to Hopewell in 2016.
“In New York, there were plenty of people who’d happily take the jobs I had,” Lamb reflects. She served as curator for the Children’s Museum of the Arts and taught art in Guatemalan orphanages and university settings. “And I realized that even though I was living in New York, my photography concerned Hopewell, and I had to stop and think about why. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to invest my life and energy, and make a true difference, the kind of changes I’d want to see happen might not happen otherwise unless I advocated for them. This is my hometown; I know what makes it tick.”
Lamb posed the question of the best way to weave art through the lives of Hopewellians other than those already connected with art, whether through making and collecting or visiting galleries. She also observed the opening of restaurants and breweries, the completion of the Hopewell River Walk, and the rebirth of The Beacon Theatre.
To complement these events, in 2019 the Lamb Center took the lead on presenting the Hopewell Arts Fest through partnerships with a dozen organizations including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which brought the revived Art Mobile.
“Every Hopewell fourth grader came though,” Lamb says. “Almost a thousand people attended.” She wanted to repeat and grow the festival’s scope in 2020, but the pandemic forestalled the plan.
One of the prime requirements for artists, however, is resiliency.
Lamb says, “I can’t get everybody to the gallery, but I can get the gallery to the community.” A part of the Hopewell Billboard Project’s inspiration came from Infante’s 5-foot-by-10-foot work “Hope,” depicting the heroic-sized girl wreathed by eucalyptus leaves.
Lamb approached Lamar Outdoor Advertising, which demonstrated its community-mindedness by donating seven billboards for at least the month of October. The company isn’t a stranger to the notion of public art. The concept also coincided with the Culture Works art advocacy group’s annual initiative ArtoberVA.
Lamb invited five other artists with Hopewell connections to contribute.
Several of the billboards are visible from housing communities and situated to allow people to view the works from their homes and playgrounds.
“We’re peppering these pieces about different aspects of the community throughout the city,” Lamb explains, “to build bridges and fill gaps to help it feel more whole.”
Infante, a native of Santiago, Chile, tends to work large, but he acknowledges surprise seeing the art in billboard dimensions, 10 feet by 22 feet in this case. “More than seeing the work displayed so large, it’s also their location. Mine is right across from the playground of a housing authority property, and for me it’s a very, very touching connection to those who’ll be able to experience it there.”
The leaves add a flourish of the mythic and ground the figure. She seems light, ready to fly.
Ed Hatch, a Hopewell native and full-time artist for the past 40 years, describes his painting “Running Tide” as “a stretch of the Appomattox River with some artistic license.” The original piece is about 6 inches by 12 inches. The dreamy landscape of sunset reflected on water is situated amid parking lots for the billboard project.
Hatch presently lives in the hamlet of Burroughsville, 14 miles east of Hopewell, where his great-grandparents opened a store in 1912. He received a VMFA professional scholarship in 1980, “and I’ve not not had a job since,” he jokes. He quit making designs for T-shirts and pursued life as a working artist, creating a variety of pictures ranging from farms and fields to sunflowers and sailboats. For the past four years he’s held an open house at his studios; this year it will take place in the first weekend of November.
“I invite people to come down to this place in the middle of nowhere,” he says, “and hope they’ll make a little destination of it. Have lunch at the Boathouse [at City Point], take the free ferry to Jamestown.”
Austin “Auz” Miles, a painter, designer and muralist originally from Durham, North Carolina, works out of Richmond and lives in Petersburg, though she visited her mother’s grandparents in Hopewell.
Miles, who often presents the narratives of Black women in her work, participated in collaborative painting at the first Hopewell Arts Festival. The resulting work was “Hopewell Proud,” a 4-foot-by-16-foot work on panels with the center piece depicting a bald eagle. “It’s magnificent that you can find them right there at home,” she observes. The piece is near the entrance to the Cavalier Square Shopping Center.
With fellow artist Nico Cathcart, Miles recently completed a mural titled “Liberty Leads Her People” as part of the Richmond Mending Walls Project and an episode of the Mending Walls podcast.
Lamb’s photograph in the billboard project carries special meaning for her. The image is of Donna Brown and her granddaughter Kendriana in front of Brown’s sister’s shop in the center of Hopewell, Bobby’s Antiques. Lamb deliberately placed the piece the farthest from downtown. Vines seem ready to encroach.
“When I was growing up, Hopewell’s downtown was antique-centric; now I think Bobby’s is one of the few remaining.” The collection is curated, emphasizing Americana, and speaks to the history of the city and nation.
Lamb made this image while still living in New York, “For a long time, I took pictures of Hopewell without people in them,” she recalls. “This was the first one I took that was otherwise.” She notes, too, that the Billboard Project is the first time that either she or Infante have exhibited in Hopewell or together in an exhibition.
The Hopewell Billboard Project continues through at least October. Find a roster of the makers and the locations of the works here.
