A colorful wave of ideas and inspiration — courtesy of Filipino artist Venazir Martinez — will soon splash across an unsuspecting brick wall near Old Dominion University’s Chartway Arena. Poet, English professor and director of Old Dominion University Filipino American Cultural Programming Luisa A. Igloria announced that a custom-created mural will honor the legacies of Filipino Americans.
“The design incorporates many maritime elements — showing the connections of our community to water and seafaring, historically,” Igloria wrote. “I’m really excited.”
Martinez will come to Norfolk to paint the mural, which she designed. It will be affixed to a north-facing wall on 45th Street between the arena and University Village Bookstore. Gordon Art Galleries Director Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth said the mural’s location will create a visual continuum between the public cultural space of the convocation center, the Gordon Galleries and the Art Department buildings along Monarch Way.
The artist will arrive at Old Dominion University Oct. 22 and plans to complete the mural in a little more than a week. She’s scheduled to give a public artist talk at the Gordon Art Galleries Oct. 30 at noon.
Her design for the mural features bright colors and emblematic images. It includes naval themes, a nod to medical professions and education, and Virginia symbols including dogwood blooms.
This project is made possible through an endowment established for ODU by the Filipino American community 27 years ago, though FilAm cultural programming was on hiatus for the last ten years or so, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. The work supports the University’s strategic goal of emphasizing projects that create a sense of place, promote wellbeing, and strengthen community ties. Public art is one way to reach those goals.
Martinez describes herself as a “street muralist and visual anthropreneur.” In recent years, she has created eye-catching murals for public spaces in New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Wyoming, Michigan.
Also, she created one for Portsmouth’s Wall Street Mural Festival held in May.
In 2018, Martinez was awarded the Darnay Demetillo Artist Grand Prize from the University of the Philippines. The next year, she won the top honors at the Wanderland Music and Art Festival in her home country. In May of this year, she received the inaugural Dream Big prize at the National Mural Awards held in Salt Lake City.
Martinez says her work “intertwines souls and spaces” and creates a “tapestry of intersectional narratives that explore the evolving relationships between human traditions, cultures, memories, and the landscapes that shape them.”
