By Debbie Adams
During their 2023 season, the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra (RSO) has sponsored “The Painted Violins Project” in collaboration with local artists in Southwest Virginia. Twelve violins were donated to the artists who created a piece of visual art on the surface of the violin. Once completed, the violins were raffled off online and the proceeds will be used to fund strings education in Roanoke and the surrounding communities.
The project revived a previous RSO initiative—Painted Violins: Music to the Eyes, a 50th Anniversary Celebration.
The new Painted Violins Project is meant to make the community aware of the deficits in the Roanoke area in string education. Their ultimate goal is “building tomorrow’s symphony.”
The RSO says, “String education is at the core of the Roanoke Symphony’s Educational Programming. Students in Roanoke and the surrounding communities have limited access to string education. While we have worked to take action in closing the gap between our community and string education, there is always more we can do. Like many arts organizations in our community, the youth ensemble programs in Studio: RSO have declined through the Covid-19 pandemic and without proper outreach, engagement, and interest, these student ensembles will continue to suffer.
“The Painted Violins Project directly supports the initiatives of musical education at the RSO. Not only will this project engage community support and interest in string education, but it will also open the conversation to the importance of the arts in our community. Our hope with project is to be able to bring more string educators, teachers, performers, and opportunities to the students we serve.”
One of the 12 artists selected for the Painted Violins Project is Allyson Goin, who has been teaching art at William Byrd High School for 23 years.
“I applied and was chosen,” Goin explains. “I had to submit a resume, show pieces of art I’d done, and explain why I wanted to be a part of the project. They chose who would be a part of the project, called us, and then provided us with the violins to paint.
“We submitted a proposal for our theme, a sketch of our design,” she says. Goin chose the theme of “Harmony of Nature and Time.”
“The last few years I have found myself reflecting on ‘time’ and how it affects everything around us,” Goin said. “I chose to visually represent ‘time’ through the changing of seasons, metamorphosis, birth/nurturing, and death– while also showing ways we have and continue to tell time: sundial, pocket watch, hourglass, cracked clock, and grandfather clock.
“We then had set dates to check in with the person in charge so they could make sure we were staying on track, and they wanted to see how things were going,” Goin notes. “It was well organized, and Hannah Cox (Community Engagement and Education Director of the RSO) then had a great variety of places to put the violins on display to show them off while raffle tickets were sold.”
The RSO hosted an Artists Reception Cocktail Hour and Gallery of the Painted Violins Project at the Hotel Roanoke, inviting all local teachers to attend and giving each one free ticket to the raffle.
The Painting Violins Project has been a great success and has raised thousands of dollars for string education.
