Diversity Richmond gets a new look

A new paint job for the rainbow building.

November 9, 2015; 4:04 PM • by Richard Hayes

The rainbow building of Diversity Richmond and Diversity Thrift is a colorful landmark for travelers zipping along I95 through Richmond. This past week the building began a transformation to bring the design into this decade without losing its colorful personality.

Diversity Richmond, formerly Gay Richmond Community Foundation, has been working with Lisa Cumbey, Creative Director and Managing Partner of Propolis Design Group on a rebranding campaign. The rebrand started with Propolis Design Group in 2014 but internally has been in the works for closer to three years.

Renovation of the building located at 1407 Sherwood Avenue is part of that rebrand campaign. The design you see below was presented along with the name change to Diversity Richmond.

Shortly after that presentation—as luck would have it—Mickael Broth of Welcoming Walls (our story from last year) reached out to Diversity Richmond expressing interest in using their building as a canvas. Lisa had seen Hamilton “Ham” Glass’s work and thought he would be an excellent fit for the vision of the building. Mickael then stepped back in and got Ham on board. About a month ago, the Diversity Richmond Board approved the design.

Welcoming Walls secured funding for the paint and volunteers for the application paint from Altria.

Hamilton came to the site about a week ago and sketched the mural out. This past Friday, the team from Altria, in addition to volunteers from the Federal Reserve, Richmond Business Alliance, Equality Virginia and Wells Fargo descended on the building and went to work. By 1:00, it was very well roughed-in.

Hamilton (middle) directing volunteers while straddling the scaffolding.

The next step will be more detail and organic art parts added personally by Ham, with this portion of the project wrapping up in about two weeks.

The painting for the REST of the building commences this week, starting November 12th. Part of that phase of the project is being donated by Home Depot.

Image: Lisa Cumbey