Artist and gallery owner Virginia Knapp is stepping up – way up – to make a rooftop garden a reality on the new addition underway at the Vero Beach Theatre Guild.
“I’m an environmentalist,” says Knapp, a founding owner/artist in Gallery 14 downtown and former owner of the island’s Eye of the Lizard gallery.
Guild president Mark Wygonik says the garden had been scratched from the original plans for the new three-story building that will include dressing rooms, rehearsal space and storage space for the all-volunteer community theater group.
Wygonik was talking to Knapp, his longtime employer, about the guild’s benefit production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “The Mikado” to run July 17 through 27, with proceeds going to the construction fund.
“He was discussing the fundraiser and he indicated that they wanted to do a green roof but it was $60,000 extra and they thought they couldn’t afford it,” she says. “I thought about, and decided it’s a wonderful idea. So I’m going to try and help with this green roof. I’m donating something that I feel will help the environment.”
The garden would be used for gatherings and fundraisers, and, as Knapp sees it, for meditation. “I want to see benches and a waterfall. I see it all green and very zen-like.”
Knapp, who worked for years in advertising in New York, was married to the late Tom Knapp, a partner at Tweedy-Brown and close associate of Warren Buffett.
Wygonik has been Knapp’s personal assistant for 15 years; they met in 1989.
Through all that time, he has been intensively involved in the theater. “He works so damned hard,” she says.
“The Guild appreciates the continued support that Virginia has demonstrated,” Wygonik says, adding that the rooftop garden “is a fitting tribute to her and Tom’s legacy of environmental stewardship.”
Knapp also donated a golf cart to be auctioned in January in conjunction with the Guild play, “Whose Wives Are They Anyway?” The cart is nearly mint – Knapp says she only drove it to a party on her cul-de-sac.
“I don’t know why I bought it, but it’s gorgeous – black and silver,” she says. “You know I have excellent taste.”