Author Archive
We Fight We Die: How The Disenfranchised #Occupy
Jeff Kirkman III, Alexander Burton, Michael Rodriguez and Stanley Andrew Jackson III; Junesong Arts’ We Fight We Die. Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Self-defined as representing the masses, it’s no surprise that a majority of Americans approve of the now-global “Occupy” movement—they understand it as the manifestation of desperation, a fight where compromise failed. Feeling [...]
More »Love (of Art) Conquers All (Weather)
It wouldn’t be street art if it didn’t stand up to the elements, and even today’s (ongoing) icy rain couldn’t shut down Albus Cavus’ Monster Mash Halloween paint party at Garfield Park. The nonprofit art organization, which offers workshops and after school programs and curates a series of what they call “open walls” for graffiti [...]
More »DC Graff: The Case for Open Walls (Part II)
Continued from Part I… Just a few blocks from the Capitol South metro stop, alongside children tackling the jungle gyms and dogs chasing after Frisbees, Hill staffers play pick-up games of football and soccer on the greens of Garfield Park. Until a few years ago you might have caught a pick-up basketball game, too, at [...]
More »DC Graff: The Case for Open Walls (Part I)
Murals DC Piece at Fuller and 15th NW The debate is fresh but the line seems to already have been drawn. On one side, facing an uptick in tagging that has cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in removal fees this year alone, DC officials agree that illegal graffiti is criminal before artistic: [...]
More »Greetings from DC!
For fifteen years, the West-facing wall of Mama Ayesha’s restaurant on Calvert Street stood bricked and barren, save for a narrow painted banner of Middle Eastern desert. In 2007 it was time for a tune up, decided manager Mohammed Abu-El-Hawa, whose family has owned and operated the Adams Morgan icon since 1960. Originally founded as Calvert [...]
More »Why I Love DC: Jordana Merran
Raised in Potomac, where I attended private school and then a public school whose parking lot doubled as a BMW showroom (my 1990 Honda Civic fit right in), everyone I knew growing up was “going somewhere.” Something like ninety-eight percent of my classmates went on to four-year colleges—an impressive achievement, according to the Montgomery County [...]
More »A True Adams Morgan Original
All photos by the author. From a lofty brick throne, a voluptuous redhead rules over Adams Morgan, watching and goading all manner of revelry like a contemporary Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. Her territory spans the 18th Street strip; her image an iconic symbol of throbbing crowds, vodka cranberries, and Jumbo Slice pizza. But just two blocks [...]
More »Old Lovers Meet at 14th and Swann
Faded, crumbling, unlikely to survive too many more DC winters or 14th Street-area renovations, I love this mural. It raises a million questions. From the perch of an old row house wall overlooking the Swan Auto parking lot, emerging from a pool? pond? ocean?—two Dr. Seuss-like figures—humans? balding angels? fruit flies?—share a fading yellow apple. [...]
More »DC Street Art Scene: G40 Summit is Just the Beginning
When I first introduced myself as the newest We Love DC arts writer to Lauren Gentile, Director at Irvine Contemporary art gallery on 14th Street, she warned me that I would struggle to find works that would meet my “street art” beat. At the time, I was researching the P Street Shepard Fairey mural, and [...]
More »When God Gives You Junk…
For several weeks between March and April, members of Luther Place Memorial Church combed through their garages, recycling bins and—in some cases—the very streets of DC for junk: old newspapers and office supplies, takeout containers and bottles, even rusty appliances. Then, at weekend workshops, supplied with glue, paint and chicken wire, they got to work… [...]
More »The P Street Fairey
Heading west from the 14th Street corner of P Street, as jarring as a fence or brick wall, you’ll crash into a young Cambodian soldier, a machine gun hanging off his shoulder, a brilliant red flower pinned to his beret. The alley wall ends, but his steadfast gaze does not; and whatever his destination, it [...]
More »The State of Arts Education
Last week, the Huffington Post ran an opinion piece by Michael Kaiser—President of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts— lamenting Millennials’ low “culture IQ.” “We now have an entire generation of young people who have had virtually no exposure to the arts,” Kaiser declared, citing anecdotal examples of young colleagues clueless of Caruso’s tenor [...]
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