Cars driving under the busy Fourth Avenue underpass in Southwest Washington on Thursday morning slowed to a crawl as they passed dozens of people gathered in the street, their headlights illuminating the tunnel’s newly colorful interior, whose walls were ablaze with 11 newly painted murals adorned with pink flowers, D.C. flags and images of the city’s historical figures.
Artists, city officials and community members gathered along the busy sidewalk to celebrate the unveiling of the Southwest Gallery, a new mural collection designed to celebrate Southwest Washington.
The Southwest Business Improvement District chose the underpass as a canvas for a new public art piece as a reminder of the 30,000 residents displaced by urban development in the 1950s and how urban renewal has divided Southwest communities, said Lexie Albe, the district’s managing director.
“Urban renewal was a really disastrous time for the area, and I think a lot of that memory is still here,” Albe said. “The ability to actually bring back the infrastructure walls that divided that community is really significant.”
The business improvement district and residents identified the underpass as a public art space in 2005, but the project didn’t get started until two years ago, when 11 different artists and groups submitted design proposals.
“The Southwest is such a diverse community that just being here doesn’t mean you have a unique experience,” Albe said. “Hopefully, the opportunity to have 11 artists tell their stories through 11 different perspectives in this underpass will touch a little bit of your experience.”
Artist Kalik Crosby was inspired by the photographs of Joseph Owen Curtis, a Southwestern historian who spent decades documenting the daily lives of Washingtonians. As Crosby pored over hundreds of Curtis’s photographs at the DC Library, one caught his eye: a photo of DC High School Cadets’ Edward “Bub Jasper” Turner, dressed as a private first class in his uniform, taking part in a drill meet.
Crosby said he painted Turner in uniform as a reminder of the sacrifices young black men have made for the U.S. Crosby’s mural also depicts a streetcar that once ran on SW 4th Street, which Crosby said represents “the progression and maturity of young people and their journey into new experiences.”
Crosby, a lifelong Washington, D.C. resident and graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, said he hopes to introduce passersby to a little-known side of the city’s history through the mural.
“It’s a great way to attract people and share the culture, history and charm of the city,” Crosby said.
While Crosby chose to highlight the accomplishments of specific Washington, D.C., natives, other artists, like Rose Jaffe, used abstract figures to get their message across.
Jaffe’s mural, “Peak Bloom,” depicts large figures reaching out to one another in a natural landscape. For Jaffe, the mural’s bold colors of blue, red and green inspire joy even in the dimly lit tunnel. The overlapping figures, Jaffe said, are a parallel to how life in a densely populated city like DC intertwines their lives without residents even realizing it.
“To me these statues represent a larger collective community,” Jaffe said, “not one particular person, not one gender, not one race, so I hope that anyone who comes here can see themselves as part of this dynamic.”
For their project, Chelsea Henery and Sami Seezox painted buildings on the shells and a bright pink snail gliding along the flower stem.
The duo, known as Ham & Cheese Studio, called the building a “love letter” to the beautiful architecture of the Southwest, and they chose hellebore flowers to symbolize the duality and bittersweetness of development.
“We know that growth and progress bring disruption and turmoil, yet flowers bloom,” the pair wrote in an artist statement explaining the mural. “This image expresses these truths in a way that celebrates Southwest DC’s past, present and future.”
The duo said public art is public not just in the finished product, but in the process of creating it. They said that as they painted, local residents came up to them and offered water, food and compliments. Whether it’s their mural or the 10 others, Henery said he hopes the art brings joy to residents’ daily commutes.
“I want people to feel cared for,” Henery said, “like someone cares about the fact that they have to pass by here every day.”
