Street artists beautify NoMa during international mural festival

Now underway in NoMa, the fourth annual POW! WOW! DC International Mural Festival strives to bridge cultures, beautify the neighborhood, teach the community about public art and highlight the role that murals play in the city’s artistic landscape.

The local chapter of POW! WOW!, a global nonprofit that enriches communities with murals and art, produces the event, which began last Thursday and continues through Sunday. The NoMa Business Improvement District works with POW! WOW! DC to help bring it to the neighborhood. Artists are given 10 days to create brand-new outdoor murals, adding a splash of color to vacant buildings and blank walls in the rapidly changing neighborhood.

Galin Brooks, vice president of planning and economic development at the NoMa BID, emphasized the importance of beautifying the neighborhood. ”People who live here walk, bike or take transit to work every day,” Brooks said in an interview. “So we know that everyone is out and about, and we want to make sure that experience is as good as it can be.”

A map on the POW! WOW! DC website shows the locations of 16 murals in NoMa that are being painted live during the festival. Some of the properties, like the new 100K Apartments building at 100 K St. NE, are in use while others are empty and slated for redevelopment. At 1222 1st St. NE, for example, a European hotel is planned at the former site of the Ibiza nightclub.

“Even if [the murals] are temporary or they’re on buildings that are going to be torn down, it’s taking advantage of the opportunity to make something beautiful in the time that you have,” Brooks said.

Launched in Hawaii by artist Jasper Wong, POW! WOW! held its first festival in February 2010 in Hong Kong. Since then, the event has transformed urban neighborhoods in Guam, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, California, Hawaii and Massachusetts; it first came to NoMa in 2016, returning each year since then. The group also puts on a similar event as part of the high-profile South By Southwest film, media and music festival in Austin, Texas.

DC-based artist Kelly Towles, who has directed the local festival from the start, said he approaches the selection of artists “pretty much like a gallery. You have to be a curator.” There are around 20 spots each year split evenly between local artists and prominent muralists from elsewhere. This year, visiting artists come from Massachusetts, Georgia, Pennsylvania, California, France, Canada and England. Artists are given complete creative freedom aside from three rules: no nudity, no violence and no politics. The aim is beautifying the community, staying positive and moving forward, Towles said — not stirring controversy.

For Towles, organizing the festival is a way to give back to the DC community that he sees as key to his success as an artist. “My community is what helps me and makes me grow,” he said. “To give back to it in a different way, in a visual way with murals and things like that, is, I think, a full circle for me.”

According to his website, Towles spent much of his childhood in Australia and moved to DC in the late 1990s. He has partnered on art projects with local organizations such as DC Brau Brewing Co., DC United, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Greater Washington Creative Community Initiative.

Towles said he notices a lot of positive shifts in DC arts in recent years, including what he called a “giant resurgence” of the city’s music scene and a trend of artists staying in the District instead of relocating to cities like New York or Los Angeles that have art as a front-running industry. He also points out encouraging signs here like pop-up galleries and arts venues hosting events every weekend.

NoMa’s POW! WOW! festival provides the local arts community with an opportunity to benefit from exposure to well-known, global artists. Participants get to know one another and network during events such as a barbecue organized by Towles. Festival sponsors include large organizations like Apple, Adobe, Kind Bars and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

Arrangements with airlines allow POW! WOW! to fly in artists from around the world. “I get to do the dream wish list every year,” Towles said. So he invites his idols, as well as emerging artists who he thinks deserve a shot. But the DC artists who participate play a key role as well. “Our locals shine just as hard,” he said.

During the festival, muralists from DC are assigned to paint the highly visible “locals’ wall” along the section of the Metropolitan Branch Trail between Catholic University and Union Station. , Working in such close proximity helps the local artists get to know one another, said Tracie Ching, a local graphic designer who painted a floral mural.

Other participants say they’ve enjoyed the experience.

DC-based artist Sarah Jamison, whose mural on the trail’s wall includes cartoon characters like Homer Simpson and Patrick Star from SpongeBob Squarepants, said she wanted her image to be “something that was fun to look at and approachable and easy.”

Mixed Scene — a duo made up of DC artists Michael Crossett and Seive — had to overcome adverse weather conditions to complete their mural on time. Thursday’s rain washed away some of their initial work, so they had to repaint it. Seive said that he had worked until 3 a.m. one night because he needed to project an image onto the wall to create part of the mural — work that could be done only in the dark.

Seive said that he and other artists fielded questions from passersby as they painted over the murals from the 2018 festival with white paint, the first step in creating this year’s offerings. “They had mixed feelings about other work going up over other people’s stuff,” Seive said. “But this changes every year.”

Brooks noted that the festival allows the NoMa community to show its support for artists — sometimes in unexpected ways. She recounted a time early in the festival’s history when a teenager on his bike shouted a warning — “The cops are behind me!” — to alert the artists as they worked. The onlooker’s concern, Brooks noted, seemed to evoke a time “before street art was embraced in the way it is today.”

Murals — even those produced in a manner that might draw comparisons to graffiti — are increasingly gaining official sanction. The DC Department of Public Works administers the MuralsDC project, which funds new artwork in an effort to beautify the city and discourage illegal graffiti. Local residents and art enthusiasts came together in the late 1990s to establish DC Murals, a nonprofit that has documented the history of outdoor art throughout the city; a search tool on its website helps the public locate specific murals.

Murals are not just an indication of “a neighborhood that is loved” but also help create a “layered character,” Brooks said. “They can say to people going past, ‘This building might be unused or this wall might be blank, but we’re still going to make it have a positive, contributing presence,’” she said.

On Saturday and Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m., walking tours will start from Wunder Garten, 1101 1st St. NE (the site of last weekend’s kickoff party); reservations are suggested. A live art event will take place on Wednesday from 9 p.m. to midnight at The LINE DC hotel, 1770 Euclid St. NW. Organizers encourage visitors to talk with the artists throughout the POW! WOW! festival as they create their work.

This post has been updated to clarify that the local chapter of POW! WOW! is the event’s lead producer, with assistance from the NoMa Business Improvement District.