Recently, my USC-Capital Campus students and I visited the Capital Hill Boys Club Intergernational Art Gallery at 16th and Marion Barry Avenue, SE in Washington DC’s Ward 8. (We had been inspired by Elizabeth O’Gorek’s excellent article, “A Hub For Artists: Capital Hill Boys Club Art Gallery” (East of the River) July 16, 2025
https://eastoftheriverdcnews.com/2025/07/16/a-hub-for-artists-capital-hill-boys-club-art-gallery/)
We were warmly hosted by co founder Mark Garrett, and learned about many of their remarkable programs, including an artist-in-residence program, an after school arts program for elementary school children, and a community mural program.
The center is based in the former Hope Laundromat building, which had been a shooting gallery surrounded by an open air drug market. Garret and gallery co-founder Dietrich Williiams and their colleagues have created a remarkable, vital, nurturing safe space for community people of all ages.
Inside the center, my students had a chance to hang out with some of the after-school program members as they drew animals and told stories.
The team had built fences around the property, which have been filled with murals over the past year. We found many of these outdoors murals (some created during February’s Anacostia Mural Fest) well worth contemplating, and were grateful to Mr. Garrett for sharing his insights in the art works.
As the “Love Power” mural illustrates,the community is conscious of being in the shadow of the seat of national government, which looms over the horizon but which also freezes them out in so many ways. Yet, Love conquers. Here, music, perhaps Go-Go (celebrated in the nearby Go-Go Museum), is the heartbeat of the city, pulsing out of the boombox, tracing the silhouette of the city skyline.
Violence is certainly a theme in some of the work. This sculptural assemblage from a children’s plastic slide has bullet holes in it, shot by gang member friends of the artist ts his request to give it a look that reflects the lived realities in the neighborhood:
The young people we talked to are certainly very conscious of gang violence and the dangers of drive-bys. Many in the neighborhood recall the tragic year of 2020 when many women and children were lost collaterally in gun-related violence. Yet they emphasize they are standing strong. In Nonie Dope’s mural, “Bloom” (created for the Anacostia Mural Fest 25) flowers bloom around the outline of a person killed, evidently in a drive-by shooting. The “Boom” from the guns has become “Bloom”, and the bullet holes have become flowers.
The Sisters Wall is in the rear area of the yard. One of the murals proclaims “Rooted and Resilient”
Many young women in the community very deeply moved by the tragic story of the ballet dancer Michaela de Prince, who had been a war orphan in Sierra Leone, then became a ballet dancer in the US and Europe, and died under undisclosed circumstances at aged 29, in 2024. The artist Kyanna Cole (@kycode83) paints her as a winged angel, her wings made out of glittering ice or glass-like forms. Below are the shattered shards of a reflective mirror, evocative of the spreading gossamer wings. Above her head floats a crown or halo. DePrince (born Mabinty Bangura) recalls in her memoirs that as a child she was deeply stigmatized due to her skin condition of vitiligo, who led to pigment loss on sections of her skin; here the artist celebrates the condition with mulicolored hues across the dancer’s face and arms.
A possible interpretation is that DePrince functions here as a kind of guardian angel, looking over and protecting all the girls and young women who gather here to pursue their love of art.
The front section of the fence, flanking the front gate, is dedicated to LGBTQ+ themes, including the mural “Love looks like us”, The colors of the rainbow radiate out from a heart enclosing multicolored young lovers.
Continuing the LGBTQ+ section, Rae Akino’s Andromeda The Milky Way, honors Grammy-winning poet and musical artist Meshell Ndegeocello ( Michelle Lynn Johnson; Meshell Suhaila Bashir-Shakur), who came of age in Southeast DC and who has self-identified as queer. The mural’s background seems to be drawn from the Adinkra symbols of the Akan people of West Africa, often found on textiles, with the name of the singer-songwriter embedded in the lower left. Meshell’s face is highlighted by yellow circle, in which see the Adinkra patterns transform into the shapes of the US Capitol, the Supreme Court, and perhaps the American flag. The work’s title honors Ndegeocello’s well known composition, Andromeda & the Milky Way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzKXLtA2gqk The lyrics include the lines: “Take me down to your river/I wanna get free with you…this Love/Is written in the stars/Meant to be/ Forever, forever.” Perhaps the title alludes to the fact that our own galaxy, The Milky Way, and the nearest galaxy to us, Andromeda, are headed to collide and merge with one another in about 4 billion year. Perhaps “the river” in the song references the Anacostia river, near the neighborhood she grew up in, or perhaps it is the river of stars that stretches across the firmament.
[It is often stated that the performer adopted the name “Ndegeocollo” as a KiSwahili term meaning, “Free as a Bird” “Nedege” does mean bird but “eocollo” does not appear to be a recognizable KiSwahili phrase. Speculatively, perhaps the name is a hybrid neologism meaning something like “Bird Cello,” referencing the artist’s renown skill as bassist. ]
The well known DC artist Sydney Buffalow, has created this mural, from I believe her Moon Mama series celebrating the deep connection between women and lunar powers.
The gallery co founder Mark Garrett painted this image of “Mayor for Life” Marion Barry’s Jaguar, which used to cruise up and down tis very street, now facing the avenue that know bears the mayor’s name.
A mural by Karla Style (@karlaeezy) , “The Eyes of the City,” depicts Mayor Barry with the three stars of the DC flag above him, and the eyes of DC all on him. (The artist explains that she didn’t actually realize she was painting the late Mayor until his widow explained to her that the visage was that of Marion as a young man. (see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2025/murals-corner-anacostia-dc-artists/)
An unhoused gentlemen took me into the adjacent yard where he now sleeps at night, to very proudly me show the murals painted there, including Tarika Campbell‘s (@TarikaArt) “We are Cultured”. A woman has an image of the Capitol dome rising out of her mind; above her are musical notes and a couple dancing, next to Egyptian pyramids, perhaps alluding to the ancient Egyptian roots celebrated by many Afrocentric thinkers in Washington DC. He told me, “We have our own regular Smithsonian right here!
Mark Auslander 