Let’s Paint the Streets

Our city is filled with blank canvases ripe for artists to make their mark. Washington’s creative community has turned alleyways into urban art galleries and transformed building walls into vibrant murals. A new art initiative in Logan Circle, Let’s Paint the Streets, was developed with the same objective in mind – to create beauty in the unexpected. The public art project commissioned 16 local artists to transform 20 utility boxes into magnificent art installations about placemaking and neighborhood transformation.

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities awarded a grant to the Logan Circle Community Association for the project, which was conceived by artist and local resident Tarek Kouddous whose start-up art production company, Radical Empathy, as creative director. Logan Circle Main Street and ANC 2F helped to support the project from conception.

The project’s theme of transformation and rebirth evokes the community’s past, present, and future. Logan Circle has gone through significant transformations since its beginnings as farmland, through the devastation of the 1968 riots, to the renewal brought, in part, by LGBTQ residents and, more recently, with the commercial evolution that has displaced residents due to higher housing prices. The theme emerged through conversations with residents and small business owners. With the stories of Logan Circle’s past, present, and future, artists produced their visual interpretations of Logan Circle’s history, unified by Let’s Paint the Streets as a cohesive collection of diverse artwork.