In March, Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallal began painting messages of hope and gratitude on the windows of his D.C. restaurants, using the hashtag #PaintTheStorefronts.
Soon, he was hiring fellow artists to create more temporary murals, including Vy Vu, whose painterly shout-out to teachers, restaurant staff and health care workers graced the façade of Busboys and Poets in Shirlington. Shallal began encouraging other businesses to do the same.
And so they did. In May, the Crystal City Business Improvement District (now the National Landing BID) launched a neighborhood-wide art campaign dubbed #LoveNationalLanding, rendering its public spaces more colorful.
Area restaurants and shops saw their windows transformed by artists Cris Clapp Logan, Jeff Huntington (aka JAHRU), Patrick Owens, Juan Pineda/Criomatic, Eric B. Ricks and community arts organizer Chelsea Ritter-Soronen (Chalk Riot), currently a resident artist at The Kennedy Center’s Moonshot Studio.
Curated by Tom Pipkin, the vivid installations also include monumental-scale vinyl wraps, and soon will feature more than 100 sidewalk decals by the muralist collective BroCoLoco.