At a recent art exhibit in Southeast Washington, there were some eye-catching works, but maybe none as compelling as one called “Wall of Sorrows.” It was a composite of those curbside memorials that spontaneously appear at the scene of fatal shootings and car wrecks.
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You’ve seen them — the collection of teddy bears and flowers, candles and balloons, and whatever other items people bring to let it be known that someone died — and someone cared.
“It’s a kind of visual representation of the way we come to closure after losing a loved one,” said Ardinay Blocker, 19, a budding artist from Southeast on hand to answer visitors’ questions. “It’s dedicated to people we have lost in the community, like my father, cousins, brothers, different people.”
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I asked Blocker how many friends and family members she had lost in her young lifetime. “I really don’t know, but probably more than 50,” she said. Some had died of illness, some from violence, but all had departed the world prematurely.
That’s enough grief for a huge wall of sorrow all her own.
A wall that conveys the magnitude of such sorrow would probably be too big for an indoor art show.
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But the exhibit, “Art on the Rise in Wards 7 & 8,” aimed to do more than showcase grief. The goal was to spotlight 10 young visual and performing artists — emerging talent — while highlighting the connection between art, healing and entrepreneurship.
Several works by the young local artists were sold at auction during the exhibit. Two pieces were bought by Reginald Van Lee, who recently took over as chairman of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Under Van Lee, the commission has begun increasing funding to small and midsize arts organizations while reducing funds to larger wealthier groups.
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Kim Bookard, director of programs and community relations for the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative, helped organize the three-day art show. She said she welcomes Van Lee’s commitment to helping artists and arts groups that are too often overlooked.
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“If anyplace needs more investment in young artists, it’s Southeast,” she said. “There is so much talent waiting to be discovered.”
Myniah Sweetney, 20, was one of the visual art standouts at the exhibit. She’s been painting since elementary school and seems capable of turning any kind of surface into a canvas for her art. She painted on wooden pallets. And together with her mother, also an artist, she painted a cityscape on a round wooden tabletop.
Sweetney was born in 2001. In her lifetime, there have been 3,306 homicides in the city, according to D.C. police statistics. Most have occurred in Southeast’s Ward 8, where she lives. At age 7, a close family friend was shot to death at a corner liquor store near her home.
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“Before that shooting, life was so peaceful and simple for me,” Sweetney recalled. “Ages 3 to 6 was what I called my age of innocence.
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“That’s when I started understanding the concept of death,” she recalled. “I began to understand what it meant when everybody was gathered around crying. I began to feel the same pain that those around me were feeling.”
Her mother, Nikeesha Sweetney, began nurturing her interest in art during those years. She found paint brushes and sketch pads at the dollar stores. She started arts and crafts projects and invited other kids from the neighborhood.
“I tried to keep my apartment a safe place for kids,” she said. “I could let them go outside sometimes, but there was so much going on in the neighborhood.”
Myniah Sweetney recalled that after the shooting she started to use more Magic Markers in her artwork. The drawings became rich and dark with primary colors, the ink often seeping into her paper like blood on pavement.
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In fifth grade, she entered a citywide art contest. Students were asked to depict a new use for the St. Elizabeths Hospital grounds in Southeast. Sweetney painted a utopian village for the elderly — and won first place.
Her artwork rarely depicted the heartaches of life in her neighborhood.
“I kept drawing and drawing and somehow the troublesome things got shut out,” she said. “My mind would just push through images of life in those simpler, calmer times. I was still aware of the painful realities, but a part of me really wanted to create a better world.”
In seventh grade at the Richard Wright Public Charter School, she earned a two-week trip to Cameroon through the William O. Lockridge Community Foundation, named for the late D.C. school board member. It was the trip of a lifetime.
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“I was not just out of D.C., I was out of the country,” she said. “I was in Africa, meeting kings and queens, and being treated like royalty myself. I bought a custom-made dress and lots of new fabric.”
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Back home, she said, she felt more centered, less anxious.
“Before, I had been so antsy, always trying to make sure I wasn’t being left behind,” she said. “But when I returned, I was a lot calmer.”
This summer, she taught art to 20 children as part of a program offered by the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative.
“It was uplifting to see them smiling and laughing, so eager to learn and show you what they could do,” Sweetney said.
In her paintings, teddy bears and balloons show up at birthday parties — not as curbside markers for those killed. If we could teach more kids to “create a better world” like Sweetney, there might not be a need to build another giant “Wall of Sorrows.”
Read more from Courtland Milloy