Of Old Connections, New Partnerships, and Oneness in Community
In November 2021 my friend Tannia Talento called and asked me if I was attending a virtual town hall held by Arlington county that evening. I told her I had not heard about it. She asked me if I would attend because she couldn’t, and then I could tell her how it went. She told me it was about immigrants and their experience with housing and law enforcement in Arlington. I asked, “Why me?” I was an immigrant but had no issues with housing or law enforcement. She said I knew stories of many immigrants and their issues with housing and law enforcement as so many people share their stories for my various projects. We had a wonderful long discussion (as usual) about how many people would not be able to attend because they are busy or they have bad internet and what our responsibilities are if we know the stories of so many people. In the end I agreed to listen in and share the stories people had shared with me—if needed.
At that meeting, an immigrant mother from Barcroft Apartments on Columbia Pike shared how their landlord had said they would all have to leave in 15 days as the property was being sold to a developer. Everyone on the call was shocked! She shared how her son didn’t want to leave his friends and his school. There were over 1300 units in that apartment complex.
“Where we we all go?” she asked.
County Board member Libby Garvey said the county knew about this and was taking steps to see that nobody would have to leave. That day I saw the power of the everyday person sharing their story, being heard, and how it can affect a person, a community, and a city.
Photo from the Columbia Pike Documentary Project Walking Tour, part of the exhibit We PAUSED! Unbound at Gallery 3700
Columbia Pike: While working on my projects Columbia Pike Recipes for Recovery, commissioned by the Columbia Pike Partnership, and The Road Ahead for the Columbia Pike Documentary Project, I had been spending a lot of time on Columbia Pike trying to get people who live or work there to share their stories. However, it was still pandemic times and it was hard work. I was worried and scared, they were worried too, and the restaurant owners were worried and under-staffed. Yet, there was something about the Pike that got to me. This is where I was so comfortable. This was vibrant, busy, moving, and changing. This is where diversity thrives.
I had lived on the Pike from 2001 to 2006. I had taken my son to a pre-school group at the old Arlington Mill community center. I had walked on the Four Mile Run trail taking him to Long Branch Nature Center. My parents had visited from Mumbai and had bought fish and rice at the Bangladeshi grocery store on the Pike and my dad had got himself a new hairstyle at a Latino barbershop. Later, even after we moved, I brought the kids back during many summer breaks for snowcones by the old CVS.
As I worked on the projects I noticed that the stories people shared were about heritage, family, and community. About growing up on the Pike and wanting to come back here as an adult and have a home here. Of hearing languages of home as you walked to the bus stop. There were stories of struggle, of not liking being poor. There were also stories of driving an Uber to save up money and open a restaurant. Stories of the community sharing about the new restaurant, and them being sold out of food on their first day.
“I want to have a Studio PAUSE location on the Pike,” I told LouLou one afternoon after I had taken her to Takohachi for lunch, one of the restaurants in my Recipes for Recovery book. LouLou, an artist and PAUSEr since the day we opened had lived in Japan and I introduced her to Mr. Takohachi. They had chatted a bit.
“What? You have never said anything like this before,” LouLou said, carefully.
Driving back to the Studio, I told her to stop at the empty space next to the Dunkin Donuts (at the Shell gas station) next to the Days Inn. We got out and peered in through the glass windows. That’s when we saw the Do Not Trespass sign and ran to the car and drove away. But something had already begun…
PAUSErs with Sushmita at the Columbia Pike Branch Library at the launch of the book Columbia Pike Recipes for Recovery
Katie & Takis: In February 2022 I sat next to Katie Cristol, a member of the Arlington County Board, at the International Mother Language Day event as guests of Prio Bangla, a local multicultural arts organization, at Kenmore Middle School. We had met a few times before, shook hands even. “But I have never seen your work,” she said. “And I would love to!” So I invited Katie to the Studio. On March 2, 2022, she had barely stepped inside when she looked around and said, “How can we scale this up? We have to take this to more people!”
Anika Tene was there as well, chair of the Arlington Arts Commission. When I told Katie I wanted to be on the Pike, she asked, “Have you seen a space?”
“Across the street from the Goodwill there are some spaces that have been empty for a while,” I said, remembering how I had imagined having a space there one afternoon. Lloyd Wolf (director of the Columbia Pike Documentary Project) and I left Cafe Sazon after a coffee and at the door we had bumped into Yessenia Arias who was just entering. Yessania was a poet and activist and had had a show at the Studio. I asked her what she thought of the idea. She loved it. “I live nearby so it’s perfect,” she told us.
“Well, the property where the Goodwill stands is going into redevelopment,” Katie explained. “If we can get something in at the planning stages it would be great.”
I had no idea about the details of the new plans for Barcroft Apartments. But later that spring I bumped into Takis Karantonis, another Arlington County Board member, at the Shirlington Spring Fling. He has been a big supporter of the Columbia Pike Documentary Project and Studio PAUSE for a while. We have had many discussions on diversity and how it is seen in urban spaces. He asked if I had heard from “the Barcroft guys.” I hadn’t, I complained, begging him to email them and introducing us all. He nodded and I felt great.
From left, Sushmita, Anika, and Katie at Studio PAUSE, March 2, 2022.
BU-GATA & Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners: It would be in December, 2022 when Saul Reyes, Executive Director of BU-GATA, introduced us via email to the Jair Lynch team, the developers who now owned Barcroft Apartments. BU-GATA is a multi-issue organization which started as a tenants’ rights association based in Buckingham, who was also working with the Barcroft residents now, and who I had been working with for the past eight years.
Hi Sushmita, Mark and Melissa,
I hope you all are having a great start to the holiday season. It is with great pleasure I indroduce you all to each other. This is a connection I’m delighted to make because I think you both can work to serve the Barcroft community in creative and artistic ways and further build and strengthen community through art. I really love and enjoy Sushmita’s approach to art, story telling, and getting residents engaged and expressing themselves through art.
Sushmita, I’ve provided Mark information about your studio and he would love to set up a visit with you.
Always a pleasure to introduce great people. I hope you are all able to connect soon!
Best,
Saul Reyes
Mark Hanan, Jair Lynch Investment Manager, invited me on a property tour of the historic Barcroft Apartment Community. When I shared this news with Amy McWilliams of the Columbia Pike Partnership at our last meeting of the Recipes for Recovery book before it went to print, she told me how this company was community-oriented and a good fit for me to work with. I invited Amy and her colleague Andrea Avendano to join the tour. Saul and his team joined us as well. As did LouLou.
Mark and Melissa visited the Studio first to get a feel for the work we do and see the kind of space we use. Then we went to Barcroft Apartments. Mark showed us the leasing office where we met the property manager. He showed us other indoor and outdoor spaces where the community could gather and interact. The Arches was a beautiful outdoor space and beyond that was a huge courtyard. Then he showed us a model unit and told us about the renovations planned for the property. Next he told us to meet him at the Barcroft Shopping Center as there was a retail space he wanted us to see.
Tour of the Arches area of Barcroft Apartments. Photo, MaryLouise Marino.
Mark unlocked and lifted up the rolling shutters of the old Checks Cashed location that had been closed for a year or so. When he showed us in, the first thing that hit me were the colors. LouLou and I looked at each other. She knew exactly what I was thinking. These are the Studio brand colors—blue and orange!
We went upstairs and downstairs, and took in all the space. If this location looks good to us they can get it ready for us in a few weeks, Mark told us. We took photos and then all stepped out to leave. Mark locked up the space and the Jair Lynch and Gates Hudson teams left. The rest of us stood outside wondering. All was silent until Saul went, “Yes!”
The rest of us came out of our quiet. “Again!” I said to Saul, and with all our arms stretched upward LouLou took a photo to document the moment.
In the old Checks Cashed location. From left, Saul, Mark, Sergi (property manager), Rosalie and Steven of Bu-Gata, Sush, Amy and Andrea, and Melissa. Photo, MaryLouise Marino.
Columbia Pike Documentary Project: When I shared the news of the space with Lloyd, and told him how I envision it to be a space for Studio PAUSE and the CPDP. He said this had been what Paula Endo, co-founder of the CPDP had always dreamed of—a space for the project on the Pike. In 2022 I had written an application for a planning grant proposal: How do we make “multicultural” visible in our cities? I did not get the grant but I had thought about it all a lot.
We celebrate multicultural once a year at the Prio Bangla Festival in September and inside the Arlington Mill Community center for Hispanic Heritage Month in October. But it can be so much more, too. Multicultural can be eating hot pot to celebrate the Cherry Blossom festival, as the owner of Supreme Hot Pot told me when I interviewed him for the Recipes for Recovery book. And it can be in a blog, in occasional exhibits, and in books like the CPDP. But it can also be so much more.
I kept feeling that multicultural has to be more visible so we know it, experience its beauty, and feel its challenges. We have to listen to various stories to see how the community lives it. We have to share our art to make cultures visible. And where can we do that—on any day and at any time on the Pike? Where was that space where we can learn, celebrate, and change?
Lloyd Wolf, director of the Columbia Pike Documentary Project documenting the renovations at the new Studio location on Columbia Pike.
Arlington Arts & the Historic Preservation Program: As Jair Lynch worked to get the space ready for Studio PAUSE, donating the lease and renovations cost, I applied for grants to fund our work in the new space and in the new community. This all felt new and yet it was not. Barcroft Apartments was a new community to me but I had already been working in Buckingham as my studio was in the Gates of Ballston community for the last 8 years and I had an idea of the range of people who live in these communities. I had been invited to bring my work there by Jennifer Endo, who worked with AHC Inc., a developer who built affordable housing communities. The art and writing sessions are free for the residents there and that was the plan for the residents of Barcroft Apartments as well. I had worked on projects with AHC Inc. and in 2020 we received a Virginia Humanities grant to work on a community book called We PAUSED! which documented the pandemic. (It strikes me now that Tannia had introduced me to Jennifer Endo as well!) A retail space this size was new for me but when I had first opened the Studio in 2013 it had been in a small retail space on S. 26th Rd. I had learned a lot about having a retail space then which I could use again. As for the size… I was sure I would learn how to work with it!
As I discussed the project ideas with the PAUSErs we came up with many ideas. We were just completing our work on We PAUSED! Unbound, a year-long community art exhibit I was commissioned to create by Arlington Arts at their Gallery 3700. We could continue that work and bring it to a new space and a new community. So I applied for an Individual Artist’s Grant from Arlington Arts to curate four community art exhibits at the new space. When I spoke with Sharon Raphael, Community Arts Manager and Grant Administrator, about the new community-focused grants Arlington Arts was funding, she said they were working with the county’s Historic Preservation Program as well to coordinate getting the arts to new and underserved areas of Arlington. As I looked at the HPP grant application it looked like doing a project with the residents of the Barcroft Apartment community would be a great fit! And as we had worked with the Buckingham community we already knew how to do this. We had done the City of Stories: Voices of Children project with BU-GATA’s Buckingham Youth Brigade, which had developed after my last Individual Artists Grant for City of Stories. As that project had stopped abruptly because of the pandemic, we had included it in the book We PAUSED!
In 2022, the participants of BU-GATA’s Buckingham Youth Brigade participate in Studio PAUSE’s community book project “We PAUSED!” The book included the stories and art by BYB participants in the Studio’s 2019 project City of Stories: Voices of Children.
Gates Hudson: The Barcroft Apartments property is managed by Gates Hudson who will be partnering with us to introduce us to the community so the residents know about us, can participate in our projects, and help build community. Sylvia Castillo, Resources Director for Barcroft Apartments, shared a beautiful story in a letter of support for one of the grants:
“We have a world map in our office with pins of what countries are represented here at Barcroft and it is well over 200!”
She has invited us to their events like the Summer Fest Carnival in July where we told the residents about the new Studio location and how all the art and story sessions and events there are free for the residents. We did a sidewalk chalk activity and had children and adults color in PAUSE cards which artists LouLou and Sughra and I had designed. They had the word pause written beautifully in English, Arabic, Spanish, and Bangla. The cards invited the residents to bring the completed work to the Studio and be included in our opening exhibit. They also invited residents to come for two Gather & Greet Open Houses at the space before it opened to the public.
Little Pratyush colors in his favorite PAUSE card design as his parents watch on, Summer Fest Carnival, 2023.
It was fascinating for me to notice how the story had unfolded. Many PAUSErs are impressed by how I somehow got to tell some important people in the county about the dream I had of a Studio on the Pike. Some had the expertise of the big picture and planning, others had insights to what kind of partners the developers would be. And an organization whose members had actually worked with me and experienced how that work across art and stories impacted their lives would write that introductory email. And then Jair Lynch got the old Checks Cashed location cleaned up and ready for us to move in and do our work in the community. And we at Studio PAUSE knew how to create spaces where we build community. “I feel like it’s a check I have cashed,” I joked. “A check given to me for all the work I have done over the last 10 years!”
“The creative CPDP and Studio PAUSE teams will expand our proven model of work to a new and bigger Arlington community at Barcroft. It will let us document places that are changing, improving, and being lost, all through the voices of those who live and work there. As we make time to do this work, we build a community that respects and understands each other. It adds to the bigger story of Arlington, and Virginia,” I had written in the HPP grant application.
I am happy to share that we got both grants!
Then a PAUSEr told me about second-hand furniture from a tech company that was downsizing so I went to see if I could get a monitor. Turned out Digital Turbine, a Ballston-based company was happy to donate whatever we needed from their list! We rented a U-Haul and brought chairs, tables, TV monitors and more to be stored in the basement while renovations continued.
“How does the new space feel?” Ken Krafchek, a recent PAUSEr and recently-retired founding director of the Community Arts MFA program at MICA, Baltimore asked me recently via text.
“Not sure,” I replied. “But it is amazing to see people’s responses to this space. Just amazing!” And that’s what really matters. So many people’s eyes light up as they learned what we will do here. So many people peeking in the windows as we set up and I go out to say hello. From PAUSErs who have been part of all this from the beginning, to workers coming in to fix the drywall, everyone sees wonderful possibilities. I look forward to continuing this work which I love, taking in everyone’s ideas, inviting and encouraging them to share their stories and art.
When we know that we are in fact connected to everyone then we can rejoice in our partnerships and build community together. Because everyone can join in and everybody needs it.
A huge thank you to Jair Lynch for the in-kind donation of space and renovations for the new Studio PAUSE location. Read more in the ARLnow article here.