Students from UDC Professor Davide Prete’s Interdisciplinary Art II course recently brought their creativity out of the classroom and into the heart of Washington, DC’s NoMa neighborhood. Their work was chosen for the annual NoMa in Color Mural Festival, a weeklong event that brought together artists, residents, visitors and the broader District community to celebrate public art and the transformation of neighborhood spaces.
The UDC mural, “Side by Side,” explores the idea of “then and now” through two related neighborhood scenes and invites viewers to look closely to spot the differences between them — for example, as new buildings fill in the landscape and a historic trolley is replaced by a modern MetroBus. The interactive concept encourages pedestrians to spend time with the artwork rather than simply passing by, turning the mural into both a visual experience and a playful exploration of observation, change and place that captures a piece of District history.
The project began in Prete’s course last spring, where student Ann Standrod developed the initial concept of the two images capturing the neighborhood at different points in time. She was inspired after an afternoon watching families enjoying nearby Alethia Tanner Park: “When I was thinking about a mural, I knew that I wanted to encourage community involvement and engagement and felt that introducing the history of the neighborhood was a fun way to start. My hope is that people will spend time viewing the mural, solving the puzzle and perhaps even be inspired to learn more about the surrounding neighborhood’s history.”
The class then worked together to develop the concept for submission to the NoMa in Color competition, discussing how the design could be translated into a large-scale public artwork and refining its imagery, composition, colors and relationship to the surrounding community. The resulting proposal was selected as one of only 12 murals from more than 250 submissions, giving UDC students the opportunity to transform a classroom project into a highly visible work of public art.
Executing the project became an even broader collaborative experience as UDC students and alumni worked together to transfer the design to the wall and paint the final work on site. Graduates Kaila Garcia and Aliyah Morris-Chevalier took important leadership roles and joined Prete, Standrod and students Ever Casarrubias, Zola Johnson, Audrey Neumann, Jenn Rudiger, Makayla St. Cyr and Bahran Tesfaye to bring “Side by Side” to life.
Prete said this experience “provided students with much more than an opportunity to paint a mural. They participated in many of the same stages professional public artists encounter: identifying an opportunity, developing an idea collaboratively, preparing a competitive proposal, adapting a design to an architectural site, organizing materials and production and working together to complete an artwork under real-world conditions.”
For him, this connection between education and professional practice is a key component of the Interdisciplinary Art curriculum: “One of my goals is to give students opportunities to take ideas beyond the classroom. Seeing an idea that began in class selected from more than 250 submissions — and then watching the students actually paint it in the city — is exactly the kind of experience I want them to have.”
The mural also demonstrates UDC artists’ growing presence in Washington’s creative community. For example, Standrod and two more Interdisciplinary Art II students, Jenn Rudiger and Takako Sangoh, all recently had pieces showcased that grew out of class work: Standrod was selected by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District for their Signal Box Public Art Project, Rudiger’s work was featured by the Women’s Caucus for Art of Greater Washington DC, and Sangoh’s work was selected for the International Postal Card Exhibition “Outsider.”
For Standrod, an interior designer who now takes courses through UDC’s Institute of Gerontology, these experiences are bringing her long connection to UDC full circle: “Many years ago, I was directed to UDC by the architecture department at Catholic University because of the excellent technical program here. The classes I took in architecture and math helped launch my career in interior design, and so I’ve always viewed UDC as a great place to learn foundational ‘real world’ skills.”
Prete says every opportunity to share his own works in progress also directly influences his teaching: “Each of these projects brings new lessons into the classroom: how to respond to a site, how to work with communities and selection panels, how to build strong proposals, how to manage budgets and fabrication and how to translate artistic ideas into durable public work. I try to bring my students into this professional reality as much as possible. My goal is for them to understand that public art is not only about making objects, but also about listening, researching, collaborating and creating work that can serve and reflect a community. When students see that their professor is actively working in the field, and when they are invited to apply those same processes in class, the classroom becomes a bridge to the professional world.”
The students who created the NoMa mural have now crossed that bridge, contributing directly to the District’s visual landscape while representing the university beyond campus.
Learn more about UDC’s arts programs.