Three-minute interview - Uchenna Chukwu
By: Kytja Weir
August 11, 2009
The 19-year-old D.C. native has spent the summer working with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Summer Youth Employment Program to create a 300-foot mural in the Edgewood neighborhood. The group is hosting a “mural jam” Saturday to bring together local artists to work on the mural, then plans to host an unveiling on Aug. 22.
What is the mural going to look like?
The title of the mural is called “From Edgewood to the Edge of the World.” It’s going to be a lot of different colors depicting the Metro stations — the Red Line, Blue Line, Yellow Line, Green Line, all the different colors. It has faces of different people and artists going throughout the train system, then towards the end is a globe and that’s the edge of the world.
What is the coolest part of this?
I get to be a part of something that is going to be here hundreds of years well not hundreds of years, but a long time. And you can see it from the Metro station.
What does this do for the neighborhood?
We did a survey of the neighborhood and asked everybody what they would want in a mural. … There’s a lot of graffiti that doesn’t mean anything out there. They want something that does mean something, that looks nice.
When this is all done, what are your plans for the fall?
I’m going back to Delaware State University. I’m going to be a rising junior. And I’ll take the skills I learned. I have a magazine on campus so I can use the ideas of working together with people and hosting events, getting things together.
When the mural is finished, the event is over, what do you hope people take away when they see it?
I hope they see a group of young artists came together to try to beautify the neighborhood. ... And hopefully people will come out and they can take part and do some of it themselves and say they, too, made it for the neighborhood.
