“…multiple emotional states caught between contemplation and confrontation”

The Gateway Arts District is a vibrant arts community located in Mount Rainier, Maryland, near the northeastern border of Washington, D.C. It is a designated Arts and Entertainment District that encompasses several neighborhoods, including Mount Rainier, Brentwood, North Brentwood, and Hyattsville. The district is home to a wide range of artists, including painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, writers, and performers. The district aims to foster creativity and support local artists by providing affordable live-work spaces, galleries, studios, and performance venues. It also serves as a hub for artistic collaboration, expression, and cultural exchange.

One of the main attractions is the Gateway Arts Center, a multi-purpose arts facility that features galleries, artist studios, and performance spaces. It hosts exhibitions, workshops, art classes, and community events, showcasing the talents of local artists and engaging the public in the artistic process.

Recently, Filipino-American artist Jeff Huntington, also known as JAHRU, painted a mural on the wall of the Otis Street Arts Project. This project is part of a complex of warehouse studios that mainly hosts artists from the Washington DC metropolitan area. JAHRU is the co-founder, along with Julia Gibb, of Future History Now, a nonprofit arts outreach program for teens that brings murals to walls in the community.

For his new mural named “FLUX,” JAHRU offers commentary on the divided attention and feelings of distraction that arise from our adoption of new behaviors with social media and smartphones. Using his niece as a muse, the artist positions the teenager as “existing in a rapidly changing world of daily updates and reconfigurations seen through an electronic screen.” He explains, “The superimposed faces capture multiple emotional states caught between contemplation and confrontation, punctuated by a pattern of vibrant vertical lines of varied widths that mimic a barcode.”

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