Just a few blocks east of the Anacostia River, an unsuspecting row house in Ward 7’s Fairlawn neighborhood is being transformed. On Saturday, the Nicholson Project, a new artist residency program, will host an exhibition and celebration in the house at 2310 Nicholson St. SE from 3 to 8 p.m. The event will mark the launch of a space that will soon be home to a revolving artist-in-residence, who will live and work there.

The house will also host what Nicholson Project founder Stefanie Reiser calls a “neighborhood garden.” It will be more communal than the typical community garden, she says, where separate plots of land are assigned to individuals or families. In the neighborhood garden model, on the other hand, all vegetables will belong to the neighborhood as a whole — a collective benefit, but also a collective responsibility. Love and Carrots, a small business that plants vegetable gardens in urban spaces around the region, will install the garden in the row home’s backyard. “It’s one part bringing beauty in … and it’s one part amplifying, engaging and elevating what’s already here,” said Reiser. She believes the space draws on the “theme of looking, seeing and recognizing both the beauty and the possibility that exists everywhere and often goes overlooked or unrecognized.” At the launch event, Love and Carrots will be holding a “garden talk.” There will also be a photography exhibition courtesy of DC-based artists Beverly Price, Larry Cook and Vincent Rutherford Brown, as well as music from East River Jazz and DJ Jahsonic, and free produce. Reiser — a veteran of DC real estate as founder and principal of Align Development LLC who has also worked in Congress and at the White House — has an office on the second floor of the Nicholson row house. There are fresh mouse traps and a jar of peanut butter on her desk. After owning the Nicholson Street property for around five years, she recently decided she wanted to do something with the house that would benefit the community. She set the Nicholson Project up as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, with a board of directors that will help to select future artists-in-residence. While she has self-funded the project thus far, she’s searching for a development director to lead future fundraising efforts. “When you look at the overall impact we think we can achieve, compared to the amount of annual funding that is required to maintain this, you’re going to get huge bang for the buck,” Reiser said in an interview with The DC Line.

Although the grand opening is scheduled for this weekend, the house’s first artist is already settled in. Amber Robles-Gordon has been at the Nicholson row house since July, and she will live and work there until her residency ends in October. She will be at the launch event, as will the art she has made during her stay on Nicholson Street, a textile and mixed media installation titled “Fertile Grounds of Minds of Wombs and of the Earth.”

Robles-Gordon says the installation draws parallels between manmade pollutants that can’t be reabsorbed into the earth and unwelcome masses that grow in women’s bodies, like tumors and cysts.

“Being an artist living in Southeast for the last 20-something years, I just want to be able to contribute to the community in what I would consider concrete ways,” Robles-Gordon said. 
“I think not everybody realizes the impact of art and culture. And I think sometimes that happens when people are in what I would consider survival mode.” 

Robles-Gordon believes that social hierarchies attached to art culture came to America from Europe, and that the vestiges of this Euro-elitism plague art to this day. She hopes that producing her work in Southeast helps to chip away at the social stratification that makes benefiting from art seem like a privilege for the wealthy. 

The main floor of the house on Nicholson Street has a gallery that includes commissioned artwork purchased by the Nicholson Project collection. The upstairs residency unit is autonomous with its own kitchen and bathroom, allowing the artist-in-residence to seal themselves off and concentrate on their work. There is also a second suite that Reiser sees as potentially accommodating a traveling artist in DC for a temporary stay.  

The row house was originally built in 1916. While renovating, Reiser and her team tried to maintain the building’s character. Whenever possible, they left imperfections as they were, as design elements. In the kitchen, they pulled off three layers of flooring to get to the original. They kept the original windows, stairs and bannisters. Even the artist-in-residence’s bedroom has a peeling tin ceiling (though they added a layer of clear sealant for safety’s sake). The electrical and plumbing systems are all new.

Reiser cites Theaster Gates, a community activist in Chicago who believes that beauty is a civil right, as an inspiration for the project. Though she dislikes the word “disruption,” Reiser hopes the Nicholson Project will help to change how and where people engage with art in DC.

“I think when you put something like this, an artist of Amber’s caliber, in a place like this … and you put it literally right next door, it’s sending a message that there’s value in having this amazing work here in this community, not someplace else,” said Reiser. “To me, having this in a neighborhood setting is absolutely part of how you send that message.”

At the conclusion of her residency in October, Robles-Gordon will ascend to the board of directors, and the Nicholson Project will go out in search of a new artist-in-residence to live and work in the row house for one to three months. So far they don’t have a rigid criteria for what they are looking for, though they would prefer to prioritize artists living in DC who will be responsive to the surrounding community. Whoever is selected will also receive a $2000-a-month stipend to support their work. Applications will go live Oct. 1. 

The launch event is being planned in tandem with Dashboard, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that specializes in “designing dreamlike spaces and experiences.” Past Dashboard-supported projects include simulated UFO sightings, an exploration of office-life and a surreal deconstruction of a man’s childhood. Reiser hired Dashboard to help pull much of the Nicholson Project together, including the recruitment of Robles-Gordon and the coordination of the launch event. 

The number of people who will be allowed into the event on Saturday is limited, but interested parties can RSVP to reserve a spot.

https://thedcline.org/2019/09/13/new-artist-residency-in-ward-7-opens-saturday/