How it started, how it’s going
The end of Pink Line Project as we know it
At the beginning of the quarantine in March, I decided to take a short break from sending out the Pink Line Project’s weekly newsletter. All the art events I’d normally have highlighted had been cancelled and, to be honest, I needed a breather. I’d been sending my weekly art picks to thousands of art curious folks in the DMV for years. I figured I’d be back in action in two or three weeks. A month tops. Nine months later, the pandemic continues unabated and things won’t get back to “normal” for a while more.
Even when some artists adapted their work to online presentations in super creative ways and a smattering of artists performed IRL while the weather was still nice, with appropriate distancing and mask wearing, of course, I still did not restart the newsletter to highlight them. Keeping up with knowing what’s going on around the city took a lot of time, even during our currently sparser era, which was probably why people were always asking me for suggestions and why I’d started writing the newsletter in the first place.
Long before the newsletter, I’d started a blog called “Adventures of Hoogrrl” in the early 2000’s where I shared lists of art events I was planning to attend each week. Sometimes I’d got three or four art things in one night. Then I began organizing hundreds of arts events myself, intimate salons in my living room, panel discussions, music shows, a performance art festival that attracted artists from around the world, massive events in raw spaces all over the city, and more. I nearly burnt myself out several times over the years. Those events evolved into creative placemaking projects that focused on community building through the arts. And all of that led to Looking For America, a project in which I use art to bridge divides between people from across the political spectrum all over the country. The newsletter was the last vestige of Pink Line Project that allowed me to stay connected to the DC art world.
Many people had been perplexed, and some had even been resentful, when I barged onto the scene with maybe a little too much zeal. Artist Jeffry Cudlin tried to figure me out in a performance art piece 10 years ago called “The Pink Line Project Project.” He transformed himself into an exaggerated and cheeky version of me and became my alter-ego as he explored the state of the art world and what it was becoming. I persisted and evolved through the years and Pink Line Project evolved along with me. I learned a lot along the way from supporters and even my detractors. My greatest teacher was the relentless pursuit of art-fueled experiences as both an organizer and a participant.
Pink Line Project and the DC art scene became entwined with my identity. I was walking through Rock Creek Park a couple months ago when a guy shouted from across a field, “Hey, aren’t you that art lady? Pink Line Project?”
Despite not having organized any significant art events in DC in a long time, even before the pandemic drastically curtailed the arts this year, and despite having been away from DC for most of a year when I was traveling around the country for Looking For America, my identity as a DC art person endured. I considered resurrecting the newsletter a few times over the last months. Writing kept me connected to DC arts and to maintain my identity as a “DC art lady.”
We all have multiple identities that surface at different times in our lives and we flow in and out of them as the moment demands. One identity becomes more important, while another recedes, and then they can switch places as circumstances shift. We outgrow some of them, too, or they change shape over time. It’s tough to let go of an identity that has given me so much, though.
I will always be passionate about the arts in DC, even as my “DC art lady” identity shrinks and the Pink Line Project Project comes to a close. Pink Line Project was always about using art to connect people who might not normally meet. In my next identity, I’ll continue that mission by experimenting with ways art can be used to depolarize our country by connecting politically opposed people through humanizing and empathy building conversations. Join me?
[I’m switching to new handles on Instagram and Twitter. Still here on Facebook.]
