Building a new Studio PAUSE Community Gallery Exhibit, March - July 2026
Virginia 250: A Community Art Exhibit
Sharing Expression, Encouraging Education, and Fostering Care through our Art & Stories!
“Everybody learns history differently. I loved learning from Felicity, my American Girl doll from Williamsburg, VA!”
~ Kori Johnson
This community art exhibit invites, guides, and encourages those who live, work, and play in Arlington to create and share their unique interpretations of the theme of Virginia as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and Independence of the United States. As we do this we learn about our state, its history, and the people who live in it.
Our Thursday PAUSE art and writing sessions in March explored the US and VA flags, and in April, they continue every week celebrating National Poetry Month. Join us and add your creativity to our exhibit!
SAVE THE DATES!
Fri, April 24th, 6-8 pm Community PAUSE: Celebrating the PoeTree.
Sat, May 9th, 10 am - 5 pm We will take a pop-up version of this exhibit to Arlington’s HistoryFest at Kenmore Middle School.
Fri, June 26, 6 - 8 pm: Community PAUSE: Celebrating Virginia 250 and see and order our exhibit catalogue.
Enjoy this glimpse into the myriad stories, and experiences that make up our community. We have begun to imagine and discuss what our first crowd-funded exhibit will be, building it over the next few months at the Studio on Columbia Pike.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW VIDEOS!
As we build our new exhibit, here are some of the expressions people have shared. These are the first two of our playlist!
WE STARTED A GOFUNDME!
Hi, I'm LouLou Marino, the one who started our GoFundMe campaign. I’ve been involved with Studio PAUSE since it opened—I was the artist who had the first show at the Studio's launch! I've been a part of Studio PAUSE ever since, and I hope you'll join me in supporting this new project, with our first ever crowd funding.
To make this project a reality, we need your help.
We believe in this project which invites people from our unique and diverse community to tell their stories of Virginia 250 through their art and poetry—and be proud of it. Everyone involved is equally excited to participate, collaborate, and share. That's why we've decided to try fundraising. This is our first time reaching out to the community for direct support.
Funds raised will go toward art materials, hosting art-making and writing sessions, exhibit materials and setup, outreach, catalog design and production, and operational costs—everything needed to bring this vision to life from March to July, 2026. Your support, whether through a donation or by sharing our fundraiser, will help us continue our mission of connecting and uplifting our community through art.
Thank you for believing in the power of creativity and community!
Arlington History Fest
On Saturday May 9, 2026 we joined Arlington Historical Society, and so many others, in the County’s commemoration of Virginia 250 with our community art exhibit.
Enjoy the photos below.
Loading the U-Haul! So grateful for all the PAUSErs help with planning, loading, problem-solving...
The PoeTree goes to the History Fest!!
Such helpful and efficient volunteers at the event! The tent was up in a blink.
We hung the exhibit double-sided on our folding panels. Here is the series titled Our Histories are Connected by Sushmita Mazumdar. Above is "Cornwallis" and below "Gandhi"
Last in the series is Paav Bhaji. Then my 2012 book "Looking for Presidents" now also in Spanish. Center is an artwork from my 2018 grant project "City Of Stories" - North & South, East & West, a story shared by Van Vo.
The Puppeteer by David Ramos
Artworks "I Do Believe Good Will Prevail" by Jorge Rogachevsky and "Virginia Kintsugi" by LouLou Marino
Art and Poetry by Yessenia Arias
An essay "Echoes of 1984: Living the Surveillance Age We Once Imagined" by Spike Bee, a poem and artwork "Armed Girl" by Angelina Ribeiro Jones, and "The Book Banning Machine" by Wolfgang Rennert.
Delegate Alfonso Lopes checks out our PoeTree 2026 with over 110 haikus written by our Arlington community!
A budding poet
Late Entry, full circle
Here is a cool thing that happened. It reminds us to be patient with our creativity and our art-making, and to be open to trying new things. LouLou Marino had an idea to collaborate with Reneé Adams, her neighbor who is a poet. She would invite Reneé to write a poem on VA250 and LouLou would make it into art. I was quite surprised to see LouLou want to try this new way of working but she has been working in many new ways lately and it was a joy to witness. So she tried this and that, bought papers, did collage in her usual way. But things weren’t working. She told me how she shared the poem with a friend who is an actor/dancer and how she imagined the poem being depicted. I was so excited I wanted to make a painting out of her movement translation of the poem! But there was a lot going on. Then one day LouLou brought all the art she had tried out and a big roll of papers and put it on the table at the studio. She showed me all the things she had tried and how nothing seemed to work. She couldn’t do it, she said. She had spoken to Reneé she said. If you have any ideas when you look at all this, go for it, she said. And then, for some reason, she read the poem aloud. And thats when I was struck by how beautifully she read it. How beautiful it sounded when she read it. Can you make an audio recording of it, I asked LouLou. We will put it on the website. Of course, she said.
When she send me the audio file I realized, the poem title was familiar. I walked up to Kori’s 2018 poem, featured in our exhibit. It had the same title, We Are Here. ~ Sushmita