Barbara Januszkiewicz plexiglass artwork (see image below of Januszkiewicz painting Coming Together mural) has the power to connect, inspire, and transform neighborhoods. Nowhere is this more vivid than in Arlington, VA, where Barbara Januszkiewicz’s “Coming Together” mural has evolved from a local landmark to a symbol of creative innovation—and is now celebrated in a dynamic new gallery setting.

A Local Landmark Reimagined

On the east side of El Pollo Rico (932 N. Kenmore St, facing Wilson St), Januszkiewicz’s magnificent mural welcomes all with sweeping bands of color that echo Arlington’s diversity, vibrancy, and community pride. What began as a bold effort to revitalize a neglected pedestrian walkway has become an enduring emblem of togetherness for the neighborhood.

But the story does not end at the mural’s surface. Januszkiewicz has reinterpreted the energy and spirit of “Coming Together” through new fine art works—“Through Refraction” and “Reframe in Color”—now on view as part of the group exhibition Re:Vision & Re:Frame at George Mason University’s Founders Gallery, Mason Square Campus.

Art, Innovation, and Collaboration

This exhibition is not just a showcase, but a creative collaboration led by Mason Exhibitions Arlington and the Arlington Artists Alliance. Their partnership brings together nine artists to explore the theme of reframing: how can community, creativity, and innovation intersect in transformative ways? The gallery doesn’t just hang art—it leads visitors directly into the newly developed innovation hub Fuse at Mason Square, linking artistic vision with research, learning, and entrepreneurship.

Fuse serves as both backdrop and inspiration for the show. Its mission: to foster new ideas through cross-disciplinary learning. The very theme of the exhibition is drawn from this spirit of openness and exchange, encouraging artists and viewers alike to see their community through a new lens.

The Ongoing Journey

Januszkiewicz’s new plexiglass artwork captures the mural’s momentum—layers of transparent color dance and overlap, echoing the diversity and unity at the mural’s heart. By reframing her public art as gallery sculpture, she invites audiences to reflect on the changing face of Arlington and the shared potential of creative community.

“Coming Together was about making something beautiful and welcoming from overlooked space,” Januszkiewicz says. “Now, through this collaboration and new work, we’re exploring how those ideas carry forward—inside our galleries, across our creative spaces, and into our shared future.”

See It for Yourself

Re:Vision & Re:Frame runs through September 19, 2025 at:

Founders Gallery, Van Metre Hall, Mason Square Campus, Arlington, VA (right beside Fuse)

Original mural location: El Pollo Rico, 932 N. Kenmore St, Arlington, VA 22201 (east side, facing Wilson St)

For a behind-the-scenes look at mural-making, watch: The Making of “Coming Together” mural – Vimeo.

This collaborative exhibit is a unique opportunity to experience the evolution of public art—and the creative leadership of Mason Exhibitions Arlington and Arlington Artists Alliance—at the intersection where art and innovation shape the community’s future.

Time to open up... my apologies in advance for the cursing - you can retire the Navy out of a former sailor, but you can never retire the sailor out of a sailor.

That show is "Women Artists of the DMV." More than 400 artists in (so far) 15 major art venues across the capital region!

As part of that process, starting in December 2024 I wrote multiple emails and mailed multiple old-school snail mail letters to offer the Smithsonian Institution the opportunity to archive the exhibition materials as part of a survey snapshot in time for DMV area female artists - at no acquisition cost - FREE!

The materials that I offered to the SI would consist of a flash drive which would contain a Powerpoint presentation documenting all curated female artists and one image per artist - I also made it clear that any digital format could be used as needed/recommended by then.  Additionally, in view of how fast technology ages, I would also include (at no cost) a digital screen device (a digital frame) to “play” the digital presentation as needed in the future.

Throughout January, February, March, and April I was ignored, and in May I blasted a: "Did you get my email?" email to every email address that I could find online from them.

On May 9, 2025, I got this response:

From: AAACollectionReview - AAACollectionReview@si.edu 

To: lenny@lennycampello.com

Copy: Helmrich, Anne L.

Dear Lenny Campello,

    Thank you for your interest in the Archives of American Art. Upon reviewing your inquiry, the Archives is not the proper home for the proposed collection. This decision reflects the ongoing needs, priorities, scope, and resources of the Archives rather than the value of the collection.

We are excited to see the exhibition when it comes together. A more suitable repository for a local survey show and a PowerPoint documenting the artists who submitted might be the National Museum of Women in the Arts, though each institution has their own priorities and archival acquisition strategy. Such records of exhibition submissions can be challenging for archival accessions, particularly regarding rights issues around images as well as preservation concerns around born-digital materials.

Thank you again for reaching out to the Archives of American Art —

The curatorial team

Archives of American Art | Smithsonian Institution

www.aaa.si.edu| blog.aaa.si.edu

 

DC Headquarters

FedEx/UPS/DHL: 750 9th Street NW | Suite 2200 |Washington, DC 20001

USPS: PO Box 37012, Victor Building 2200 | MRC 937 |Washington, DC  20013-7012

New York Office
300 Park Avenue South | Suite 300 | New York, NY 10010

Join us on Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Pinterest |Instagram

Subscribe to our podcast. 

Nine years ago my courageous mother died... this is my eulogy from that day:

When my father died last year, I began his eulogy by noting that another oak had fallen.

This morning, around 1:25AM, Ana Olivia Cruzata Marrero de Campello, his wife of over 60 years, and my beloved mother, passed on on the day of her 97th birthday.

If my father was an oak, then my mother was an equally strong, but also very pliable, and elegant tree.  When hurricanes attack the main lands of the world, the strong tall trees often fall, but the pliable ones, like plantain trees, always give with the wind, and survive the storms, and thrive in the drenching rains.

My mother was like a an aged plantain tree, not only immensely strong and pliable, but also giving and nurturing.

Like many Cuban women of her generation and her social-economic background, she had never worked for a living in Cuba, and yet within a few days of our arrival in New York in the 1960s, she was working long hours in a sewing factory, putting her formidable seamstress skills, honed in the social sewing and embroidery gathering of young Cuban girls, to use in the "piece work" process of the New York sewing factories.

As soon as we saved the money, one of the first things that my mother bought was an electric sewing machine - a novelty to her, as she had always used one of the those ancient Singer machines with a foot pedal.

I remember as a child in Brooklyn, that women used to bring her fabric and a page from a magazine with a woman wearing a dress. Without the benefit of a sewing pattern, my mother would whip up a copy of the dress that was more often than not probably better made than the original. As the word of her skills spread, so did her customers and soon she was making more money working at home than at the factory - but she kept both jobs.

I once noted to her that I admired the courage that it must have taken  her to leave her family and immigrate to the United States. "We didn't come here as immigrants," she corrected me. "We came as political refugees, and I initially thought that we'd be back in Cuba within a few years at the most."

When the brutal Castro dictatorship refused to loosen its stranglehold on her birth place, she became an immigrant, and from there on an American citizen from her white-streaked hair down to her heel bone (that's a Cuban saying). Like my father, she loved her adopted country with a ferocity, that I sometimes feel that only people who have been bloodied by Communism can feel for a new, free homeland.

As as I've noted before, Cubans are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.

I remember as a teenager, once I started going out to parties and things at night on my own (around age 16 or so), that my mother would wait up for me, sitting by the third floor window of our Brooklyn apartment, where she could survey the whole neighborhood and see as far as the elevated LL subway station a few blocks away, to watch me descend the station stairs and trace my way home.

My mother was always fit and, as once described by my father, "flaca como un fusil" (as slim as a rifle). She was strong and fast. She was also quiet, but never silenced, and when needed, could and would command attention.

My mother was always well dressed and superbly coiffed. When we'd go to parties and events, women would always ask her where she'd gotten that dress! The answer was always the same: she'd made it!

At least once a week, to my father's dismay, and in spite of his demands that my mother stop it, she'd get her hair done at the nearby peluqueria (hair dresser).

My dad knew, and respected his limits with my mother. 

I remember one time that my father and I were returning from shopping at the supermarket, dragging one of those wheeled folding carts that could carry four full paper grocery bags. It had been snowing, so the Brooklyn streets were wet and muddy.

When we got to our apartment my father opened the door. He then stood there.

"Go in!" I demanded.

"We'll have to wait," he said gloomily, "Your mother mopped the floor and it's still wet." This giant, tough, street-brawling Galician then looked at me sheepishly, "I'd rather walk through a mine field than step on your mother's wet floor."

I learned a lesson there.

She used to delight in telling stories how, as a child, she would often win the horse races that kids staged around the small country towns where she was raised in Oriente province, where her father was a Mayoral. 

"I almost always won," she'd say, and then would add: "Even though I was a skinny girl."

Once, in her seventies, back in the days where you could actually accompany people to the departing gates at airports, we were escorting my oldest daughter Vanessa, who had come to visit, and we were running late. As we got to the airport, we ran to the gate, and to everyone's surprise, Abuela got there first. I still remember how delighted my daughter was that her grandmother could still run like a gazelle.

When I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA, which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, and thus my parents decided to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to me.

They spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.

The mostly Cuban-American families that lived over the years in that apartment loved my mother, and would always tell me stories about my mother, ever the nurturer, bringing them food when she knew that they were going over tough times, or riding the buses with them, just to show them the routes.

This week, when I arrived in Miami, already somewhat knowing that this was approaching the end, I saw her with tubes coming out of her mouth and her eyes closed. When I spoke to her she opened her eyes, and in spite of the visuals that my eyes were seeing she somehow still managed to look strong. 

I showed her photos and movies of her grand children, and talked to her for a long time.

I thanked her for having the courage to leave her motherland and afford me the opportunity to grow as an American.

When she was being extubated, a young woman came into the room with a guitar and played and sang the haunting free prose of Guajira Guantanamera (The peasant girl from Guantanamo); a most fitting song, since my mother was from Guantanamo, and she came from strong Cuban peasant stock.

"Guajira pero fina (A peasant, but a very refined woman)", noted a neighbor and loving caretaker. 

The song, which can start with just about any prose, started with the Jose Marti poem:

 Yo quiero, cuando me muera, sin patria, pero sin amo, tener en mi tumba un ramo de flores y una bandera

I want to, when I die, without my motherland, but without a master, to have on my tomb a bunch of flowers and a flag.

She died without a master, a strong and pliable woman who not only gave me the gift of life, but also the gift of freedom.

And as my mother died in her sleep in the early hours of the morning, in the capital city of the bitter Cuban Diaspora, all that I could gather to say to her was mostly the same that I said to my father when he passed last year: "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world for them."

I love you Mami... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children, and happy birthday in Heaven!

Barbara Januszkiewicz plexiglass artwork (see image below of Januszkiewicz painting Coming Together mural) has the power to connect, inspire, and transform neighborhoods. Nowhere is this more vivid than in Arlington, VA, where Barbara Januszkiewicz’s “Coming Together” mural has evolved from a local landmark to a symbol of creative innovation—and is now celebrated in a dynamic new gallery setting.

A Local Landmark Reimagined

On the east side of El Pollo Rico (932 N. Kenmore St, facing Wilson St), Januszkiewicz’s magnificent mural welcomes all with sweeping bands of color that echo Arlington’s diversity, vibrancy, and community pride. What began as a bold effort to revitalize a neglected pedestrian walkway has become an enduring emblem of togetherness for the neighborhood.

But the story does not end at the mural’s surface. Januszkiewicz has reinterpreted the energy and spirit of “Coming Together” through new fine art works—“Through Refraction” and “Reframe in Color”—now on view as part of the group exhibition Re:Vision & Re:Frame at George Mason University’s Founders Gallery, Mason Square Campus.

Art, Innovation, and Collaboration

This exhibition is not just a showcase, but a creative collaboration led by Mason Exhibitions Arlington and the Arlington Artists Alliance. Their partnership brings together nine artists to explore the theme of reframing: how can community, creativity, and innovation intersect in transformative ways? The gallery doesn’t just hang art—it leads visitors directly into the newly developed innovation hub Fuse at Mason Square, linking artistic vision with research, learning, and entrepreneurship.

Fuse serves as both backdrop and inspiration for the show. Its mission: to foster new ideas through cross-disciplinary learning. The very theme of the exhibition is drawn from this spirit of openness and exchange, encouraging artists and viewers alike to see their community through a new lens.

The Ongoing Journey

Januszkiewicz’s new plexiglass artwork captures the mural’s momentum—layers of transparent color dance and overlap, echoing the diversity and unity at the mural’s heart. By reframing her public art as gallery sculpture, she invites audiences to reflect on the changing face of Arlington and the shared potential of creative community.

“Coming Together was about making something beautiful and welcoming from overlooked space,” Januszkiewicz says. “Now, through this collaboration and new work, we’re exploring how those ideas carry forward—inside our galleries, across our creative spaces, and into our shared future.”

See It for Yourself

Re:Vision & Re:Frame runs through September 19, 2025 at:

Founders Gallery, Van Metre Hall, Mason Square Campus, Arlington, VA (right beside Fuse)

Original mural location: El Pollo Rico, 932 N. Kenmore St, Arlington, VA 22201 (east side, facing Wilson St)

For a behind-the-scenes look at mural-making, watch: The Making of “Coming Together” mural – Vimeo.

This collaborative exhibit is a unique opportunity to experience the evolution of public art—and the creative leadership of Mason Exhibitions Arlington and Arlington Artists Alliance—at the intersection where art and innovation shape the community’s future.

Time to open up... my apologies in advance for the cursing - you can retire the Navy out of a former sailor, but you can never retire the sailor out of a sailor.

That show is "Women Artists of the DMV." More than 400 artists in (so far) 15 major art venues across the capital region!

As part of that process, starting in December 2024 I wrote multiple emails and mailed multiple old-school snail mail letters to offer the Smithsonian Institution the opportunity to archive the exhibition materials as part of a survey snapshot in time for DMV area female artists - at no acquisition cost - FREE!

The materials that I offered to the SI would consist of a flash drive which would contain a Powerpoint presentation documenting all curated female artists and one image per artist - I also made it clear that any digital format could be used as needed/recommended by then.  Additionally, in view of how fast technology ages, I would also include (at no cost) a digital screen device (a digital frame) to “play” the digital presentation as needed in the future.

Throughout January, February, March, and April I was ignored, and in May I blasted a: "Did you get my email?" email to every email address that I could find online from them.

On May 9, 2025, I got this response:

From: AAACollectionReview - AAACollectionReview@si.edu 

To: lenny@lennycampello.com

Copy: Helmrich, Anne L.

Dear Lenny Campello,

    Thank you for your interest in the Archives of American Art. Upon reviewing your inquiry, the Archives is not the proper home for the proposed collection. This decision reflects the ongoing needs, priorities, scope, and resources of the Archives rather than the value of the collection.

We are excited to see the exhibition when it comes together. A more suitable repository for a local survey show and a PowerPoint documenting the artists who submitted might be the National Museum of Women in the Arts, though each institution has their own priorities and archival acquisition strategy. Such records of exhibition submissions can be challenging for archival accessions, particularly regarding rights issues around images as well as preservation concerns around born-digital materials.

Thank you again for reaching out to the Archives of American Art —

The curatorial team

Archives of American Art | Smithsonian Institution

www.aaa.si.edu| blog.aaa.si.edu

 

DC Headquarters

FedEx/UPS/DHL: 750 9th Street NW | Suite 2200 |Washington, DC 20001

USPS: PO Box 37012, Victor Building 2200 | MRC 937 |Washington, DC  20013-7012

New York Office
300 Park Avenue South | Suite 300 | New York, NY 10010

Join us on Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Pinterest |Instagram

Subscribe to our podcast. 

Nine years ago my courageous mother died... this is my eulogy from that day:

When my father died last year, I began his eulogy by noting that another oak had fallen.

This morning, around 1:25AM, Ana Olivia Cruzata Marrero de Campello, his wife of over 60 years, and my beloved mother, passed on on the day of her 97th birthday.

If my father was an oak, then my mother was an equally strong, but also very pliable, and elegant tree.  When hurricanes attack the main lands of the world, the strong tall trees often fall, but the pliable ones, like plantain trees, always give with the wind, and survive the storms, and thrive in the drenching rains.

My mother was like a an aged plantain tree, not only immensely strong and pliable, but also giving and nurturing.

Like many Cuban women of her generation and her social-economic background, she had never worked for a living in Cuba, and yet within a few days of our arrival in New York in the 1960s, she was working long hours in a sewing factory, putting her formidable seamstress skills, honed in the social sewing and embroidery gathering of young Cuban girls, to use in the "piece work" process of the New York sewing factories.

As soon as we saved the money, one of the first things that my mother bought was an electric sewing machine - a novelty to her, as she had always used one of the those ancient Singer machines with a foot pedal.

I remember as a child in Brooklyn, that women used to bring her fabric and a page from a magazine with a woman wearing a dress. Without the benefit of a sewing pattern, my mother would whip up a copy of the dress that was more often than not probably better made than the original. As the word of her skills spread, so did her customers and soon she was making more money working at home than at the factory - but she kept both jobs.

I once noted to her that I admired the courage that it must have taken  her to leave her family and immigrate to the United States. "We didn't come here as immigrants," she corrected me. "We came as political refugees, and I initially thought that we'd be back in Cuba within a few years at the most."

When the brutal Castro dictatorship refused to loosen its stranglehold on her birth place, she became an immigrant, and from there on an American citizen from her white-streaked hair down to her heel bone (that's a Cuban saying). Like my father, she loved her adopted country with a ferocity, that I sometimes feel that only people who have been bloodied by Communism can feel for a new, free homeland.

As as I've noted before, Cubans are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.

I remember as a teenager, once I started going out to parties and things at night on my own (around age 16 or so), that my mother would wait up for me, sitting by the third floor window of our Brooklyn apartment, where she could survey the whole neighborhood and see as far as the elevated LL subway station a few blocks away, to watch me descend the station stairs and trace my way home.

My mother was always fit and, as once described by my father, "flaca como un fusil" (as slim as a rifle). She was strong and fast. She was also quiet, but never silenced, and when needed, could and would command attention.

My mother was always well dressed and superbly coiffed. When we'd go to parties and events, women would always ask her where she'd gotten that dress! The answer was always the same: she'd made it!

At least once a week, to my father's dismay, and in spite of his demands that my mother stop it, she'd get her hair done at the nearby peluqueria (hair dresser).

My dad knew, and respected his limits with my mother. 

I remember one time that my father and I were returning from shopping at the supermarket, dragging one of those wheeled folding carts that could carry four full paper grocery bags. It had been snowing, so the Brooklyn streets were wet and muddy.

When we got to our apartment my father opened the door. He then stood there.

"Go in!" I demanded.

"We'll have to wait," he said gloomily, "Your mother mopped the floor and it's still wet." This giant, tough, street-brawling Galician then looked at me sheepishly, "I'd rather walk through a mine field than step on your mother's wet floor."

I learned a lesson there.

She used to delight in telling stories how, as a child, she would often win the horse races that kids staged around the small country towns where she was raised in Oriente province, where her father was a Mayoral. 

"I almost always won," she'd say, and then would add: "Even though I was a skinny girl."

Once, in her seventies, back in the days where you could actually accompany people to the departing gates at airports, we were escorting my oldest daughter Vanessa, who had come to visit, and we were running late. As we got to the airport, we ran to the gate, and to everyone's surprise, Abuela got there first. I still remember how delighted my daughter was that her grandmother could still run like a gazelle.

When I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA, which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, and thus my parents decided to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to me.

They spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.

The mostly Cuban-American families that lived over the years in that apartment loved my mother, and would always tell me stories about my mother, ever the nurturer, bringing them food when she knew that they were going over tough times, or riding the buses with them, just to show them the routes.

This week, when I arrived in Miami, already somewhat knowing that this was approaching the end, I saw her with tubes coming out of her mouth and her eyes closed. When I spoke to her she opened her eyes, and in spite of the visuals that my eyes were seeing she somehow still managed to look strong. 

I showed her photos and movies of her grand children, and talked to her for a long time.

I thanked her for having the courage to leave her motherland and afford me the opportunity to grow as an American.

When she was being extubated, a young woman came into the room with a guitar and played and sang the haunting free prose of Guajira Guantanamera (The peasant girl from Guantanamo); a most fitting song, since my mother was from Guantanamo, and she came from strong Cuban peasant stock.

"Guajira pero fina (A peasant, but a very refined woman)", noted a neighbor and loving caretaker. 

The song, which can start with just about any prose, started with the Jose Marti poem:

 Yo quiero, cuando me muera, sin patria, pero sin amo, tener en mi tumba un ramo de flores y una bandera

I want to, when I die, without my motherland, but without a master, to have on my tomb a bunch of flowers and a flag.

She died without a master, a strong and pliable woman who not only gave me the gift of life, but also the gift of freedom.

And as my mother died in her sleep in the early hours of the morning, in the capital city of the bitter Cuban Diaspora, all that I could gather to say to her was mostly the same that I said to my father when he passed last year: "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world for them."

I love you Mami... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children, and happy birthday in Heaven!