THE NEWPORT NEWS STREET MUSEUM

The CAN Foundation, in collaboration with the City of Newport News, presents The Newport News Street Museum, the first phase of a city-wide mural project beginning in July and taking place throughout the summer of 2023. The project will feature an array of abstract and figurative murals executed by renowned regional and national muralists. The project aims to activate and highlight various locations throughout the City of Newport News, encourage placemaking, promote tourism, develop the creative workforce, and strengthen community and regional connections. The Street Museum will feature an array of abstract and figurative murals executed by renowned regional and national muralists including Nadd Harvin, Carl Medley III, Nico Cathcart, Mahari Chabwera, Earl Mack, Austin Miles, Yusuf Abdul Lateef, Andrew Samuel Harrison, Dathan Kane, Alex Michael, and Asa Jackson. Artists Ray Johnson, Poetry Jackson, and Hemadri Modi will also create moveable murals that will be anchored to select walls throughout the city as additions to the Street Museum.

Follow the journey on IG @nnstreetmuseum and check out our interactive mural map!

Nico Cathcart is a Deaf/Hard of Hearing painter and muralist hailing from Toronto, Ontario, and currently living in Richmond, Virginia. She strives to create socially informed intersectional work in her highly-colorful realistic activations on both walls and canvas. An experienced mural painter, she has worked on walls across the country with work to be found in Austin, Sacramento, Rochester, Birmingham, Memphis, Atlanta, Napa CA, and Wynwood Miami. Nico has been shown at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, the Hermitage Museum, CAN Network in Norfolk, ABV Gallery in Atlanta, Modern Eden and 111 Minna in San Francisco, Blockfort in Columbus, and countless other galleries across the country. In 2020, Nico was honored as an Agent of Change for her use of activism in art by the VMHC, and in 2023 her work “Age and Grace” won a National Mural Award. You can find Nico discussing her work in the emmy-nominated documentary Mending Walls, available trough PBS nationwide, as well as a TEDTalk about her work, and disability on the youtube TedTALK Channel.. Nico recently worked to curate, and take part in the national campaign, Artists 4 ERA, you can purchase prints of her portrait of trans activist Aurora Higgs, proceeds of which support the passage of the 18th Amendment, and voting rights work.

Connect: www.instagram.com/nicocathcart, www.nicocathcart.com

Yusuf Dubois Abdul Lateef is a visual artist and educator residing in Toledo, Ohio. Co-founder of Radiant City Arts and the Toledo Black Artist Coalition, his work explores ways in which fundamental principles of art hold spiritual implications and points of connection as tools for community building. Radiant City Arts is a For Profit organization that develops arts programing and creative sustainable curriculums for Juvenile detention centers in lower Michigan. Yusuf is also an active member of the Rasqauche artist collective. Lateef uses his love of the creative process to find ways to engage youth and the public at large. With a Master's degree from Bowling Green State University in 2d studies and social engagement as art practice, Lateef uses making as a vehicle for processing information and problem solving through art production. He has completed over 30 murals and has participated in several collaborative projects in communities in Ohio, Michigan, Charlottesville Virginia, Puebla Mexico, Bilbao and Toledo, Spain. Lateef is currently an adjunct instructor at The University of Toledo, School of Art and Letters and Bowling Green State University School of Art. His focus is 4d art and developing curriculum for experience based art practices. He also conducts arts programming in treatment centers and is involved in juvenile justice reform in both Ohio and lower Michigan.

Nadd Harvin is a self taught painter, illustrator, and teaching artist based primarily in Richmond and Hampton Roads, Virgina. As a teacher and prolific sketchbook artist, Nadd’s work is heavily process based and influenced by the act of creating and mark making. Their work is also deeply interested in utilizing realism as a vehicle for abstract expression and creating compositions that open up a world of endless storytelling possibilities. These elements bleed through into their large-scale mural work, creating a style that seeks to balance elements of chaos, centered around a personal narrative of creation and holding time and space. Self actualization, community and world building, time, space, ego, and identity are a few of the themes central to their work. 

Dathan Kane (b. 1991) is a contemporary abstract painter and muralist based in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He holds a BFA in Art & Design from Virginia State University. His work focuses on the constant duality of life's choices using bold, organic, black and white shapes to explore this complexity and gain a sense of balance. Dathan‘s work is included in many collections including Germany, France, Dollar Tree HQ, Work Programs Architects at Assembly in Norfolk, Within Interior Design Firm in Norfolk, PMA Architecture in Newport News, Commune in Virginia Beach/Norfolk, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He has exhibited at the Chrysler Museum (Glass Studio) Gallery, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art , Hermitage Museum & Gardens and the Sichuan Contemporary Institute in China. Dathan has participated in the RVA Street Mural Festival, Three Notchd "Leave Your Mark!" Mural Festival in Richmond and has completed a two week residency program at Studio House in Baltimore contributing two murals. He was a recent participant in the annual "Cabin Fever" auction held at 1708 Gallery in Richmond VA.  His recent documentary film, CURATE, produced by P.B.S "WHRO Media" in Norfolk has aired throughout Hampton Roads, Boston, and North Carolina (2022). Dathan recently completed a mural project for White Claw during Pharrell's "Something in the Water Festival" in VA Beach (2023).  He currently serves on the board of the Hermitage Museum in Norfolk, and works on the Contemporary Arts Network exhibition team in Newport News.

Andrew Samuel Harrison is a self-taught artist from Richmond, VA whose mixed technique practice seizes upon raw mark-making and spontaneous composition as a rejection to insider-outsider dichotomies of identity. Select exhibitions include 1708’s “Cabin Fever”, “w/ The Bulls'' at Petersburg Area Art League, “Asymmetry” presented at Assembly Norfolk by The Contemporary Arts Network, and “Wiggle Out and Juicy Talk'' at independent gallery, Eden Airlines. Harrison lives and works in New York City, where he is a graduate student in the MFA Fine Art program at Parsons School of Design.

Asa Jackson is an American artist, curator, and director based in Virginia. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, including at Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Hodges Taylor Gallery (Charlotte, NC), 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA), The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA) and Samuel Owen Gallery (Greenwich, CT), among many other venues. His work is a part of various prominent collections including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Capital One Corporate Collection, and the Hascoe Family Collection.

Jackson founded 670 Gallery in Virginia, leading the gallery as its director from 2014-2017. Jackson is the co-founder and executive director of the CAN Foundation, a not-for-profit arts organization in Newport News, Virginia, with a focus on artist development, arts education, and public projects. He served on the board of the Virginia Commission for the Arts from 2018-2023, acting as Chairman for FY 2022.

Austin “Auz” Miles is a multidisciplinary painter, designer, and public artist from Durham, NC, currently working in Richmond, VA. Her work uses a mixture of abstract and figurative imagery to tell stories about beauty ideals, spirituality, ancestry, and individual experiences of women as they relate to the African Diaspora. Her paintings are a glimpse into a realm where emotions are personified and become out-of-body experiences of connection. Through her work, Auz hosts visual conversations that ignite understanding and inspire community healing. Austin “Auz” Miles has exhibited her work throughout the East Coast and has installed numerous murals nationally.

Alex Michael (b.1989,Norfolk, VA) is a neo-cubist, artist, and muralist living in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Alex’s signature work pulls heavy energy from vast cultures, religions, and personal memories of family in Puerto Rico and Virginia. His late mother has a large presence in the majority of his art. Alex absorbed a natural balance between his mothers cake art abilities and his fathers  Boatswains Mate Jack-of-all-trades Navy mindset on ship and shore. 

The Norfolk Native has painted large scale public murals, canvas storytelling compositions using predominantly Oils and Mixed Media. Alex emphasizes his own deformities within his figurative work and his current surrounding landscapes push the idea of hardedge shapes. Through painting, sculpting, and installation, he aims to place his audience in his favorite art periods.

Mahari Chabwera is a womanist, artist and facilitator working at the intersection of mysticism and Black Women’s wisdom traditions. Chabwera is reinforced by communal care practices and spiritual technologies. She thinks about her work as talismans, medicine bags, and guardian gestures. Mahari’s work is rooted in African Diasporic mythologies and self-mythologization. Its origin is speculative, seductive, sensual, and fundamentally Black. 

Chabwera lives between Virginia and Maryland, developing her artistic and curatorial practices, along with STUDIOHOUSE in Baltimore. STUDIOHOUSE is an evolving, artist-run project that provides communal housing and workspace to artists with the intention of creating a restorative incubator for them to sharpen their skills, and connect with the region’s creative sector. STUDIOHOUSE honors an artist's individual intuition on how to best cultivate themselves. Mahari sees this project as an extension of her practice, and a social design experiment. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and is the recipient of the 2023 MSAC Creativity Grant, The Visual Arts Center 2020 Emerging Artist Award, and the 2019 - 2020 VMFA Professional Fellowship.

Carl Floyd Medley III is an artist who has recently relocated from Hampton, VA to Las Vegas, NV. Through his work, Carl  attempts to confront his surroundings the only way he knows how; with humor. As a child of the 80s, Carl (b. 1981) grew up with a healthy mix of Choose Your Own Adventure books, cartoon merchandising and a family whose method for dealing with life's trials and tribulations was centered around jokes. He now employs his foundation in realism and a decorated career in design to turn cultural references on their heads and create narratives ranging from absurd to heartfelt. By employing technical skill, dry wit, and a playful ambition, Carl creates encompassing experiences and ignites dialogue that lead the viewer to question, understand, appreciate, and even laugh at themselves and the world they live in.

Earl Mack is a Richmond, Virginia based artist that specializes in fine and street art design. He graduated from VCU School of the Arts in 2012 with a degree in Sculpture and Extended Media. Since graduating, Earl has been very active in the art community up and down the east cost with art shows from Art Basel in Florida to group art shows in New York. He also has several murals in various locations of Richmond including the Richmond Squirrels Stadium, The Martin Agency, The Commonwealth Hotel, & The BB&T building just to name a few. With all his art endeavors, Earl still finds time as the co-owner and creative director of the streetwear/lifestyle brand, Chilalay, to create & design clothes. When you see his work, it exudes his love for art and fashion through every paint stroke, digital design, and fabric print.