Photographs courtesy Jeff Huntington
The Breonna Taylor Mural Project in Chambers Park became a potent image of the national Black Lives Matter movement.
You know Jeff Huntington’s art, even if you don’t know his name. His arresting, super-scaled portraits grace 39 public spaces throughout Annapolis. His career as an accomplished mural painter, which started here, now takes him around the world.
Huntington maintains that there’s a difference between his work and other kinds of fine art. “A public mural is more of a temporary thing,” he explains. “It can be affected by many factors: weather, vandalism, new development, a change of property owners. It’s impermanent. For that reason, I sort of divorce myself from it more than I do with my personal studio work.”
Annapolis, with its abundance of historic buildings, might seem to be an unlikely backdrop for his murals, but Huntington has proved coexistence is possible. “Contemporary art can definitely exist in historic towns,” he says, pointing to examples in Frederick, Westminster, and Easton. “I’d rather see murals raining down instead of big corporate signs. They’ve actually been proven to help build communities, rather than tear them down. So why push them into the shadows?”
Photographs courtesy Jeff Huntington
On Church Circle, portraits of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall celebrate their work for social justice.
Growing up in Prince Georges County, Huntington was inspired by his father and grandmother, both of whom were avid amateur painters. “Everyone was painting, and that’s what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “My father worked nights as a nurse then went to art school during the day, and he’d bring me with him. I was in the middle of it all, playing with drawing pads, going to the sculpture room, going to the Smithsonian for free.”
At 15, Huntington dropped out of high school to follow the Grateful Dead tour. When he turned 16, friends bought him a GED workbook and urged him to get a diploma so he could apply to art school. “So, I did one painting a day for a year to prepare, then sent slides of 120 of them to schools. I got a scholarship to the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at George Washington University, and later got my master’s at the Art Institute of Chicago.”
In 2018, a commission to create a mural on the exterior of Tsunami restaurant on West Street landed the artist in a dispute with the City. “The city sued, not to remove the mural, but to have the owner retroactively apply for permission to have it. So he did, to which they said yes,” Huntington relates. The work wove abstract elements into a traditional portrait, a style which became a Huntington trademark.
While that case moved through the courts, artist Jason Liggett, with an assist from Huntington, painted another mural, this one Mayan-themed on a wall facing a parking lot at 110 Cathedral Street. It was planned to be the first in a series of mentorship projects. After the city told the owner it had to go through the approval process, Huntington and Liggett decided to paint over the mural, instead. They threw a “mural funeral” accompanied by New Orleans-style second line music.
“Boy oh boy, did people show up! Adults, kids—all kinds of people joined in,” recalls Huntington. “That’s when we said, ‘This is beautiful, think about what’s happening here! Let’s turn our focus to young people.’ And that was the birth of Future History Now.” The nonprofit, founded with Huntington’s wife, Julia Gibbs, has facilitated collaborative mural projects with youth facing adversity in underserved communities in Annapolis and across the world. It’s taken the couple as far as China and India.
Photographs courtesy Jeff Huntington
Huntington’s most recent commission was a mural of Chinese-American suffragist Mabel Ping-Wah Lee in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown.
Future History Now made national headlines in July 2020 when it organized young artists and volunteers to paint the Breonna Taylor Mural Project at Annapolis’s Chambers Park. (Taylor, a 26-year-old woman in Louisville, Kentucky, had been shot and killed in her home by police executing a “no warrant” search for narcotics, which were not found.)
Completed only months after her passing and just weeks after George Floyd’s death, the 7,000-square-foot portrait of Taylor on an outdoor basketball court quickly became a potent image in the Black Lives Matter movement. “The mural was featured in Time magazine on July 27,” Huntington says. “It was a wild summer as the coverage went viral.” His reputation skyrocketed, and clients with commissions began calling.
“We pick and choose our projects now,” Huntington explains. “For the first time since 2019, we’re not scheduled through the end of the year.” He’s currently working on long-postponed 10-story mural in Jersey City, and in conversations with the NOMA mural festival for a project in D.C.
Photographs courtesy Jeff Huntington
Huntington and his wife, Julia Gibbs, founded Future History Now, an art collective that engages underserved youth in mural creation.
Recently, Huntington completed a mural of Mabel Ping-Wah Lee, a Chinese-American suffragist, next to the Friendship Arch in Washington’s Chinatown. Again, his aim was to give voice to people who have suffered injustice. “Mabel worked to pass the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. But she wasn’t able to vote because of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese residents from citizenship,” he explains.
Huntington continues to imbue his art with social consciousness, pairing it with his technical skills to create extraordinary impact. He paints with purpose, and audiences are responding. “It’s the best compliment—and rare in mural production today—to hear a client say, ‘We want you, your work, your vision,’” Huntington says.
Learn more renown local artist Jeff Huntington at jeffhuntington.com.
