The Day I Stopped Believing by Billy Colbert

With an entrance so unassuming its easy to walk right past, the Healing Arts Gallery, once you find it, is a new and welcome addition to the D.C. art scene. The venue is part of the Smith Farm Center on U Street NW, a nonprofit dedicated to using creative methods for the health and education of people suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses. For the last 13 years, in their offices upstairs from the gallery, they’ve offered healthy cooking classes, yoga and meditation, and other services for individuals and their families.

Unlike, for example, Art Enables, the gallery doesn’t feature work by those who fall within their mission. Instead it plans to feature fine art by (mostly) established local artists, and has started things off nicely — Tai Hwa Goh, who recently had a show at Flashpoint, was part of their inaugural show in May, while their current exhibition includes Michael Janis and Billy Colbert (we’ll get to them in a minute). The “healing” part comes from the process of enjoying the art itself, supplemented with a full calendar of events, discussions, and workshops. When I stopped by on Wednesday, I interrupted a lecture for photographers on how to market their work and display in galleries, a workshop the gallery generously hosted for the Hamiltonian Gallery down the street, whose construction snags have their delayed opening for another month.

Smith Farm has been hosting art exhibits for awhile, but they were crammed on movable partitions in their upstairs offices, next to their cooking class kitchen. They first envisioned the gallery when their pet shop tenants went out of business a few years ago. Smith Farm split the store, and the environmentally friendly Greater Goods moved in to two-thirds of it, while the gallery was set up in the other third, helped with a hefty grant from the D.C. Commission on Arts and the Humanities. In keeping with their earth-loving vision, the space is quite serene. Visitors are greeted by a hanging wall of succulent greens, which help oxygenate the room. Beautiful Brazilian cherry wood makes up the floor and “floating” cloud-like sections give a place to hang lighting while keeping an airy opening feeling in the space. Smith Farm has grand plans to renovate the back end of the building, with a small courtyard in between (where some artists are already envisioning installation work). The artists aren’t required to sell their work, but if they do, Smith Farm’s commission goes towards their artist in residence program.