June 19 was an incredibly busy day for Nancee Lyons, the head of MuralsDC, the District’s street art program. It was the first day in a new project to put up 51 new murals on the theme of D.C. statehood, all in one week.

She called six local artists — five muralists and one photographer — whom she’d worked with before. She convinced them to commit to creating eight works of art each. Two city employees and another artist completed the final three, bringing the total to fifty-one.

“Don’t get caught up in the details,” she says she told the artists. “You don’t have two hours to spend on someone’s hair!”

The short deadline wasn’t arbitrary: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wanted the murals completed by June 26, the day the U.S. House of Representatives would vote on D.C. statehood for the first time in a generation. (The bill passed.)

Lyons called around to local business improvement districts and government agencies to find wall space — usually the most time-consuming part of a murals project. She ended up with 13 different spots spread across each ward of the city. Some walls got multiple murals — the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE, for example, has eight.

“I knew it was going to be crazy, but it was a little more than I expected,” said César Maxit, a muralist for the project. Maxit was born in Argentina and has lived in D.C. for 16 years.

He completed one of his favorite murals in collaboration with another, who goes by You Are Loved, on the side of the Atlas. A Black man with dreadlocks is pictured with his hands up, signing “I-L-Y”: I love you. He wears an orange t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase Douglass Commonwealth, the name Bowser has proposed for the new state of D.C. The man’s face mask reads “You are loved.”

Jay Hudson, another artist, says he got the call about the project on a Saturday morning and completed his first mural by midnight.

He drew inspiration for his murals from the neighborhoods where they appear. One mural, on the side of the Trinidad Recreation Center in Northeast, shows a barbecue with a fork spearing a piece of meat in the shape of D.C., with the number “51” cut out of it. Hudson wanted the image to resonate with Black residents of the neighborhood who use the rec center to relax with their families.

He was also part of a crew of artists who accidentally got locked inside Sherwood Recreation Center in Ward 6 while painting there. A ranger patrolling the area hadn’t been informed about the project and told them to leave. In the process of trying to resolve the situation, they locked themselves in the surrounding park area. Hudson says it got cleared up quickly, and they were able to finish their work.

“The reaction people have had about the artwork has been enormous,” Lyons says of the Black Lives Matter mural. “It’s certainly made a stronger case for the need for art, particularly in a time of turmoil in the country.”

The mural’s success also played into the decision to find funding for a statehood murals project. John Falcicchio, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Chief of Staff and the Interim Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, told WAMU it took three separate agencies to fund it. The Department of Public Works contributed $25,000, the Housing Finance Agency put in $25,000 and EventsDC added another $51,000 (“51, get it?” Falcicchio said). Everyone was paid for their work.

Lyons says she hopes both of the recent projects illustrate the role art can play in social justice movements. “Art speaks to people on a mental and emotional level,” she says. “It changes minds. It changes hearts.”

The murals are located at: 620 T Street NW, 201 Bryant Street NW, 1351 Wisconsin Avenue NW, 2810 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 2309 Wisconsin Avenue NW, 4608 14th Street NW, 1310 Childress Street NE, 1725 West Virginia Avenue NE, 1333 H Street NE, 640 10th Street NE, 801 West Virginia Avenue SE, 1350 49th Street NE and 2700 South Capitol Street SE.