Roxbury mural immortalizes “Queen of Disco” Donna Summer

For a while, Cedric “Vise1” Douglas and people in his circle had wondered why there weren’t any murals in the city commemorating disco legend Donna Summer. They wondered the same for other music legends from Boston, like rapper Guru from the hip-hop group Gang Starr or musician Bobby Brown, or even heartthrob boyband New Edition.

“Why don’t we celebrate these amazing people from our community that are internationally known?” Douglas, an artist, designer and public speaker from Grove Hall, asked himself.

So, when Black Market, a Nubian Square pop-up market highlighting Black artists and Black-owned businesses, reached out to Douglas to paint a mural of Sumwmer on a large wall outside their building at 2136 Washington St., he answered with a resounding yes, he said.

His first task was finding the right image that would fit within the space — he estimates it to be 60 by 50 feet — and encapsulate Summer’s “essence,” he said. He also needed an image that people would recognize.

“When you’re painting someone famous, one, you have to really capture them, and it has to look like them … and then two, it has to be an image that people can remember or connect to,” Douglas said. “Because there’s so many images of her. I feel like every image of her, she looks different.”

Among the posters hanging on the fence in front of the mural is a grid of 15 images of Summer, each, as Douglas said, very distinct. In one, she wears a gaudy, fuzzy hat, her face posed dramatically. In another, her blank expression is accentuated by Cher-like waist-length locks, a flower crown, and a hooded gown.

In his mural, Douglas wanted to capture Summer’s “beautiful, sexy, loud” personality, he said. To do that, he used the cover of Summer’s album, “Once Upon a Time,” as the base image, rendering it in striking greyscale.

The mural, which comes into view as you walk down Washington Street from Nubian Station, shows a doe-eyed Summer with her body directed away from the camera and her face angled towards it. Her lips are slightly parted, and her face is framed by perfectly arched eyebrows and a waterfall of bouncy, voluminous waves cascading from her head.

Douglas chose to surround Summer with a halo, created by a stark white circle set against the charcoal background. The halo symbolizes Summer’s “royalty and spirituality,” he said. Typical of Douglas’ other work, the halo also signifies subjects who have passed away. The effect pushes Summer forward “towards the viewer and makes her stand out more,” Douglas added.

He began working on the mural mid-July and just about completed it about 10 days later on July 27, the day Roxbury-affiliated organizations and community members came out to celebrate Summer’s legacy and the mural during Black Market’s “Summer of Love” event.

He completed the mural at the gathering and received the “vote of approval” from Summer’s family members who were in attendance, he said.

Holly Alberti, vice president of sales and business development for cannabis dispensary Rooted In, one of the organizations at the “Summer of Love,” said she appreciated how the mural brought people together, which aligns with Black Market’s focus on creating community. Rooted In used the “Summer of Love” celebration as a chance to “break barriers,” she said, just like music does.

The mural is “a great opportunity for the younger generation to maybe stop if they don’t know who it is,” Alberti said.

Summer brought disco to the masses with 17 studio albums across her five decades of making music beginning in the 1960s. During that time, she amassed five Grammy wins, producedw dozens of number-one hits and released songs that have become canon in pop, electric and disco genres, including the 1977 hit “I Feel Love.”

Her legacy as the “Queen of Disco” is now cemented in paint right here in her hometown, as it is at the annual Donna Summer Disco Party, a free dance party and roller skating night, hosted at Boston City Hall Plaza.

“It looks like it belongs … it looks like it’s been there for ages. Although it’s brand new, it looks like it fits into the fabric of the community,” said Brian Keith, founder of Rooted In, regarding the artwork. “For her to be from this community and make it on an international stage shows that you can be … from a place like Roxbury” and still make it, he added.

Douglas said Boston needs to celebrate more of its homegrown music talents. As for the mural of Summer, he hopes people will be “immersed in her beauty,” he said.

“I want people to just appreciate art more, he said, “appreciate seeing the beauty of a Black woman on the wall.”