Market 5 Gallery is a multicultural, multidisciplinary arts organization sponsoring programs that encompass all visual and performing arts, crafts, and literary disciplines. In the nearly three decades since its founding, the Gallery's mission and guiding purpose has been to encourage the creative expression of our city's many individual artists and arts organizations by providing a welcoming and affordable environment in which they can exhibit, perform, and sell their work.

A major programmatic goal of Market 5 Gallery has always been to structure a broad range of program choices to provide both performers and audiences with a wide range of art, educational, and cultural experience.

"This is sad news. Even though I haven't spoken to him in quite a long time, I remember John Harrod fondly. He was the true founder of what we know and love about Eastern Market. John Harrod was the man responsible for so many artists living on their work over the years. He gave life to a run-down building. He gave me my first one man show in DC and my first summer job when I was 16 in a theater production at the Market 5 Gallery. John Harrod was a visionary. He could be unorganized and scattered, but he did wonders for Capitol Hill. I really believe there should be a plaque or something else on the North Plaza to commemorate him." — Jonathan Blum

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As many of you know, John Harrod, founder of Market 5 Gallery and the Arts and Crafts Festival at Eastern Market, passed away this Monday. I went on the net to search for his obituary and could not find it. But when I Googled John Harrod, Founder of Market 5 Gallery at Eastern Market, well what I found was... check it out. For me the knowing of one's history is important. I love when the past can speak its own name. So if you want to know who created and maintained what many of us have and will continue to benefit from, then make the time and take a moment and read this interview. True dat knowledge is power.

Personally, I think the North Hall should be named after him.

Sonda T. Allen
Turtle's Webb

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Ayisha and Ahman,  when I told Mehmet, my Turkish friend, that John had died, he said it all:  "He was a good man." 
That made me think about why I, and so many of his friends, liked him so.  He brought us together.  Peter in Slovenia was the next to email.  John played improvisational jazz with his nephew Janos.  I could have called my Otavalan friends or Malian friend, or Nepali friend, or any number of African-American, immigrant or white friends that John helped, but all I wanted to call was John.

If you love somebody, let them know. — jim spillane