An Artist Creates Tragedy Memorials around the World. His Latest Site: DCA.

The Washington Post

16:29 JST, February 1, 2025

In muddied jeans and a wet black cowboy hat, Roberto Marquez built his makeshift memorial in the rain early Friday.

Marquez set up his tribute at Gravelly Point, near the site of the deadly Reagan National Airport midair collision Wednesday of a passenger plane and a military helicopter.

The 62-year-old Dallas painter has dedicated his life to traveling around the world and setting up memorials after tragedies. He has had a busy start to the year, creating displays in New Orleans after the deadly Bourbon Street attack and in Los Angeles for a mural and crosses after the devastating wildfires.

“I thought it was good to come and send a message of solidarity,” he said.

Marquez said he was already in the D.C. region when the crash happened because he had an interview for a piece of his at the Baltimore Museum of Industry memorializing the victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.

He has popped up across the globe, including in Ukraine in 2022. He installed a piece near the city of Irpin, where Ukrainian forces blew up the bridge over the Irpin River to prevent Russian forces from having a gateway to Kyiv.

He said he has also created projects closer to his Dallas home, including for the mass killing at a schools in Uvalde, Texas.

Texas Monthly dubbed him “The Texas Artist You Hope to Never Meet.”

“The memorial is a good way to send a message and gesture of support,” Marquez told The Washington Post on Friday.

When asked how a painter can afford to travel the world, Marquez said he made a decision several years ago that this was his passion. So, he took out a loan against his house.

He said he hopes, eventually, his paintings will help fund his work. But he doesn’t seek out donations, saying: “I don’t feel good asking.”

When he arrives in a city after a tragedy, Marquez said, he begins looking for supplies. Sometimes he’ll get lucky and find someone breaking down a fence who will let him use the slats for his crosses. He prefers that texture to finished lumber anyway.

But he wasn’t so lucky around Alexandria, Virginia, so he said he bought wood from Home Depot to make the crosses now planted at Gravelly Point.

Marquez said he could only get through about 21 crosses, but he’ll do his museum interview Friday and start back at it Saturday.

He’ll keep working on the crosses until there are 67 – the number of people presumed dead in the crash.