By Mikaela Lefrak

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If you stand outside Washington National Cathedral, you’ll see blue splotches covering its hundred-year-old steps. The paint starts at the Cathedral’s imposing front entrance, dribbles down the stone steps, and spreads like water across the sidewalk.

But don’t worry, it’s not the work of a rogue graffiti artist, or the Blue Man Group taking its revenge on organized religion. It’s a site-specific painting by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi, one of the dozens of artists participating in the city’s inaugural By the People Festival.

The four-day festival will feature performances, installations and moderated conversations centered around the broad themes of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness. Installations will go up at sites in each of the city’s four quadrants, including the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, Union Market, The Parks at Walter Reed and THEARC West in addition to the cathedral.

Kate Goodall is the CEO of the arts and social entrepreneurship incubator Halcyon, which is organizing the festival. She said By the People is D.C.’s answer to events like Austin’s SXSW, Miami’s Art Basel and the Aspen Ideas Festival.

“We really wanted to be able to deliver an international arts and dialogues festival to D.C.,” Goodall said. “It deserves it. It’s more than time.”

Looking closely at Qureshi’s piece, you can see that the blue blobs are made up of delicately painted flowers, foliage and decorative swirls. Qureshi was trained in the Persian and Indian miniature painting tradition, and said his goal with the piece was to create an illusion that “life-giving” water was spilling out of the Cathedral and into the surrounding landscape.

“I always try to create a dialogue with the architectural space and my painted vocabulary,” he said as he painted outside the Cathedral, just two days before the festival was scheduled to open on June 21. He and his assistant were rushing to finish in time – they’d been painting in the sun for the better part of a week and a half, and the humidity in D.C. was hovering around 70 percent. The first half of the process had been made significantly more challenging by the fact that Qureshi was fasting for Ramadan.

Along with Qureshi’s street painting, the Cathedral will also play host to a variety of other artists. On Thursday, singer-songwriter Nick Cave will project a video under the Rose Window, and composer and jazz pianist Jason Moran will perform a response.

“It’s very much about remembering that we are more alike than we are different, and stronger together than apart,” Goodall said of her goal for the festival. Many of the participants are internationally famous, while others are emerging artists from the Washington region.

By the People officially ends on June 24, but some of the works will stay up as long as their hosts decide to keep them. Qureshi’s painting can outlast rain and regular cleaning, but can be removed by power-washing.

“I don’t mind it if they want to keep it forever,” he said. “But I’m sure it will fade out with time, which also would be nice.”