A Special Elephant Brings a Global Story to Nepenthe Gallery’s New Fort Hunt Road Space

ALEXANDRIA, VA — There is, quite literally, an elephant in the room at Nepenthe Gallery’s new home in the Hollin Hall Shopping Center.

She is hard to miss.

Her name is Li Doo Mooh, and the life-size elephant calf sculpture now stands in one of the gallery’s enormous front windows at 7928 Fort Hunt Road, greeting guests and passersby while carrying a story that began thousands of miles away in southern India.

Li Doo Mooh’s return to Alexandria was a big part of Nepenthe’s Aug. 6 reopening celebration, as visitors filled the former Wells Fargo space and admired the gallery’s larger, lighter new setting.

“We are big fans of Nepenthe and come to all the exhibits,” one couple attending the opening told The Zebra. “We’re excited about this new space — it really shows off the art. This gallery is a huge addition to Alexandria.”

A New Home, Just Steps Away

Carrie and Jim Garland opened Nepenthe Gallery and its frame shop in 2022 at 7918 Fort Hunt Road, tucked behind the pastry shop in Hollin Hall Shopping Center. They did not close during the move; instead, they relocated to the prominent corner storefront nearby, which offers windows facing both Fort Hunt and Shenandoah roads.

Formerly a branch of Wells Fargo Bank, the new space is about 30 percent larger, with more natural light and movable exhibition walls that allow the Garlands to feature more art and sculpture. Jim Garland oversees the framing operation, while Carrie Garland manages the gallery’s exhibitions and community events.

“This will give us more visibility,” Carrie Garland told the Mount Vernon Gazette before the move, imagining art displayed in the three large windows facing Fort Hunt Road.

The expanded space is also home to Nepenthe’s new exhibition of plein-air landscapes and still lifes by Alexandria artist Kim T. Richards.

Garland told the Gazette she and Jim chose the neighborhood because they wanted to operate a community business close to home. “I like being in the fabric of the community,” she said. “This is a community that appreciates art.”

The gallery’s name comes from a Greek term meaning “a place of no sorrow.” As Garland put it, “We want people to walk in and feel uplifted. Art should not be off-putting.”

Every Elephant Began With a Real One

Li Doo Mooh is one of just 100 sculptures created for The Great Elephant Migration, a traveling art and conservation project focused on the coexistence of people and wild elephants.

Each sculpture is modeled after an actual wild Asian elephant from the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.

“Every sculpture begins with a real elephant,” the project explains.

In the Nilgiri region, Indigenous communities live near one of the largest remaining populations of Asian elephants. The animals are known individually by the people who share their landscape — their personalities, habits and movements observed as they pass among forests, farms, villages and towns.

The sculptures are not generic elephants. Each represents a particular animal from a living herd.

They are made by The Real Elephant Collective, an Indigenous-led group of artisans from the Bettakurumba, Paniya, Kattunayakan and Soliga communities of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.

Artisans shape each elephant’s wire structure and weave it with Lantana camara, an invasive plant that threatens habitat used by real elephants. By harvesting the plant and turning it into sculpture, the makers create an economic opportunity from an environmental problem.

“Every elephant carries the fingerprints of its makers,” The Great Elephant Migration says.

From India to Alexandria — and Perhaps Beyond

Garland encountered Li Doo Mooh during the project’s Los Angeles presentation, purchased her, and brought her to Virginia. Alexandrians first saw the sculpture last fall as the showstopper of Nepenthe’s pop-up sculpture garden at the American Horticultural Society’s River Farm, which The Zebra covered in October 2025.

“It has been such a joy to create this special exhibit,” Garland said at the time. “Sculpture is such a dynamic medium and brings boundless energy to a space. Honestly, this experience has been exhilarating!”

The River Farm installation was so popular that the American Horticultural Society and Nepenthe extended its run through Oct. 20, 2025. After a temporary stay in Garland’s mother’s yard, Li Doo Mooh traveled to Williamsburg for an outdoor exhibition at William & Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art this past spring.

Now she is back in Alexandria, roughly six feet tall and 10 feet long, making an unmistakable first impression in Nepenthe’s new window.

Although Nepenthe owns the sculpture, Li Doo Mooh may not be finished traveling. Like other members of the 100-elephant herd, she could someday rejoin future exhibitions and continue sharing the story of the real elephant, the artisans, and the landscape that inspired her.

For Nepenthe, whose name comes from a Greek term often translated as “a place of no sorrow,” the elephant’s arrival is not the end of an epic journey. It is the beginning of her next chapter — standing watch in a new gallery window, inviting Alexandria to stop, look closer and consider the lives, landscapes and hands woven into her story.