1speed
Incredibly profound yet fantastically flawed
For the month of November, I pretty much have some kind of cycling event every weekend besides this past one. My wife had none of her myriad obligations either, so she asked me last week if I wanted to do something Saturday. Her original idea was to go to the opening of the Christmas show at Radio City, but decided it was too much of a hassle for one day. So she was looking closer to home for something and found a Philadelphia Mural Tour put on by PAFA (The Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts). It was a 2 hour trolley tour that visited some of the more famous members of Philly's amazing mural arts program. I thought that sounded really cool, so I was definitely on board. No tour could possibly hit all the murals in Philly (the program has been around for years and they do about 50 per year.) We learned a lot about the origin of the program and how the murals are made, and got to see some pretty amazing works. I got a bunch of photos and some of them had some pretty interesting stories behind them ...
This mural is all about the impact of incarceration on families. Note the QR boxes - when you point your camera at them, they allow you to open up videos or websites devoted to that area of the mural if you have a QR reader. The relief sections here are all made of mirrored stain glass, as in the photo below.
One of the neighborhoods we passed through near Temple University has an entire block that is covered in Spanish-inspired mosaic art. This was all I could capture since we weren't able to get off the trolley in this area for time constraints, but these sculptures are everywhere in that area.
This one is about the families of victims of crime. The whole program is centered around creating alternatives to criminal activity for the communities they serve. In fact, many of the murals are actually created by currently incarcerated individuals. (The process by which they do it is fascinating but too involved to get into here.) The woman in the purple coat here is the mother of a murdered boy named Emir, and she started a foundation that seeks to bring together the criminals with the families of their victims. She named the foundation "EMIR" for "Every Murder Is Real".
I couldn't get a great picture of this one, but it's a semi-copy of a famous picture of Jackie Robinson. This is a great example of some of the logistics involved in making these murals that make the program so amazing: I said it's a "semi-copy" because the artist changed some key details from the original photo. One of those details was the prominence of Yogi Berra. In the original photo, he's much more centered as Robinson is off to the side a bit. This mural was created for a predominantly African-American neighborhood and when they were working out the details, one of the women on the neighborhood committee argued for the change because she didn't want to have a white man's butt such a centerpiece of her neighborhood. Jackie's hand is also painted outside the frame as a symbol of his breaking down barriers.
This is just a really cool painting -- it includes Ali, Foreman, Frazier and Larry Holmes on the side of a building that was once Philly's very exclusive boxing club.
This might be the most famous mural in Philly, if not the entire country. It's all about children and connections between them. The only one not connected to all the others in this photo is the central figure at the top. She is known as "the Mona Lisa of Philadelphia", and today she is actually a very successful lady living in NYC. She was asked about what she thought at the time of being the centerpiece of such a big work of art and she said "I was just happy to get out of school for the day ..."
These two photos are of two sections of the same mural. This might be my favorite one on the tour, but only because it's so colorful and so huge. It's also very new -- it was constructed in honor of the pope's visit a couple of years ago. It's on the side of an elementary school and it's just massive. Pope Francis' signature is actually included here on the blue flower in the second photo (right above the chalice.)
Finally, after the tour my wife and I were walking to lunch in center city and we cut through the sculpture park near city hall. This afro-pick was just recently added -- just as a new work was being commissioned was when the whole protest period began about former Mayor Rizzo and his controversial ways of handling minority relations. (The statue of Rizzo that was vandalized several times earlier this year sits a few feet away from this piece.) The program almost cancelled the commission out of fear that the artist, who is himself a minority, might seek to spark greater tensions, but in the end the city recognized this sculpture was a perfect response to the atmosphere that didn't shy away from the controversy by using a symbol associated with minorities of Rizzo's era but also didn't exist only to inflame tensions. Personally, I just think it's just a really cool sculpture and a very creative piece of art.
I highly recommend this tour for anyone looking for something to do in Philly anytime. I didn't cover even a third of what we saw, which is itself not even 10% of what is out there. It really is the most vibrant mural arts program in the country and definitely worth checking out.
This mural is all about the impact of incarceration on families. Note the QR boxes - when you point your camera at them, they allow you to open up videos or websites devoted to that area of the mural if you have a QR reader. The relief sections here are all made of mirrored stain glass, as in the photo below.
One of the neighborhoods we passed through near Temple University has an entire block that is covered in Spanish-inspired mosaic art. This was all I could capture since we weren't able to get off the trolley in this area for time constraints, but these sculptures are everywhere in that area.
This one is about the families of victims of crime. The whole program is centered around creating alternatives to criminal activity for the communities they serve. In fact, many of the murals are actually created by currently incarcerated individuals. (The process by which they do it is fascinating but too involved to get into here.) The woman in the purple coat here is the mother of a murdered boy named Emir, and she started a foundation that seeks to bring together the criminals with the families of their victims. She named the foundation "EMIR" for "Every Murder Is Real".
I couldn't get a great picture of this one, but it's a semi-copy of a famous picture of Jackie Robinson. This is a great example of some of the logistics involved in making these murals that make the program so amazing: I said it's a "semi-copy" because the artist changed some key details from the original photo. One of those details was the prominence of Yogi Berra. In the original photo, he's much more centered as Robinson is off to the side a bit. This mural was created for a predominantly African-American neighborhood and when they were working out the details, one of the women on the neighborhood committee argued for the change because she didn't want to have a white man's butt such a centerpiece of her neighborhood. Jackie's hand is also painted outside the frame as a symbol of his breaking down barriers.
This is just a really cool painting -- it includes Ali, Foreman, Frazier and Larry Holmes on the side of a building that was once Philly's very exclusive boxing club.
This might be the most famous mural in Philly, if not the entire country. It's all about children and connections between them. The only one not connected to all the others in this photo is the central figure at the top. She is known as "the Mona Lisa of Philadelphia", and today she is actually a very successful lady living in NYC. She was asked about what she thought at the time of being the centerpiece of such a big work of art and she said "I was just happy to get out of school for the day ..."
These two photos are of two sections of the same mural. This might be my favorite one on the tour, but only because it's so colorful and so huge. It's also very new -- it was constructed in honor of the pope's visit a couple of years ago. It's on the side of an elementary school and it's just massive. Pope Francis' signature is actually included here on the blue flower in the second photo (right above the chalice.)
Finally, after the tour my wife and I were walking to lunch in center city and we cut through the sculpture park near city hall. This afro-pick was just recently added -- just as a new work was being commissioned was when the whole protest period began about former Mayor Rizzo and his controversial ways of handling minority relations. (The statue of Rizzo that was vandalized several times earlier this year sits a few feet away from this piece.) The program almost cancelled the commission out of fear that the artist, who is himself a minority, might seek to spark greater tensions, but in the end the city recognized this sculpture was a perfect response to the atmosphere that didn't shy away from the controversy by using a symbol associated with minorities of Rizzo's era but also didn't exist only to inflame tensions. Personally, I just think it's just a really cool sculpture and a very creative piece of art.
I highly recommend this tour for anyone looking for something to do in Philly anytime. I didn't cover even a third of what we saw, which is itself not even 10% of what is out there. It really is the most vibrant mural arts program in the country and definitely worth checking out.