Murals

I love how murals sit in city spaces and take inspiration and gain meaning from the spaces that hold them. Conversely murals name spaces, places, individuals, histories, future reflections. They point out places for meaning and story where there are no markers. I love that you can drive through Philadelphia and know some of the invisible stories and feel visual surprise as art dots the landscape. I have created thirty murals in communities across Philadelphia. Most of the projects have been created with Mural Arts Philadelphia and have been participatory with communities contributing stories, histories and future neighborhood aspirations. Creating artwork rooted in neighborhoods has been a humbling experience. Mural making means being on the ground in a place for a number of months where you become a part of everyday life in that space. Through this work I have seen the need for art in all corners of the city. Art that is a visual transformation, that holds histories, that can be shocking, that can educate and has soul. I have learned about the struggles of women and youth to find housing, Journey to Home, new refugee families adjusting to new life in the United States Southeast By Southeast , older refugee communities coming to terms with the history of escape from Vietnam as Boat people on the mural located at 13th and Washington on the Bo De Temple. The Spring Garden Street Bridge mural spanned 150 yards each way and consisted of 40 portraits of people from all walks of life and ages. A homeless man with enormous dreads, an older African American jazz musician with a grizzled grey beard and shades, a blind African American grandmother, a graffiti writer, a mayor's daughter and a baby to name a few. The mural was painted on the bridge with paint hauled around in a shopping cart. I started painting in the blazing August heat and finished in a snowy December. Mapping Migration 10th and Dickinson charts the shifting map of what was called the Italian Market and is now actually the Mexican, Vietnamese and multitudes market.

My work is a push and pull between documentary and the perceptual esthetic impulses. Private commissioned work often deals with maps and more decorative elements. Color, pattern light and references to our lived environment filter into abstract compositions. Color, light, and pattern bring a sense of energy to spaces throughout the city.