The City of Murals - P.A.W. Print - Philadelphia Arts Writers

That's Jane Golden's mantra. Director of the Mural Arts Program, Golden has been bringing art to the streets of Philadelphia since 1984. What started as a six-week program of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network is now the largest mural program of its kind in the world. The City can boast the most murals in the world: 2,400 indoor and outdoor murals.


Sculpture for Girard Crossing. photo, Sara Hoover.

Beauty is not the only thing these works brought to neglected and divested neighborhoods. They brought hope. At first, doors slammed and disinterest reigned.

As Golden recalls, one dissuaded community member, when asked about creating a mural in the neighborhood said, "Things are either done to us or not at all." But Golden, a self-described perpetual pest and advocate, kept knocking on doors until she and her team convinced the neighborhoods a mural would have a positive impact on its surroundings. "The hardest thing was convincing people to believe in something before it was real. I couldn't point to something tangible." Today, with 872 people from every section of Philadelphia on the waiting list for a mural, Golden can rest assured that people believe.

Originally started for graffiti writers, truants and kids required to do community service, participants and supporters were skeptical about the program. Golden asked them to take a leap of faith. In the beginning, the kids couldn't see their potential or even their own future: they thought they would be dead or in jail by age twenty-five. Golden resorted to "outreach. She talked with graffiti writers and set up a summit. At the summit, Golden told them, "I can teach you how to build scaffolds and how to do a mural." Ultimately, the youth learned how to paint and think large, discovered their choices, and were paid a stipend for their talents. The direct intervention of the Mural Arts Program provided opportunities otherwise unknown to the participants, whose self-image and futures were upgraded. The program had such success that it was soon opened up to all city youth with an interest in art. Currently, there are four year-long youth programs, each having an application process aimed at inclusion and talent hunting.

Now celebrating its 20th Anniversary, MAP creates 100 murals and serves 1,000 kids and 100 artists each year. "It's a real testament to the universal love of art to still have the Mural Arts Program around today," Golden muses. Through the personal impact and collective journey of every mural, individuals and communities alike have evolved due to MAP. Today, people stop Golden on the street to tell her of "their experiences working with the Mural Arts crew or to reminisce," Golden reports in seeming wonderment that MAP continues to have an impact. According to Golden, graduating art students are now staying in Philadelphia in order to work at MAP.

So then, what does Golden think of the potential $50,000 cut of MAP's $864,000 subsidy and the pending $4 million city-wide arts funding cuts? "We appreciate that we are still here when other programs are not anymore."

Fortunately, a third of MAP's funding comes from the City, a third from private funding, and another third from the revenue made on selling calendars, books, postcards, and mural tours. The children in various MAP programs wrote 300 letters to City Council.

"We have a Youth Action Committee because we teach kids about the arts, but also how to be political advocates," said Golden, who added, "It's important to remind City Council about the importance of the arts." Additional cuts would be devastating to MAP which, if more cuts were levied, would have "no choice but to close programs and lay people off."


	photo, Sara Hoover.

Local artist Robert Phillips of Phillips Metal added, "The budget cuts are a really big deal. There are no kids learning art [if they go through]. The Arts cuts are unfair to the youth of the community and to Philadelphia as a whole."

A Fishtown resident, Phillips was selected unanimously by the Girard Avenue Coalition and his Community Advisory Board to produce a vibrant work of public art along the West Girard Gateway, known as "Girard Crossing." Helping Phillips with this project is the Mural Corps, MAP's teen program that works on highly sophisticated murals. Phillips has previous experience working with youth. He has been invited to local schools to provide weeklong workshops, and also apprentices art college students. For him, "working with youth has always been rewarding." In fact, a year ago, Phillips' metal shop got a bigger studio for that reason. "This project really fit into my personal ideas to share my talents with other people, particularly youth. For this project, the Mural Corps will include sixteen teens, eight, who will do metal work and eight, who will do mosaic work." Like Golden, Phillips and the Mural Corps will be bringing art to the streets---literally.

The project will be a series of sculptures, lamps, ornamental railings and mosaic inlays along West Girard Avenue. Phillips' proposal, "Metamorphosis," encapsulated all of the different themes- Renaissance, Transition, Passage, Transformation, as well as, other elements capturing the diverse spirit of the neighborhood, movement and connection, and history the Girard Avenue Coalition were looking for by using universal themes. "To incorporate all the great things asked for in the application, we needed a universal topic-metamorphosis," said Phillips, who added, "I thought of insects because they show not only the beauty of nature, but also the process of change. We used symbols that reference back to the changes people go through, daily. Those animals that represent that idea the most are dragonflies and butterflies." Along the cement base holding up the animals, "we will highlight the different aspects of the neighborhood through mosaic tiles on the stone foundation."

As Isaiah Zagar, Philadelphia mosaic guru and muralist, proclaims on a public wall, "Philadelphia is the center of the art world." That was certainly the case during Thursday, June 3 through Sunday, June 6, when Philadelphia, "The City of Murals," hosted the National Conference on Mural Arts. Attendees came from 87 cities around the world to see Philadelphia's outdoor art and hear the two keynote speakers of the Conference, Judy Baca, Director of Los Angeles's Social and Public Art Resource Center (with whom Golden, who cites Baca as influence, has worked) and Dr. Guadalupe Rivera Marin, daughter of artist Diego Rivera and founder of the Diego Rivera Foundation.

To learn more about the Mural Arts Program, the National Conference on Mural Arts, or the Girard Crossing Project, please visit www.muralarts.org or call (215) 685-0750.