Mantua Greenway Art Project
In 2019, I was hired to co-create a series of three murals with Sedakial Gebremedhin which are titled "The Mantua Greenway Art Project." The murals will be posted along a new greenway that will run through the Mantua and East Parkside neighborhoods of West Philadelphia.
The objective of the Art Project is to tell the history, present, and future of the neighborhoods. Sedakial, myself, and our Community Liaison Joanne Douglas held four community meetings to listen and record stories from the residents through creative art-based engagement activities. After gathering and sorting the stories and information, as well as doing quite a bit of reseach on our own, Sedakial and I co-created sketches for each mural. We then took those sketches back to our stakeholders and asked for any final feedback and revisions before we started painting.
The painting process for these three murals spanned six months and hundreds of hours. Each small detail is inspired by community stories and vetted by an empassioned group of neighbors.
The mural will be mounted on panels along the new greenway. It is currently going through the architectural, art commission and city council processes of approval. We hope it will be posted by the fall!
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Scroll through photos of the creative process
Photos taken by Andrew Geller
We facilitated creative interactive workshops to open up conversations with community members and celebrate their stories in their neighborhood.
Each meeting brought to light new aspects of the neighborhood, which we were excited to listen to and record in our mural designs.
Each small detail painted into these murals is inspired by particular stories we heard throughout our time developing the design.
We facilitated creative interactive workshops to open up conversations with community members and celebrate their stories in their neighborhood.
Other Murals
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Personal commission
SEPTA bus painted outside Philly Electric Wheels
Mural painted in bathroom. Personal commission.
Detail from commissioned mural.