About the mural from Mural Arts Philadelphia’s website:
On the left side of the mural, rendered in line drawings, are three vignettes from the immediate neighborhood. Two trees in the center lean into each other, symbolic of an embrace. The garden spills out from the space between them. This is to symbolize the spirit of community gardens and the people who work together to nurture these gardens. Guinn created the mural with transparent colors, to simulate the feel of a watercolor painting. The bottom extends the actual garden’s space up onto the wall and vice versa.
From the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance about the artist-
Ashley Cantero is a Tampa, FL native and artist who actively engages in the local art scene. Best known for her precise line work and bold female characters, her work embodies a profound energy that she defines as the “intense and complex emotional responses we have to the world around us.” With themes inspired by ‘60s psychedelia, Atomic Age design and Sci-Fi, Ashley’s work is ever evolving through various mediums and artistic forms of expression.
Intended as a contemporary interpretation of the classical muses, Saligman has created an arts landscape filled with figures and elements symbolizing today’s art and creativity.
In the center of the composition is an arts machine spinning out spheres, symbols of the perfect art form. Each of the nine muses in the composition is associated with a sphere, and there are circular references throughout the composition, such as the compass.
Through portraits of local performing artists and references to works of art by local artists, Saligman honors the following forms of creative expression.
The entire mural was created by the artist in her studio using large squares of a polyester fabric called non-woven media (or parachute cloth). These were then adhered to the wall with an acrylic gel, much like a giant decoupage. Saligman’s style is very painterly yet also very realistic and makes frequent allusions to classical themes and figures like the muses in this composition.
Today’s flashback is to Allison Hueman‘s 2017 mural Bloom, spotted in 2019 in downtown LA’s Arts District. The mural pays tribute to local community activist Joel Bloom, who passed away in 2007.
For more work by Hueman, also check out her Instagram.
Artist Amy Sherald made headlines around the world with her stunning official portrait of Michelle Obama, portraying not only the beauty and intelligence of the woman herself but the depth and breadth of all that she represents as our first African-American First Lady. Sherald’s overall body of work represents reflective, everyday moments within the lives of Black people, evocative portraits that explore how people construct and present their own identities.
Now Sherald brings her work to a new scale: working with Mural Arts Philadelphia on a massive mural portrait in Center City. The portrait is of Najee S., a young Philadelphian and participant in our art education program. Like the First Lady’s portrait, Sherald’s mural challenges ideas about identity and the public gaze, asking the questions: “Who is allowed to be comfortable in public spaces? Who is represented in art? How can one woman’s portrait begin to shift that experience for others?”
The project began with a field trip to Sherald’s studio by some of Mural Arts’ art education participants. The young people spent a day with Sherald, learning about her unique artistic practice, exploring costumes, and taking photographs together that would form the inspiration for the mural.
Three of Mural Arts’ Art Education assistant artists, Kien Nguyen, Arthur Haywood, and Emily White, also had the opportunity to study with Sherald in order to learn about her artistic process. They shared her unique process in classroom exercises with Philadelphia students, and also began work from Amy’s design to execute the six-story-high mural.
Mural Arts Philadelphia Executive Director Jane Golden says, “We are so honored to be working with Amy Sherald. For years we have admired her painting; there is such strength in her composition, her color and the way she captures a gaze. And now she has teamed up with our art education program to create a unique mural in the heart of our city. What an extraordinary moment for Mural Arts and for Philadelphia.”
A ringing bell organizes our civic life, inviting us to come together in public space. Its unmistakable sound marks the hours, calls us to assemble, alerts us to danger, and announces momentous occasions. These and other modes of public address can unify communities and define the auditory landscape of our city, even when all else is silent and still.
Davina Semo (b. 1981, Washington, DC) has created five cast-bronze bells to be rung by visitors in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, recalling the maritime communication once common at this waterfront site. While their percussive function is familiar, the traditional bell form has been reimagined by the artist as an elongated streamlined sculpture that dangles aloft from a heavy industrial galvanized steel frame. The holes she has drilled through each bell create constellations of light in their darkened interiors and staccato patterns on their exterior shells. These arrangements give them unique identities that are characterized through their evocative titles: Reflector, Singer, Dreamer, Listener, and Mother. Their distinctive voices are also expressed in the subtle nuances in their tones when rung.
Semo’s bells are coated with a lustrous pearlescent paint that glows hot orange to evoke the international color of urgent alarm—meant to heighten our attention in precarious times. During this turbulent year, auditory interventions have characterized our collective experience, whether through the evening cheers for essential workers or the chanting voices of protesters demanding justice. The exhibition builds upon this moment, encouraging audiences to add their own contribution to our urban soundscape. Ultimately, Semo intends for these bells to sound an optimistic note. As we ring out the old and ring in the new, each bell reverberates in concert with its neighbors, creating a collective resonance together.
In this video she and the curator discuss the work and you can see more of the installation-
Philadelphia artist Arden Bendler Browning is known for creating large-scale, highly energized, gestural paintings inspired by her urban surroundings. Browning’s paintings are mostly abstract, yet include hints of realism with the suggestion of architectural structures, roadways, telephone poles, and green spaces. Browning’s paintings envelop the viewer with their scale, intensity, and sense of movement. Her imagery is derived from photos taken while traversing the city. The photos enable her to see the city from various vantage points and, as she has described, “jump through time and space.”
Browning’s paintings visually capture that sense of timelessness as she often conveys a disorienting landscape where colors and shapes collide and overlap, where only glimpses of reality come into focus. She speaks of the urban environment as “a vast sea of fluctuating boundaries arguing claim to the demarcation of space.” This statement also describes Browning’s work as she depicts the urban landscape using an amalgam of colors, shapes, and painterly marks adrift and influx.
Browning has said, “Nonstop is multifaceted and dense, full of action, and vibrancy in unexpected places with pockets of space and clusters of commotion. It is just like Philadelphia.”
Browning is currently part of the group exhibition, The Landscape: Lost and Found at Ellen Miller Gallery in Boston, on view until 3/28/26.
Justine Kelley is a Filipino-American, Philadelphia-based printmaker, illustrator, and designer. She is inspired by vibrant colors, emotions, and the accidents that happen during the art-making process. Most of Kelley’s work is hand-drawn, infusing it with an honest, intimate quality. Her illustrations aim to explore the social barriers that exist between people to create new structures of meaning and connectivity. Kelley likens her art-making process to cooking—she uses the resources she has to feed the people she loves. Her goal is to synthesize emotion as a raw material and use it to create a magic funhouse mirror which reflects the world back at itself.
For her exhibition at Philadelphia International Airport, Kelley presents the Bella Vista neighborhood with an emphasis on the Italian Market, the nation’s oldest open-air market which spans 20 city blocks in South Philly. Bella Vista means “Beautiful Sight” in Italian. For many generations, this neighborhood has been home to a variety of immigrant communities, from Irish, Italian, and African descendants in the 1800s to Vietnamese, Korean, Cambodian, and Mexican communities settling in the 1900s. Having recently moved to South Philly, Kelley says, “I wanted to celebrate the abundance of food and fresh produce, colorful signage and typography, and bustling community that exist in the Italian Market and Bella Vista area, with much thanks to the shopkeepers who run their businesses and the neighbors who live here… If the path to one’s heart is through the stomach, then this place is an artery pumping vitality to the city, feeding us with nutritious foods and delicious sights. It’s a feast for all the senses. If I were to rename Bella Vista, it would be the Italian words for “Beautiful Sights, Sounds, Tastes, Smells, and Feelings”.
