Has anyone seen the new mural going up on the northeast corner of Broad & Girard? It's great to see that old bank building (next to McDonalds) come back to life.

What's happening with the building? The last couple times I've walked past it, there were people working on fixing up the inside.

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Can you snap a cell phone pic?

I have another trip to the Zoo planned. I might go check it out while I wait for the trolly.

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

Lemme guess... a bunch of mutilcultural kids doing stuff and looking in different directions.

Not bashing it but that sums up about 70% of the mural..

it's just boring.

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Yeah the city needs to cut back on the "people doing things" murals.

I do know what you're talking about, but those are typically just the ones on major arterial roads. The city likes to put projects that boost its image there, but I've seen some wild ones off the beaten path where I guess they care less. There's one on 16th and Montgomery near Temple that is eye-popping good, amongst hundreds of others.

Multicultural? I wonder when Grays Ferry will get one of those?

Well there is an Asian kid on one, but not one white kid on any in our area.

I like the ones on broad with Lanza and Sinatra.

Maybe we can petition for one, in Grays Ferry, of the "Fighting Irish" ..... Notre Dame and show a little diversity?

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Learn the truth about Danny Faulkners
murder and his murderer here:

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/

The theme and general content of the murals are generally chosen by the community. That's how Grays Ferry ended up with this:



and south 9th street this:

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dovate.com > [photo] [words]
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You've helped make the point I was referrring to but Your information is incomplete

What ethnicity are those people ?

Could you post pictures of any others from Grays Ferry?

What block in Grays Ferry is that mural on?

When was this vote taken and at what community meeting was this?

You must know the answers ,since you know "how" all of this came about.

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Learn the truth about Danny Faulkners
murder and his murderer here:

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/

construction of an art garden is the city’s latest attempt to bring harmony to Grays Ferry. Design plans have been confirmed and it’s official: Construction of the art garden planned for 29th and Wharton streets in the Grays Ferry section of South Philly will begin in a few weeks.


The garden will be built on the large lot in front of what is known as "the peace wall," a mural depicting a multicultural stack of joined hands and a peace dove buttressed by the Christian dictum, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." The peace wall will go from being alone on a barren corner to being the focal point of what most involved have dubbed the "Peace Plaza."


The mural is already something of a focal point in the neighborhood, which in the '90s became a poster child for urban racial strife. The work was created by the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts program -- designed by its director, Jane Golden, and painted by the program's Peter Pagast -- in 1998. It wasn't met with community-wide acceptance; some said it was a lie, that the warmth embodied in it didn't represent the neighborhood. According to Golden, many of those people have come around, a good few during the painting of the wall, when they came out of their houses and offered lemonade and cookies to the artists, or offered their hands for the photograph that the mural is based on.


She says the idea for a garden on the lot was hatched "immediately after" the mural was completed and that she's particularly excited about the latest plans for the site.


"When I look back at that project in Grays Ferry, I have to admit that it's one of the highlights, one of the most important projects for me. It's an example of how we can go into a community and encounter skepticism and mistrust and through art, forge bonds."


Jim Helman of Grays Ferry's Committee of Concerned Citizens says the current project "will create a more formal setting for a meaningful and important work of art."


Mural Arts, through grants from the William Penn Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, has partnered with Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia Green to design and construct the garden. The Office of the Managing Director has offered to take responsibility for the removal of asphalt from the lot.


The project, which Golden estimates at a cost of $10,000, involves, among others, a horticulture specialist, a landscape architect, a mosaic artist and a host of teens from Mural Arts' Big Picture program at Vare Recreation Center, which is less than a mile from where the lot is. The four recreational advisory councils in the neighborhood -- those of Lanier, Finnegan, Stinger Square and Vare playgrounds -- have agreed to pitch in to maintain the space. Carl Haefner of Philadelphia Green says that arrangement should work well; the design, he says, was worked out by the planners and some neighborhood representatives to allow for ease of maintenance, mostly just the mowing of grass every two weeks or so and the picking up of trash.


The team working on the project will transform the now-sinking asphalt lot into a garden largely consisting of grass and accented by three quarry-fine paths converging on a central circle. The quarry-fine features in turn will be accented by mosaic images "done in natural stone of different shades and shapes," says Haefner. A grove of river birch trees will stand in one corner of the garden and Haefner says a bed of ornamental grasses and flowers will run along the base of the wall.


Design plans for the space have been created keeping in mind the practical and realistic as well as the inspirational.


There will be no places for sitting, both in keeping with what has been neighborhood use of the space -- the lot’s been used as a shortcut by residents and architect Sarah Endriss has worked that usage into the design -- and to prevent it from becoming a hangout for anyone. Coordinator Shari Hersh, of Mural Arts, says design elements were hammered out at community meetings. The garden will be about viewing and contemplation on your way somewhere, she says.


“Kids came up with the pathways. The thing about this space is that kids use it more than adults. They cut across it. There will be no fences; people we spoke to wanted it to be an open space, a place for everyone. A place requiring very little maintenance, that couldn’t be vandalized or used as a weapon, as with pebbles or rocks that could be picked up and thrown.”
Artist Susanne Fell Adams explains, “The Peace Plaza is meant to get you from point A to point B in as contemplative a manner as possible.”


As the month of June winds down, the Big Picture kids, who have collaborated with Adams on design ideas for the three paths that will wind through the garden, will be practicing appropriate mosaic technique at their recreation center. Adams says that “sharp learning-curve learning” will prepare the core kids on the project, who are each receiving small stipends out of the budget, for what she describes as a fairly labor intensive feat, the lugging and sorting of mosaic stones and the setting of the stones in dry mortar. Their work on the garden will begin the first week of July.


Adams says that by "distilling the more traditional peace images," she and the kids came up with the mosaic images that will grace nine stones distributed throughout the paths. Those images include the tree of life; an illustration of the sun, moon and stars; and a spiral, which Adams initially came up with based on her interest in both the labyrinth design and Celtic knots, journey and unity symbols, respectively.


Mural Arts has now completed several murals in Grays Ferry, and at least one more is planned not far from the peace wall. Golden says there’s always “the potential to do more work in Grays Ferry. We’ve created a relationship that transcends the six-week period of going in and painting a mural.”

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dovate.com > [photo] [words]
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Grays Ferry needs murals of some local legends such as Dean or Markey.

Why not show the people who have struggled to keep this area solid, in spite of the decay of recent years?

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Learn the truth about Danny Faulkners
murder and his murderer here:

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/