Moulder Memories: Murals of Philadelphia

I became interested in finding out more about the fabulous murals I see everyday throughout the city of Philadelphia. I searched online and found an article written by CBS News reporter Anthony Mason filed last year. I hope it is okay for me to have used some of his article to share the story of the murals. (I have included a link at the end of the post to his article)

There are so many murals around the city I will only get to see a few of them during our year.

Jane Golden, a Stanford-educated "dynamo", founded the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the most prolific of its kind in the world. It has created close to 4,000 murals since 1984 when she was hired by the city to lead a short term anti-graffiti campaign. There is a "giant waiting list of people who want work", she says. The amazing thing is that no one ever wrote on the murals. Everyone expected that they would be completely vandalized, but none of the murals have been touched.

Each community helps determine a mural subject then an experienced artist co-ordinates a diverse team of workers.

This mural above was painted on a methadone clinic. Some of the 1,200 artists who contributed were patients. One person said, "I no longer feel like an addict; I feel like an artist." The people who contribute may be painting next to someone who is very different from them but the work can be very humanizing and engages everyone in a spirit of community.

This work had a particularly tender story for me.
The article tells of man by the name of Michael Whittington who took Mural Arts classes when he was in prison. He had done time for a shooting in 2003. He didn't pull the trigger, but he provided the gun that shot and paralyzed then-19-year-old Kevin Johnson. When he joined Mural Arts out of prison, Whittington told Jane Golden he wanted to visit the victim of his crime, to say he was sorry, but once he arrived he didn't want to get out of the car. Jane, who had driven him there, told him, "Michael, I'm gonna tell you what real courage is. Courage is getting out of this vehicle and going up to that young man and apologizing for ruining his life. And that's what you're going to do right now."

What Michael didn't know was that Kevin and his mother were watching from the house. She said that when Kevin saw Michael get out of the car her son smiled, "And his first words once he was able to speak was, 'Mom, just forgive so we can live. Forgive so we can live.'"

Before Kevin died of his injuries in 2006, he and Michael became friends. The mural was Michael Whittington's idea. It depicts Kevin and his mom, and is called simply "Forgiveness".

What a wonderful program this is!! Way to go Philadelphia!

Other murals that I like are below for you to enjoy. If you want to read the article written by Anthony Mason, here is the link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/philadelphias-murals-the-autobiography-of-a-city/

If you want to look at more murals on your own, here is the link to see a map of the city:
https://map.muralarts.org/
By clicking on the pins on the map it will bring up each mural with it's title.

Enjoy!