Streets Dept Magazine, Issue #2 (2023)
Our second annual issue of the Streets Dept Magazine is now available for purchase: Click here to get yours now!
Celebrating The Linc’s 20th Anniversary with An Awesome New Mural
Very excited for Streets Dept Walls to recently partner with Lincoln Financial Group to create a mural with a local artist to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Linc! That incredible local artist is BUSTA, who designed the mural in three weeks and painted it in just two days.
The mural was finished at a pre-season Philadelphia Eagles game at The Linc where fans could see the artwork being completed, meet with the artist, and take selfies with the mural!
Fishtown Gets Four New Murals: Unveiling Front Street Walls 2023
Last month we officially completed the first updated iteration of Front Street Walls, created with Streets Dept Walls, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and CookNSolo‘s Lilah Events and Goldie Falafel! Featuring the addition of four new murals from local artists Iris Barbee Pendergrass, EL TORO, Emily White, and UNAPXLXGETIQ, the murals will remain on view on Front Street between Columbia Avenue and Oxford Street in Fishtown for the next year.
As we mentioned when we announced this updated version of Front Street Walls, curator and Streets Dept founder Conrad Benner will be working with Mural Arts and CookNSolo to refresh these four murals spaces each June with new Philly artists.
So thrilled to work with these amazing partners, these four incredible artists, and assisting artists Donna Grace Kroh and Michele Scott to bring this project to life over the last number of months. See more about this year’s artists and murals below. And be sure to follow Streets Dept Walls on Instagram to learn about next year’s open call for artists in January, 2024.
A Street Art Outing with Nine(!) Philly Artists
Words and photos by Streets Dept Lead Contributor Eric Dale.
I recently joined some local artists as they walked through South Philly together putting up stickers and wheatpastes and writing or spray painting the occasional tag. What I initially thought would be a group of three artists just kept growing and growing as more and more folks showed up at the meeting point.
Eventually, nine—yes, nine—street artists and I departed for an evening of art: Praise Dobler, Gloopy Goblin, Mr. Scoot, Spud, the666cat, Fuck A Fuckin Job, Exist, Misprint, and NEEK, a committee member from Anti Flower Show Movement.
There was never a planned route, but we walked around to several established street art spots. All along the way, stickers and tags were going up on signs, poles, and other surfaces. It reinforced for me why stickers are such a popular medium—I could barely get a photo of one in an artist’s hand before it was slapped up and they were moving on to the next spot. This speed really makes for inconspicuous, widespread installation.
The major stop of the evening was in the 9th Street Italian Market, where six of the artists put up wheatpastes simultaneously. Almost as soon as we rolled up to the spot, someone called out “yo, there’s a ladder right here.” So Praise Dobler and NEEK grabbed it from where it was stowed under one of the vendor stands and used it to put a few pieces higher up on the wall. (They then returned the ladder to where they found it.)
Read more…A New Interactive Public Art Project On The Delaware River Waterfront Connects Visitors To Their Surroundings
Words and photos by Street Dept Contributor Eric Dale.
A series of large, mixed media art installations has popped up along the Delaware River Waterfront! The project is called Pockets Of Light, and it’s a collaboration between textile artist Julie “Juicebox” Woodard and experience designer Eric The Puzzler. (A note of disclosure: Eric The Puzzler is a side project of Streets Dept Lead Contributor Eric Dale). Julie created the lively artworks, and Eric created the site-specific activities that accompany them.
Julie hand-and machine-stitched the 13 artworks in the series entirely from post-consumer waste, most of it plastic. Nine of the pieces are what Julie calls “wayfinding waterscapes.” Labels on those pieces provide viewers with a map that guides them to the main course: the four larger installations, which are located on Race Street Pier, Cherry Street Pier, Washington Avenue Pier, and Pier 68. The pier artworks depict native flowering plants found along the Delaware River, and Julie constructed them as creative interpretations of several artistic mediums, including collage, sculpture, and stained glass.
Read more…
A new, temporary public art installation in a Center City, Philadelphia public park honors our city’s LGBTQ+ community and centers the importance of local journalism. And I absolutely love it!
AND INTO THE STREETS is a public art project by artist Rami George and curator Jameson Paige, with support from Mural Arts Philadelphia and archival images from the William Way LGBT Community Center. Installed throughout Louis I. Kahn Park (located at 11th and Pine Streets in Philly’s Gayborhood), the project represents archival images and materials from the now defunct LGBTQ news publication, Au Courant (1982–2000).
Orginally planned to run from June 1 through August 31, the project has just been extended through October 31.
To build the exhibition, Rami threaded together these images to center underrepresented histories that depict a queer cultural memory of Philadelphia life.
“The project builds upon Rami’s significant time in the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia’s most extensive collection of historical LGBTQ materials and ephemera,” a Mural Arts press release explains. “John Anderies, Director of the Wilcox Archives, has been a guide throughout the development of this project, and the William Way LGBT Community Center has been a partner.”
“This project is incredibly important right now,” curator Jameson Paige wrote over email. “Of course for its debut during Pride month, but mostly because of how George has animated the fullness of a queer politic—both what it has been in the past and what it could become. In deciding what photographs and materials to include it quickly became clear that so many of our struggles today were fought for in the 1980s and 90s, particularly related trans and gender nonconforming people’s rights to life and bodily autonomy. There’s a frustration in feeling like we’ve moved backwards, but also hope in that there’s so much to learn from those who came before us. AND INTO THE STREETS is trying to knit those cross-generational conversations together.”
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