New Street Art Project by Blur is Inspired by the Real Stories of Philadelphia Women

May 7, 2017

Yoooooooooo, Blur has been KILLING it lately! (As evidenced here, here, here, and here.)

Blur’s newest series, titled Note To Self, takes the stories and portraits of living Philadelphia women and turns them into beautiful, uplifting reminders wheatpasted all around the city.

Curious to learn more about her new project, I reached out to Blur via email where she explained: “The Note To Self project is a large-scale collaborative portrait series; portraying people in front of their mirror looking at themselves and reading a note that’s hanging on the mirror. A note meant to remind themselves of a variety of different things. This project offers a peek into people’s lives, a side we don’t often let people see.”

Each person depicted in the Note To Self series sent in a submission to be apart of the project. The call for submissions was posted on Blur’s Instagram account a few weeks ago. To submit, you just need to email Blur a selfie and a paragraph about yourself (her email can be found by clicking the ‘contact’ button on her Instagram page.)

Blur uses the photo and paragraph each participant sends to create their Note To Self. “I’ve gotten a lot more emails from people trusting me with their stories than I thought I would,” Blur noted, “It’s really been an amazing experience and an honor to write about them/draw them.”

When I asked the artist about what inspired her new project, Blur replied: “What inspired this project are two things: A continuation of challenging vulnerability and bringing empowerment for those in my community and anyone who sees my work, as well as wanting to challenge myself further as a writer to share other people’s stories. My work the past two years has been about sharing my story, and experiences in the classic Blur mouth. Though I still love doing that, I wanted to branch out artistically. Show that I can draw more than just mouths, and write about more than just myself. After the Speak Up Phl project I did with Ishknits in early March, I felt the power of being a vessel for sharing others stories and feelings. I wanted to find a way to continue doing that.”

Of the five Note To Self wheatpastes that are currently installed around Philly (including the three in this post), all are women. To-date, there have been 41 submissions total for the project – all women. Nevertheless, Blur is interested in having men participate: “It’s all women right now, but I would like men to submit to it too. I didn’t start this project thinking about gender. But I know I connect mostly with women, so as of right now only women have submitted.”