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For many, the biggest canvas their artwork ever sees is the front of the family refrigerator — until now. Community Paint Days, an annual event created by the Mural Arts Program, puts paintbrushes in the hands of the people and anyone can come out to leave their mark on the city.
Although it is the program’s goal to involve the organizations that have worked on the nearly 3,000 frescos created since 1984, Community Paint Days focus on allowing everyone to transform their neighborhoods.
Two of the four murals for this year’s event, held throughout June and July, are in South Philly. "Keeping Kids Safe" — illustrating concepts and images of emotional and physical safety — is at Guerin Recreation Center, 2201 S. 16th St., and "Healing Mural" — reflecting the theme of offender re-entry into society — is at the Church of Philadelphia, 17th Street and Snyder Avenue. While the subjects reflect separate themes, the murals strive toward the same goal: Bringing the community together.
"We have the Paint Days so people can join in, collaborate and feel like they’ve had a part in the creation of a project," Kathryn Ott Lovell, the program’s director of development, said.
The creation process for both began months ago when the sponsoring organizations and artist Jon Laidacker, the lead muralist for each work, met with residents at each site to discuss what they’d like to see.
"It’s their painting and they’re the ones that have formed it," Laidacker said. "I want them to have as much ownership as they possibly can. Having them come over [to paint], it’s great, I feel like it’s a very valid thing."
The theme of each mural is not only derived from residents’ input, but reflects the organizations partnering to create them. For "Keeping Kids Safe," the Department of Behavioral Health and the Department of Human Services wanted to explore the meaning of safety in an aesthetic manner.
"Keeping children safe is everybody’s responsibility," Alma Jean Taylor, special assistant to the director of the Department of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services, said. "We want to empower and engage the community so that when we [are done painting] they can have other [areas within the neighborhood] to continue to work on."
"Keeping Kids Safe" depicts children in everyday activities and families spending time together. Laidacker’s favorite element, though, is the reflection of the neighbors and their heritage.
"That wall has a series of air conditioners protruding out of it, so to make them less of an issue, I played on the fact that it’s in an Italian neighborhood and decided to develop a series of [Italian-style] archways in between the air conditioners," he said.
Brainstorming sessions with community members added the possibility of bringing in flower boxes and painting vignettes on the back of the building "so it’s meant to look like you can walk inside," the muralist, 26, added.
The Center City resident who’s been with the mural program for three years and was lead muralist at five sites prior to these two has been working for weeks on getting the Guerin space ready for its Community Paint Day, planned for 4 to 7 p.m. June 12. He’s gotten a good deal of the template drawn out on the blank wall, and will work through several formats to piece it together, although the mural won’t be completed in just one day. There will be areas where the design is painted directly on the wall, but, as with many similar creations, sections will be painted on parachute cloth and adhered to the large-scale project. This allows work to get done faster and lets the muralist and the community reach out even further, as the cloth can be transported to more participants for its exterior latex-acrylic coating.
Such is the case with "Healing Mural" that is open for painting 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 14 and 28 at the rectory building at the Church of Philadelphia. As the mural’s sponsor, the Philadelphia Prison System is working with Laidacker and the mural program to take sections of parachute cloth to inmates in Delaware County prisons to paint. Offenders also helped design the mural that is based on "School of Athens" by Renaissance painter Raphael, where great ancient philosophers are depicted. In "Healing Mural," the philosophers are replaced with community members, many of whom are modeled after real people in South Philly, including three offenders re-entering society that Laidacker plans to find from a sponsoring organization.
"To bring that kind of art acknowledgment into the community is really important," Bob Eskind, public information officer for the Philadelphia Prison System, a sponsor that’s been working with the program on Community Paint Days for years, said about educating the public on offender re-entry. "To have that relationship with the community is real important to the inmates."
"It’s collaborative conceptually from the minds of community members," Laidacker said of the murals’ designs, "to come up with ideas and see that they’re actually reflected, that it’s not just an artist coming in and putting something on the wall. I’m there to visually depict their ideas. I feel that working with the public and community members and giving their neighbors something to this effect is a way to create one of the most socially relevant pieces of art that you can possibly make."
In its busiest season from April to November, the program tries to do two or three Community Paint Days a month in as many neighborhoods as possible, Lovell said. The program chooses most sites because they’ve applied for a mural and artists are contacted to begin the collaboration and creation, something Laidacker finds most rewarding.
"The attitudes of community members gets me excited," he said. "When they’re excited, it makes me so happy."
