I’m excited to announce that my artwork is in a mural exhibition titled ‘Jawn 2, A Philly Thing‘, officially installed and displayed at the Philadelphia International Airport between Terminals E-F! The other artists that I have the honor of exhibiting with are Blur, Kyle Confehr, Gloss Black and Cultures Clothing aka Alloyius Mcilwaine.
The mural is a collage of The Neighborhood Series of drawings. They capture the fleeting moods of West Philly as it is transformed by the influx of growing businesses, new residents, petty crimes, and trope characters. Four of the original drawings are in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
The mural at the Philadelphia Airport represents a platform for communication. I hope it encourages people from different walks of life to exchange ideas and learn about each other. The portraits are colored in with sharpie paint markers that drip and splatter with the fusions of vibrant colors. I used thin lines to illustrate how close we are connected and I omitted details for some of the figures to promote viewer interaction in the sense the viewers imagine a personal narrative to match the character on display.
Some of the imagery in the mural includes: a line drawing of a female artist and her easel, standing beside a building and sketching it, and a rendering of a young well-dressed boy asleep in church as a concerned older man behind him taps him on the shoulder. Within the collage you’ll also find a boy getting a haircut by a focused barber, a hipster in red and green chapeau and blue kicks biding time on his black bicycle with orange handlebars, an alley cat and a SEPTA trolley. My art is reflective of my observations and perceptions. To me, it’s how I connect and build strong relationships with people. It’s how I interact with the world.
