Streets Dept. Walls: Marrying My Philly & Southwestern Roots For Fashion District Philadelphia
My latest (and largest to date) painting is an 8ft x 8ft mural. It’s Untitled-for now at least. graphite, house paint, & paint skin on plywood. It makes its debut this Thursday at the newly constructed Fashion District (formerly the infamous Gallery), alongside the work of 10 other Philadelphia artists whose artistic styles range from street to contemporary, and whose careers range from emerging to established. The project is curated by Conrad Brenner, founder of Streets Department, which celebrates the street art scene and it’s artists in the city.
The creation process involved navigating a few new learning curves due to the size and material I was given to paint on. I’ve never painted on any surface other than canvas, paper, and drywall; piece is on two panels of plywood, which has an uneven surface texture and requires priming so the wood doesn’t soak up the paint. There were also numerous cracks and holes that needed layers of filling.
The palette and movement are inspired by the landscape of the Southwest that raised me: reddish brown clay and white sands, dusty desert terrain, the mountains of Santa Fe…expansive sky with shades of pinks, oranges & purples dancing in the early morning and evenings…the indigo night sky that felt like I was standing in the middle of the universe surrounded by an infinite number of stars…painted hues of copper, gold, umber & ochre…its peaks, mesas, valleys and dunes…the caverns, canyons, ridges, and sedimentary rock sculpted by time, gravity, erosion, and water millions of years ago..
Looking back, I’m realizing I felt held together by the fabric of the Southwest, even as my own life at home was being unraveled by violence during those formative years. Perhaps nostalgia and the passage of time have softened or romanticized the sharper edges of these memories, but at 36, as I slog through the work of healing my inner child, I’m realizing I found a serenity there I haven’t experienced living elsewhere as an adult. Just like “Family”, “Home” has always felt more abstract concept than concrete reality to me due to the abuse I experienced throughout my childhood and teen years. While I haven’t felt completely connected to one particular place throughout my life, I do experience a sense of grounding, belonging, and that same serenity I felt in childhood whenever I return to the region. I think it’s the closest feeling to “coming home” that I’ll get-at least at this current stage of healing and life.
My familial roots are here in Philadelphia, but the origins of my Self and creativity emanate from the landscape, people, and culture of the Southwest. I wanted to pay homage to that duality of existence while also tying my roots to both places and who I was then with who I am now in this painting. It’s both a reckoning of a complicated personal and familial history and intuitive exploration of what “Home” symbolizes to me in this moment.
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