The Anthropologie Mural/Blog

SO in the past few months, my Mural Corps class teamed up with another site run by my friend Kien Nguyen (who is also my Citywide Project Teammate) to create a mural for Anthropologie. The work will take up three walls of an exhibit space in their flagship store at Rockefeller Center, NYC! During January and February we met with people from their main office in the navy yard to discuss the design and throw around ideas.

The classes began taking photographs of themselves inspired by fashion photography, and combining the imagery with patterns that can be found in any Anthropologie store as well as in everyday life. The resulting design combines the Anthropologie aesthetic with a youth perspective.

The mural is currently being painted by both classes in the Thomas Eakins house, and will be temporarily on display at Anthropologie's flagship store in Rockefeller Center in NYC from May 6th to the end of June.

This is a huge opportunity for the class,as the mural will be seen by an incomprehensible amount of people in those two months!

The project will be getting some press, but im not sure if i can discuss details yet. I'll post more when I'm sure it wont mess up any kind of opportunity we might get.

In addition, to document this whole project (since its a rare opportunity) I've decided to start a blog with my class. This time around it will be run and updated by the students themselves. One student in particular took courses in film at NYU last summer, she will hopefully lend her talents and time shooting some footage and putting together clips for the site.

The Student Blog (check for weekly updates)
http://okdehcorpsteam.blogspot.com/


This is the design in its entirety, use the scroll bar below to view the design details.

Citywide Project Meetings

4 of the 8 scheduled Citywide workshops are behind us now. Each one brought about completely different conversations, arriving at certain truths about the city and being a Philadelphian in general. This has been an interesting series so far, and its worth it to attend just for the conversation, and the stories.

Heres a few shots from the first 4 dates...






The Northwest workshop was postponed due to the snowday last monday. Here is the revised schedule of the last remaining workshops.

NORTH
Monday, March 9
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Project H.O.M.E.: Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs
1936 Judson Street

SOUTHWEST
Tuesday, March 10
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Meyers Recreation Center
5800 Chester Avenue

NORTHWEST
Wednesday, March 17
6:30 - 8:30 pm
St. Martin's Church
8000 St. Martin's Lane

Final Culminating Meeting:
(all are invited to attend)
Thursday, March 19
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Daily News/Inquirer Building
Broad and Callowhill Streets

During this final meeting, representatives from all of the community forums will help present the information from their area of the city. This will be the final meeting before the artists begin their design phase.

Greenfield Restorative Justice Exhibition

April 17th is the Opening Reception for the Greenfield Restorative Justice Exhibition. The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation funded two of my most recent projects, which took about 2 years
to complete, and yielded countless photographs (From Howard Zehr and Harvey Finkle) , poetry and stories, student paintings and murals, audio interviews, and video. All of which will be on display in one form or another. A book, written by Phoebe Zinman, detailing the output of both projects will also make its debut and should be for sale that evening.

Im working on a web based interactive component for the opening that will take the viewer through both murals, expanding on the symbolism and meaning behind the imagery.

Here is a flyer i just made, the date is set but the times may change a bit. The show is throughout the Thomas Eakins House, Mural Arts base of operations located at 17th and Mount Vernon Sts. (just 2 blocks above Spring Garden. )

Please come out!