Design for Philadelphia Mural Arts: Love & Abundance

The Mural Arts folks liked Connected By Sea and the various other symbology-driven tattoo themed pieces I’d done in the past to honor our cultural variety within one human family. This proposed piece was in that series. The SEPTA underpass at Susquehanna unites, or divides, two neighborhoods, and an artwork was sought to knit them together, also finding a way to add more light to the shaded walkway of the underpass without investing in any nonstandard lighting. I proposed to add glass and reflective beads to the background yellows and white paint to give a shimmery reflective glow.

Street Tattoos: Love & Abundance

Humans throughout history and all over the world have used tattooing as a symbolic way to communicate our wishes, aspirations, and identities, and to solidify those ideas into reality.

I’ve combined visual symbolism from around the world to create bold “tattoo” style designs for the underpass walls. The north wall expresses community strength, peace and universal love. The south wall invokes a blessing of abundance.

Edit, Aug. 2020: The design ultimately chosen for the Susquehanna Avenue underpass can be seen on Page 34 here. (I’m a big fan of Dougher and Sarantitis’ design for the Norris Street underpass design, page 13).