A Healthy Escape

This mural celebrates growth, enrichment, and empowerment. It specifically references gardens and healthy food, with sycamore trees and azaleas creating a sense of a harmonious community in a space people can imagine themselves in.

The site of the Co-op, in an OARC building was central to the development of the content of this mural. The OARC works on issues of community and economic development. The Co-op, in partnership with OARC, creates access to healthy food, grown right in your neighborhood. Because it is a membership-owned store, the local economy is supported, and makes the Co-op a neighborhood partner that works with OARC, WOLBA, Enon Church, West Oak Lane Senior Center, Stenton Family Manor, and schools throughout the Northwest to provide healthy produce.

A Healthy Escape was a collaboration between the Office of Pennsylvania State Representative Dwight Evans, the Weavers Way Co op, the West Oak Lane neighborhood, and youth at Martin Luther King High School. Artist Keir Johnston and his team were asked to represent the history of the local natural beauty that was once more prevalent in the neighborhood. The community asked for the mural to have an essence of deep space that would complement the existing garden in the adjacent lot. Community members also asked for representation of azaleas and london plain trees, with a focus on the power of nature and its therapeutic qualities, emphasizing how the presence of nature can positively affect one’s life. They also requested a backdrop of a bright, vibrant sky either at sunrise or sunset.

The artist chose figures from his own neighborhood to include in the mural, feeling strongly that much of what ails our city could be rectified by increased interactions with and presence of nature in the lives of local youth. As Johnson sees it, “We have the biggest inner city park in the world. If we were to better utilize its services, we [could] change many of the problems that haunt us as a community at large.”

Johnson described the process of creating the mural: “We used a multi-layer painting process that really pushed the youth to their skill learning and production capacity. We started with a colorful and geometric base coat on each parachute cloth panel. We then projected all of our linear components while marking all lines with a silver Sharpie. The students mixed close to two hundred colors and we created the final layer by a sponge imprint technique in which our base layer was still visible. [This process created] a vibrant and textured finish product that allows for a more expressive means of painting and collaborations.”