Dogwood

Dogwood a collaboration between Mike Smash, Johnny Buss, and Colleen Kane, is located at the Wissahickon Charter School in the Nicetown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This project grew our of a long-standing partnership with the Wissahickon Charter School and Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Big Picture Program. Once the school was confirmed as a site for a new mural there were many community discussions about what the final piece should look like. These community discussions came up with the a design that invoked a sense of growth and reflected the environmental consciousness of the school’s charter. The mural created larger-than-life dogwood flowers and animals flowing up the building from a tree near the entrance to the school, by carving pieces of foam and adding cement and paint to color and enhance the shapes. Trees and animals depicted in the mural are all indigenous to the area of Germantown and Wissahickon. Sixty young people worked on this project that has transformed Wissahickon Avenue.