Gateways to Philadelphia: Tree of Life
The Gateways to Philadelphia project set a nationwide standard for comprehensive highway beautification and landscape improvement, increasing civic pride, stimulating tourism, and supporting workforce and economic development. These improvements, made in advance of the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations, included bold murals, graffiti removal, enhanced maintenance, and dynamic, four-season landscaping and garden installations symbolizing the city’s warmth, pride, and bright future.
The project reimagined seven major gateways to the city, which include the three highway murals by Phillip Adams and Kien Nguyen, to ensure visitors coming to the city experience a welcome that is bold and vibrant. The project aimed to create a consistent color scheme in cohesion with high-quality planting design, installed by Philadelphia Horticulture Society, from the airport to key locations downtown. Consistency of design and improvements at each location ensured that visitors arriving by plane, train, or automobile all experience the same high-quality introduction to our city.
About the Artist
Phillip Adams is an artist based out of Philadelphia, PA. Adams received his BFA from the University of Georgia and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He has exhibited his work in Philadelphia at Seraphin Gallery, Arcadia University, Moore College of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tiger Strikes Asteroid (founding member), and Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Adams’ work has also been included in exhibitions throughout the United States. His public art is featured both nationally and internationally, most recently Montreal, Canada.
Artist Statement
Inspired by the City of Philadelphia’s Clean and Green initiative, these murals continue to celebrate the natural beauty that is proposed in the landscaping of the Highway Beautification proposal. Using bold silhouettes of flowers, linked to the Ribbon of Gold, the composition captures the elegance of these plants as a viewer moves quickly or slower along these underpasses and ramps. This work reflects a commitment to transforming everyday infrastructure into vibrant, life-affirming spaces. By elevating the simple beauty of flowers into striking silhouettes, the mural invites residents and visitors to reimagine these corridors not only as routes of transportation, but as living landscapes of renewal. It is both a tribute to the resilience of nature and a call to nurture a greener, more connected city.
