On the Block

On the Block by artist James Burns located in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was painted in conjunction with Don Gensler’s mural Reading: A Journey at corner of 40th & Pennsgrove. Burns was assisting Gensler and was asked to rework an existing mural at the site. Alice Wright, block captain, had a team of children with her every day in the summer who looked after the block. A number of the children were photographed and their images were part of the mural’s composition.

Another integral element of this mural is children’s drawings. Burns held impromptu art classes at the site and included a number of them as an innocent expression. The homes, painted in the background, were inspired by a drawing found in a book. And the floating shapes that move through the composition were painted from drawings that one of the boys on the block had done (there were about twenty pages of them).