Sharing Our Nicetown Stories, Forging Our Common Future (My North Philly: Nicetown)
The two walls at Nicetown Park are bound by the themes of nature and color selection (secondary colors: purple, orange, and green). The materials used include metallic gold acrylic paint and mosaic from broken colored glass.
The artist describes the mural in his artist statement:
“This mural was designed as a site of public memory. Stories were collected from residents, as well as feedback from the neighborhood, so that together they could engage in a process of cultural democracy. The intent of the design is to provide a place to elaborate on and share a collective identity to forge common futures.
“[This wall’s] theme is the location of the individual within his/her community as well as within the universe. According to ancient cultures-including African, Native American, Asian and European, each of the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) corresponds to an element, a community memory or value, and a color.
WEST IS WIND local heroes and blue
EAST IS FIRE family and red
NORTH IS WATER history, and yellow
SOUTH IS EARTH labor/community and green
“Above, a #23 trolley passes through a panorama of current cultural and social centers in Nicetown, reflecting the past and the present. At the other end is the Rowan Walkway, drawn from Mr. Rich’s interview, which were called, ‘gingerbread houses’ because of their German origin. A little boy with a Batman Cape running through the walkway is suggestive of the story from Mr. Harold Walker’s childhood. This area represents history and is bounded by a symbolic design of water.
“On the left side are local heroes including Parris McNeal coaching football, Steve Washington putting up a sign in front of his restaurant, and a representation of a neighbor helping a neighbor. This section is bordered by a wind design, while at the bottom, Mr. Richard Mathis has an image of Philadelphia City Hall behind him—an abstracted dollar bill and cogwheels with images of various issues and industry that reflect Mr. Rich’s lifetime work in advocating for his neighborhood.
“On the right side—bordered by flames with hearts, an image from Nikki Bagby’s interview depicts an elder making sure a child gets home safely from school. At the center of the mural is an image from Ed Shockley’s interview where he described a table, ‘groaning with food’ prepared by his grandmother during Thanksgiving and Christmas. At the other end, Nikki Bagby is shown helping kids clean up the park while at the bottom, from Steve Washington’s interview where he told of how he and his friends would build their own bikes because of financial constraints.
“Finally, at the bottom reflecting labor and community, a farmer is depicted while at the other end a block party is illustrated with two musical groups from different generations – the Royal 5 and the rap duo Chris and Neef. Ceramic tiles, made during community workshops, anchored by golden buntings reflects community engagement at a block party.
“Communities form from people collectively sharing their visions, resources, and efforts in the shared hope for the future. This mural is intended to designate a ‘sense of place’, for telling stories and building community, a place of reflection, a place of remembrance-fortifying all that is essential to develop and thrive in a contemporary urban environment-inviting the first step towards compassionate interaction.”
This mural is pat of the My North Philly project that traced the stories of four communities — Nicetown, Kensington, el Norte de Filadelfia, Strawberry Mansion — in North Philadelphia through the oral histories that inspired the creation of seven landmark murals. At the beginning of 2005, the Mural Arts Program began a new odyssey. The My North Philly project aimed to collect the stores that residents of North Philadelphia told about their neighborhoods and to give those words a lasting life through a series of murals. Out of the myriad North Philadelphia neighborhoods, four communities –two east and two west of Broad Street — were chosen with an eye to the history and diverse experiences of the area and Mural Arts established partnerships with neighborhood churches, libraries, resident associations, and community groups. Over the next three years, artists and oral historians from the Program reached out to folks in these communities, taped and transcribed oral histories and group discussions, and pored over the themes, images, and events that interviewees described. By autumn of 2007, seven murals had been painted, one final mural was in progress, and more than ninety North Philadelphians had told their stories — the stories of their North Philly. Though neither the people who told their stories nor the murals that those stories inspired speak for all of North Philly, they capture, in a personal way, some of the lived experiences of the place that many Philadelphians just call “home.”