Soar to High Heights

Soar to High Heights by Eric Okdeh, borrows its title from a quote in the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go!. The work was designed to convey the sense of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children as a safe haven. The four children featured going on an adventure together in the mural were actual hospital patients. The goal was to represent the diversity of children who are served by the hospital and who live in the surrounding neighborhood. The artist worked with Jim Magee of Irish American Films to take a drone camera image looking down onto North Philadelphia to capture a landscape that patients and their families would recognize as their own neighborhood. The hot air balloons are a recurring theme of whimsy and adventure that appear throughout the hospital’s artwork. The three most foregrounded balloons are each done in mosaic glass, whose intricate patterns Okdeh designed to stand out from the black grout that surrounds them. The tiles on this south-facing wall sparkle in the light and shift colors depending on the time of day and the weather.