About the Project 

This new Callowhill mural has a record number of firsts: In 2016, Mural Arts Philadelphia created the Spring Arts District, Mural Arts’ first rotating outdoor gallery—a collaboration with Arts + Crafts Holdings in the post-industrial Callowhill neighborhood. In spring 2017, Charles Burwell’s large-scale, abstract work is the first permanent mural to be installed as part of the rotation. The first collaboration between Burwell and Mural Arts—and Burwell’s first-ever mural—the work is true to the artist’s reputation for crafting intricate, vibrant, meticulously-painted patterns and shapes. Green, blue, and orange prisms float between colorful threads that activate a dotted and striped canvas rising three stories high.

Charles Burwell is an internationally known abstract painter, born and raised in Philadelphia, and now represented by Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Starting in the fall of 2016, Burwell worked with on-site teaching artists Brad Carney and Jamee Grigsby to teach Art Education students from Northeast High School and Kensington High School for the Creative and Performing Arts about his process. The students collaborated on the painting, learning how to create templates for replicating the large-scale geometric shapes with mechanical accuracy.