Wild Iris

Wild Iris by artist Paul Santoleri is one of several murals in West Philadelphia created in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its children’s mural workshops. The artist faced a particular compositional challenge with this wall, which has five windows. Santoleri solved this by having the windows function as the windows of the painted building. The concept for this mural was to show that beautiful things can grow in the city. The composition artfully plays the geometric forms of the buildings against the organic shapes of the flowers. The mural captures the architecture of the neighborhood in the decorative cornices and brick patterns of the buildings. Both the cornices and the elements of the garden are made with ceramic tiles produced by the young people in the museum’s workshop.

The mural was restored in 2011.