Painting the Future with the NFL
When the National Football League approached us at Mural Arts Philadelphia about using painting to commemorate the 2017 NFL Draft this April, we weren’t sure what to expect. Philadelphia is a proud sports city, and we’ve done murals for the Eagles, the Phillies, and most recently the 76ers, but we’d never done anything like this. The project evolved into a theatrical live painting event, with 16 artists painting 32 canvases during the draft as a rapt audience gathered.
On the first night of the draft, we counted down to 8 p.m., waiting to see who the first pick would be. Each artist was assigned two draft slots, but we had no idea who the teams would select. NFL representatives, each with two phones, buzzed from artist to artist as news started to arrive, and the paintings started to flow.
“Which team is on the clock?” we kept asking, as draft picks changed unexpectedly, and a few artists had to switch their assigned canvases at the last second. The painting pace was rapid, and artistic styles varied widely. Every time we turned around, a sketched outline would become a full face.
The artists kept working the next day during the second round, finalizing their work and putting it up for display. The completed paintings were on view for the rest of the NFL Draft Experience, and the NFL plans to gift the original artwork to the School District of Philadelphia.
Our annual Eagles Day event is next week, when Mural Arts staff will gather at Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington and help paint a new mural with the Eagles—maybe we’ll get to say hello to their new team members!
Thank you again to all of the artists involved in this project, some of whom are Mural Arts regulars, and some of whom were wonderful new faces: Felix St. Fort, Morgan Shankweiler, Nathaniel Lee, Keith Greiman, Randy Bullock, Sarah Ryan, Ali Williams, Ryan Psota, Hawk Krall, Rebecca Simon Miller, Distort, John Zerbe, Santiago Galeas, Amir Lyles, Willis Humphrey, and Priscilla Anacakuyani Bell.
Watch time-lapse footage of the live painting on the NFL site >>
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