Wordless Wednesday, Miercoles Mudo: The art of belief

18th century, Central American school, oil on linen.

There are walls ... and then there are walls

The Wonders of Radio mural
43rd & Locust Street

You can't go too far in Philadelphia without chancing upon a wall with a mural. Some of them are spectacular, others whimsical - all of them surprise and delight.

The one pictured at the top of this blog post, "The Wonders of Radio" - is a partnership between radio station WXPN and the Mural Arts Program. In February, the Catholic Standard & Times contributing writer Arlene Edmonds wrote about students from St. Francis de Sales school who worked on this mural (although the CS&T article is not archived online, read Edmonds' similar piece in the Philadelphia Tribune by clicking here). As with so many of the Mural Arts Program projects, this one brought together professional artists, amateurs, children, members of business and non-profit organizations. The result of the collaboration adds color, life and pride of place to the city.

Be a part of the experience: "The Wonders of Radio" will be officially unveiled and dedicated at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 13 at 43rd and Locust Streets. Students from the five schools that participated in the project (St. Francis de Sales, John Hancock, Penn Alexander, Greene Street Friends and Alexander Wilson schools) will be in attendance, as will be local musicians and the host of WXPN's Kids Corner program.

My favorite city murals? The one at Hahnemann Hospital, pictured above, the Patti LaBelle mural on Mantua (not far from the zoo) and a mural on the expressway - for which I have so far been unable to locate a title - which enlivened my daily commute for the past four years. Alas, I have no photos to post of the latter two - but take it as a challenge to explore and see them in person. Click here for a printable pdf of a walking tour of murals in Center City .

A no less memorable, but much less pleasant wall is also in the news.

The Associated Press reported today that completion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall is in limbo until a U.S. District judge gets answers to private property concerns expressed by landowners in Brownsville, Texas (read the AP report here).

Photographer Tomas Castelazo has taken some evocative photos of the border wall (here and here and here). Funny how the human impulse to beautify finds expression even here - in Castelazo's example of the colorful and heartwrenching coffins placed on the wall as markers for those who have died trying to cross into the United States.

The promise of a better life always draws, no matter the danger. I am old enough to remember the wall between East and West Berlin, and to have heard the stories of flight across it - people driven by desperation or promise. They often ended the same way the crossings at our border do: deportation, detention, even death.

I watched the Berlin wall come down on TV, during a cocktail party, in the company of a filmmaker, actors, a poet. We watched instead of drinking or eating or socializing. We watched what we had never expected to see in our lifetimes - the wall pulled apart stone by stone by people who no longer wanted to be defined by it or what it represented. We watched silently because words would have called tears and tears would have admitted hope and hope is the province of the poor, the unsophisticated, the desperate. Isn't it?

Hope is what leads people over and under and around walls.

And still, in St. Paul's words to the Romans: In hope we were saved.

I hope I live long enough to see another wall come down.

I hope.

SB 850 – the unkindest cuts

The Pa. Senate Appropriations Committee’s proposed budget for 2009-2010 is in.

If you aren’t affluent, say goodbye to access.

To the arts.
(SB 850 zero funds arts and culture grants made through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Which means many of the small arts organizations across the Commonwealth that produce and present dance, music, film, visual and performing arts in neighborhoods and communities will be shuttered.)

To funded civil legal services.
(SB 850 eliminates all of the state appropriations that ensure that the poorest among us have access to justice.)

To Pre-K and Head Start.
(SB 850 slashes Pre-K counts by 55 percent and Head Start funding by 50 percent.)

To low cost insurance for children.
(SB 850 cuts CHIP funding, as well as funds for child care, county child welfare and basic education.)

The list is extensive and alarming.

In proposing SB 850 as an alternative to Gov. Rendell’s more moderate proposed budget, the Senate Appropriations Committee has ensured that those most impacted by the current economic recession will find life in the Commonwealth even more difficult – if not impossible – after July 1.

If you value any of what is being cut by SB 850, call your state legislators immediately. Rumor has it the vote on SB 850 will be tomorrow – May 6.

• • •

The image at the top of this post is a public artwork by my mother, Joyce de Guatemala, on Howard and East Huntingdon Streets in Philadelphia. The image to the right of this paragraph, is another of her public sculptures -- this one in front of the Elkins Park Library (http://www.elkinsparklibrary.org/history.htm). And that's my mom in the inset photo.

From my mom I inherited my love for art, and my belief that access to any and all of the arts should be open to all – not restricted only to those who can afford it. While you might be tempted to dismiss arts organizations as less important than the other organizations/programs mentioned above, I urge you to think of a what the world would be like without music, paintings, poetry .... To protect the arts, go to http://ga1.org/campaign/FY10_PCA.

Man will begin to recover the moment he takes art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money.
– Ernst Levy, composer