2013 Mural Arts Paid Summer Internship Program

I recently applied to the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program's Paid Summer Internship.  I had to write an essay (one of my least favorite things to do) for the application.  When I was doing research for this essay, I snooped around a lot on the Mural Arts website and Mural Farm.  Philly Painting was something that I was totally unaware of until I had to write this essay.  It totally blew me away.  I watched all of the short videos about the project that were posted and a really great Ted Talk about it. These two Dutch guys named Hass and Hahn got a grant to paint like four entire blocks of Germantown Ave. They are known for painting a hillside of favelas (slums) in Rio de Janeiro bright colors. I really like these guys - they do amazing work and don't think too hard.

The following weekend JB and I were driving somewhere and we made sure to go down Germantown Ave to get there just so we could see it in the flesh.  It's awesome! There's also a lot of weird sculptures and a crazy mosaic fence.  So anyways, I painted my application to look like one of the Philly Painting color swatches, in the hopes that that would increase my odds.  Man, I really love Philadelphia's murals, public art, big stuff, and painting large scale... I really hope I get this internship!

Another thing I saw on the Mural Arts website was the zoo mural that's in progress now.  I remember a couple of years ago when they were accepting submissions for that mural, and I couldn't do it because I was going to be in Poland when all of the important planning meetings would have been happening.  All I can say is, I wish I would've applied anyways!  I am unimpressed by the design of this mural.  I feel like everything looks disjointed with how the scale shifts so much.  I feel like the artist was successful in the shifting scale of the kangaroos, because it feels like one of them is in the foreground.  In defense of this design, it is on the side of a parking garage, so I feel like designing anything would be really difficult with those grey strips breaking everything up.