![Featured](https://www.codaworx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EDU-right-side-5-scaled.jpg)
![Education is a Message: Love, Light and the Written Word](https://www.codaworx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EDU-left-end-1-scaled.jpg)
![Education is a Message: Love, Light and the Written Word](https://www.codaworx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EDU-corner-1-scaled.jpg)
![Education is a Message: Love, Light and the Written Word](https://www.codaworx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EDU-middle-2-scaled.jpg)
![Education is a Message: Love, Light and the Written Word](https://www.codaworx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EDU-right-side-5-scaled.jpg)
![Education is a Message: Love, Light and the Written Word](https://www.codaworx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EDU-right-side-4-scaled.jpg)
Client: the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
Location: Philadelphia, PA, United States
Completion date: 2010
Project Team
lead artist
John Lewis
commissioner
the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
Overview
This is painted in acrylic paint 24″ x 200″ on a block wall around the neighborhood swimming club. The community members in West Philadelphia joined in the concept, deciding it should be about education. I chose to show education embodied in a message passed from person to person; spoken words, a series of birds (some carrying notes), a book, a reflecting pool – all are shown through the narrative as a transition of forms of the idea of education.
Goals
This work was a commissioned project by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
Process
The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program commissioned this, and the neighborhood committee and I brainstormed on the concept. We had multiple community meetings, and preliminary versions of the design. Following that, I took photos of people in the neighborhood, and friends to be models for the characters in the mural.