A familiar name, eight thousand square feet

I had to look up the name of this one: Lava Kid (5 Below). Meg Saligman’s studio lists the 2019 mural at Eighth and Market Streets as 8,000 square feet. Eight thousand! Knowing that gives me an even greater appreciation for the work involved. I get to point a camera at it; the artists had to bring that enormous face and all those playful details to life. Artist’s project record

The Five Below name is easy to spot, and this is a commercial mural, with merchandise worked into the picture. That is part of its story, too. What interests me in these photographs is how the painted world sits beside the building’s brickwork and tall windows. A giant lava lamp next to all that older architecture! My eye keeps moving between the two. Background on the commission

“I came looking for art, and now I’m studying the building beside it. My camera does get me into things.”

– Robert

Philadelphia gives a mural hunter plenty of reasons to keep looking. The city’s Mural Arts program grew from work begun in 1984 and has helped create thousands of public artworks. That wider tradition gives some context to my enthusiasm for photographing art here, even though this Five Below piece has its own commercial purpose. For this visit, one wall was enough to keep my attention through four photographs. You know how that goes… there’s always another angle for me to find. Philadelphia’s public art program