Calling How Philly Moves "epic" barely does justice to the $500,000, 50,000-square-foot, six-wall endeavor. The most prominent figure - a belly dancer with a red scarf - measures 8,540 square feet, nearly twice the size of a basketball court.
Beyond the immensity lies the complexity of painting on concrete parking decks pocked with "negative," or open, space between floors.
"Some of my favorite photos wouldn't work," Tiziou explains, "because a hand or face would be lost in that gap."
Groovin' grandmas
In the end, 26 people made the cut, from a 62-year-old grandmother getting her groove on to an angelic 4-year-old ballerina practicing fifth position with arms raised gracefully over her head.
Traditional Indian, Latin, Aztec dance are all represented. So are hula and tap. There's even an amateur who, Tiziou recalls, "put on some Green Day and just sort of thrashed around as she would in her bedroom."
A Drexel University dance-therapy student leading a charge in a wheelchair lends emotional gravitas to the collage. And lest anyone think the deck was stacked in favor of classically trained dancers, consider the Fishtown linguist who told the photographer he "gets invited to weddings for the express purposes of getting things moving during the reception."
Once the design gained final approval, lead muralist Jon Laidacker and four assistants began the months-long task of translating movement for the masses.
"This," he says appreciatively, "is the closest thing any of us has had to job security."
