Public Art

"WALKING ON Sunshine," the newest SEPTA Art in Transit piece on the platforms of the rehabbed Spring Garden station, is unexpectedly cheery and colorful. With its snappy, patent-leather shine, it gives the underground station "soul," as one appreciative rider put it. This creation of Philadelphia artist Margery Amdur is one of 21 art projects SEPTA has created systemwide since 1998, when Art in Transit began at the behest of then-new SEPTA general director Jack Leary. Leary came from Boston, which had an art program in its MTA; he wanted art for Philadelphia, too. Everybody up and down the SEPTA line embraced the idea, according to Elizabeth Mintz, who came on board at the same time as Leary and is the authority's director of communications and manager of the Art in Transit program.

An allegation of artistic censorship is drawing attention to a labor dispute involving the University of the Arts and the Philadelphia carpenters union. Starting in the spring, the union distributed leaflets and hung protest banners outside the university's South Broad Street campus, saying outside contractors were undercutting prevailing wages for renovations and furniture installations. The union rate is $37 an hour, said business representative Ed Coryell Jr., whose father, Ed Sr., heads the union.

Did you decide that you just couldn't miss The Gates in New York? What did you think about the display of saffron flags lining the walkways of Central Park? Not that you need to leave South Jersey to get a look at public art - or to have an opinion about it. Community Voices is looking for essays of about 400 to 700 words on The Gates or any public art in the region. Do you have a favorite, or does one capture your attention even if you don't care for it? Send your essays or ideas to Community Voices, The Inquirer, 53 Haddonfield Rd., Suite 300, Cherry Hill, N.J. 08002.

With the unveiling of the Frank Rizzo statue on the steps of the Municipal Services Building planned for Jan. 1, this question comes to mind: What other works of art do the public spaces of the city and suburbs need? What person, event or thing would you like to see so honored in your neighborhood? Why? Send essays of 100 words or less by Jan. 11, including a phone number for verification, to Community Voices/Heroes at the addresses listed in the Where to Write box above. Questions?

Driving across the Ben Franklin Bridge and seeing the city's skyline arrayed before you makes a marvelous introduction to Philadelphia - a promise of urban excitement after an enervating journey through South Jersey's commercial sprawl. As new projects spring up along the waterfront, billboards disappear and Vine Street goes post-modern with sweeping ramps and new landscaping, that impression is bound to get even better. But let's face it, there is one eyesore at the very entrance to the city that acts as an immediate depressant, and nobody to date has done anything about it. That's because Isamu Noguchi's Bolt of Lightning . . . A Memorial to Benjamin Franklin falls into the untouchable realm of art. The 102-foot-high statue, for all the genius, money and good will that went in to its creation, looks like a crumpled piece of metal - less a salute to the great inventor than to the city's oversupply of litter.

A relief mural spreads 81 feet along the limestone wall of a community center in East Los Angeles. It commemorates the life of a mid-19th-century black woman named Biddy Mason. There's a wagon wheel, symbolizing her trek by wagon train from Texas to Los Angeles, where she won her freedom in a landmark case. There are bonded photos of her freedom papers and of the deed to her homestead, which once stood on the site. There's a midwife's bag, symbolizing her service as a midwife bringing hundreds of babies into the world.

SEATTLE - Hulking under the Aurora Bridge in Seattle is a 7-ton troll clutching a real Volkswagen Beetle, as if it snagged it off the roadway above. And incidentally, the VW has a California license plate. The statue, made of rebar steel, wire and concrete, is at Troll Way and 36th Street in the funky, artistic neighborhood of Fremont. One of the delights of visiting the Northwest is the vast array of public art. Some of it, like the Fremont Troll, is fun. Some is thought-provoking; some stirs controversy.

What do we want to leave for future generations? What about our community might inspire a work of public art? How can we improve our public spaces? Over the past year, communities and artists participating in the Fairmount Park Art Association's NewLandMarks program have been grappling with these challenging questions to plan new works of public art for sites throughout Philadelphia. To spread the word about the NewLandMarks program, the art association held community meetings at Free Library branches throughout the city.

PICTURED at right is our suggestion for one piece of public art that would be fitting for the outside of the new Phillies and Eagles stadiums. It's by one of Philadelphia's favorite artists, Claes Oldenburg, creator of "Clothespin," that iconic sculpture in Center City. This piece is called "Soft Screw. " As documented by Don Russell in yesterday's Daily News, the public, which is heavily bankrolling the construction of our new $1 billion in stadiums, has been shut out of the selection or approval of the public art that will grace the grounds of those new playing fields.

The rich blue salvia is in bloom. Ditto the red yarrow, the yellow yarrow and the pure white bellflower. Thousand of flowers stand at attention, like horticultural brigades waiting to march up the hill and pour through the columned west entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They create a splashy parade ground — great squares of blue, red, yellow and white — where before had been a simple swath of green lawn. These flowers, which will fade and be superseded by others coming into bloom (next up: blue false indigo, red blanket flower, yellow false indigo, white gaura)

"WALKING ON Sunshine," the newest SEPTA Art in Transit piece on the platforms of the rehabbed Spring Garden station, is unexpectedly cheery and colorful. With its snappy, patent-leather shine, it gives the underground station "soul," as one appreciative rider put it. This creation of Philadelphia artist Margery Amdur is one of 21 art projects SEPTA has created systemwide since 1998, when Art in Transit began at the behest of then-new SEPTA general director Jack Leary. Leary came from Boston, which had an art program in its MTA; he wanted art for Philadelphia, too. Everybody up and down the SEPTA line embraced the idea, according to Elizabeth Mintz, who came on board at the same time as Leary and is the authority's director of communications and manager of the Art in Transit program.

A COP COMES up to you on the street. Tells you to stop what you're doing immediately and cites you for … dancing cheek-to-cheek?! If you lived in Philly in the 1920s and you encountered Miss Marguerite C. Walz, you might just get in trouble for such offenses as not wearing a coat and collar or too much body wiggling, "hip dips" or close embraces at the public dances held on the Parkway. Walz, a dance teacher, became the first female police officer deputized in Philadelphia.

Rafael Ferrer remembers the day all too well. At the end of February, he was speaking on the phone with Stanley I. Grand, director of the Lancaster Museum of Art and long a fan of Ferrer's sculptures, installations, and paintings. They were discussing the final logistics of a major Ferrer retrospective that Grand was curating, scheduled to open at his museum March 30 - a survey of the Puerto Rican-born, 78-year-old artist's works on paper, a vast collection of lush, mostly previously unseen images.

A RECENT editorial deservedly praised the citywide billboard installation of Zoe Strauss' photographs, as part of her exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The article also cited the importance of "non-mural" public art, and specifically questioned the level of city support for the Mural Arts Program. Since my office oversees the city's Percent for Art program and is responsible for conserving and maintaining the vast array of city-owned public art, as well as advocating for and coordinating public-art efforts in general, I would be the first to agree that we need more investment in our public-art collection and new, innovative public-art projects.

I WAS DISTRESSED to read my words misrepresented and applied negatively to the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program on the editorial page: "[W]e can't help thinking that the city is, to riff on a phrase from Councilwoman Blackwell, a little 'muraled-out.' " This is not something I ever said, and I was surprised to read my name in the piece, since I was not contacted to comment and did not speak with the writer. If we had spoken, I would have been able to tell you that I have known Jane Golden and her work since her days with Anti-Graffiti, work that would ultimately lead to the formation of the Mural Arts Program.

I WAS HAPPY to see your editorial celebrating the work of Zoe Strauss, as I, too, am thrilled that her work is now on display not only at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but also on billboards throughout the city. But I was startled that the editorial counterpointed her work with that of Mural Arts, as though we were two opposing forces rather than two complementary elements, in Philadelphia's growing world of public art. Seeing Zoe's billboards makes me realize how far our region has come in embracing a diverse range of public art, and I am proud that the Mural Arts Program has played a role in that evolution.

WE GIVE A hearty thumbs-up to whatever smart person decided that it was time for a Zoe Strauss photography exhibit (at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until April 22) and two thumbs-up for Strauss herself, who thought of displaying her images on 54 billboards around the city. There are many wonderful aspects of this very public, very temporary way of displaying art. First, we wish more billboards were devoted to art and fewer to strictly commercial messages. We need more presence of art in our lives, and billboards are a great canvas for high-impact works; it's a perfect way to have art confront us where we live, rather than confined to the walls of museums and galleries.

For many of Betsy O'Hagan's students, real art was something that people they know nothing about painted a long time ago. It hung on museum walls, and it had very little to do with their lives. O'Hagan, who teaches at Good Shepherd Catholic Regional School in Ardsley, Montgomery County, wanted to change that. Enter Claes Oldenburg, the Swedish sculptor best known for creating public art in the form of giant versions of everyday objects, like Philadelphia's iconic Clothespin.

Jane Golden is executive director of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program is the nation's largest. Since 1984, it has created more than 3,500 murals and works of public art, earning Philadelphia international recognition as the "City of Murals. " Mural Arts engages diverse communities in the creation of more than 100 murals each year, offering free art education programs to more than 600 youths at sites throughout the city and 300 individuals in the criminal justice system.