Field Trip: I Take You to the Making of a Mural
33:57 Share

Find a fresh, healthy take on grocery shopping at your new neighborhood Sprouts Farmer's Market, now open in Leesburg on Edwards Ferry Road Northeast and Route 15. Discover the season's freshest produce, unique products around every corner, high-quality meats, an assortment of vitamins and supplements, and so much more. Sprouts makes it easy to find your healthy with our huge assortment of plant-based, gluten-free, organic, and keto-friendly products. Head over to your newest Sprouts, now open in Leesburg.

Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket Portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics, and managing it as one big juicy investment. Now that's pretty good. Learn more at fidelity.com slash baskets. Investing involves risks, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC. Member NYSC SIPC.

Oh, hey, it's the acorn at the bottom of your purse, Allie Ward, and I love a field trip. I love them. Checking things out, you're walking around, you're talking to strangers, seeing the world. Now, this episode is the much-promised, long-awaited partner to our recent Modern Toycographology episode all about murals.

with the wonderful Conrad Benner of the Mural Arts Department of Philly. So I take you with me, kiddos. And today we're going to a street in the Fishtown neighborhood in Philadelphia, underneath some train tracks and next to a large expanse of wall with perfectly primered surfaces ready to become six murals.

Again, this is the Front Street Mural Project. It was orchestrated by Philly's Mural Arts Program. We talked about it in the Modern Togagraphology episode about murals and street art. That one's linked in the show notes. But over 300 local artists pitched their designs, and only six were chosen. So we'll reunite with Conrad Benner and artists who go by Unapologetic, El Toro, and These Pink Lips.

One muralist, Emily White, was in Greece muraling over there, but we chatted with a few other nearby street artists who were on hand to help. But before we hit the streets, thank you to patrons of the show for supporting Ologies. Since before even our first episode, you make the show possible, and you can join at patreon.com slash ologies. Thank you to everyone out there in Ologies merch at ologiesmerch.com. For no dollars, though, you can leave us a review, and I read them all, so...

Thank you to Stingray Bands, who wrote, listening to the tardigradeology episode as I write this, and said, imagine you're a tardigrade sitting on a moss cushion. Bro, I am there, Stingray Bands writes. Thank you, Stingray Bands.

We're together in moss. Okay, and now let's take you back to the mural capital of the world and the birthplace of graffiti, Philadelphia, to learn how to make your design huge and then paint it, how many Sharpies it takes to outline a building-sized mural, sticker versus marker versus paint.

graphic and text mural designs freehand. Most of all, let's hang out on a street corner with people cooler than us and learn how they live their lives as professional artists. So onward, hop in, field trip, then making up a mural. Come on. So up first, we talked to a veteran mural arts muralist who's on the scene to assist these artists. Some are doing their very first mural projects. Grace, tell me your first and last name.

Donna Grace Crowe. K-R-O-H. She. But you go by Grace? Yes. How long have you been an artist? Honestly, my whole life. Like I've.

really been interested in art like as a child, really drawn to it. And then I remember winning my first monetary award in sixth grade and I was like, okay, this might be something. Yeah, to be a paid artist in sixth grade? Exactly. It's a good lifelong goal. Yes, but I've been doing murals specifically for just two years now. Oh,

What made you make the jump outside? Was it COVID? Were you like art shows and galleries weren't happening? So you moved it outside? Well, I was actually focused. I studied psychology. So I was kind of focused in trying to get a career within psychology and more in like the corporate world. But yeah, because of COVID, I was working within the school system and, you know, we had to go online and that really wasn't for me. There was a volunteer day within Mural Arts and I actually just jumped right into it and they hired me on the spot. Wow.

And I quit my job that day. Sayonara, baby. And I've been loving it ever since. It doesn't even feel like a job. Like, yeah, I'm just purely in love with what I do. I didn't know this until Sarah McAnulty told me that Philadelphia is such a mural city. And now I know. Do you have a couple murals that really inspired you?

Honestly, there's one mural that's in Center City by Amy Sherald, which has a pretty bright blue background and has a figure of, I believe, one of her students painted in black and white. And she has a yellow hat. And I loved it because I'm a portrait artist. And I loved how simple it was, but it was in large scale and made you stop.

And Amy Sherald, side note, is an American painter who you may remember from First Lady Michelle Obama's official portrait. And Untitled, her mural in Philly, is this huge, maybe 50-foot mural in downtown of a girl wearing a graphic floral black and white coat.

And she's wearing a bright golden yellow hat. And the buttons on her coat match the yellow hat. And Cheryl, who's a woman of color, is known for the way she paints skin tones in grayscale. She says to challenge notions about race. And I read that as her art career took off, she waited tables until the age of 38 to support herself. And now her paintings sell in the millions.

So if you're in Philadelphia, cruise by her Untitled with this bright turquoise background because you are looking at a renowned, expensive piece of art from the parking lot of a Target.

I just love that part about it. And there's a new mural too called the Flight Mural, which is kind of close to it on, I believe, 13th in Philadelphia. And it is with a woman who's jumping in the air. It's actually the artist who used herself as reference. And there's a quote below it, but it's

I believe it's like three stories tall. Oh, my God. And it's another portrait. And it's just, you know, very surreal, larger than life. So this mural, Flight, nearly takes up the height of a tall brick building in Philadelphia. And it depicts the artist Tatiana Falalizadeh with arms outstretched.

And she continues...

It was told that enslaved Africans could take flight, liberating themselves by flying back to their homeland of Africa. And though the folklore of black people being able to take flight extends before the period of American slavery and far beyond it, in this series we see black people suspended in the air, floating above societal violences.

And this mural, Flight, is also multiple stories tall. Now, these murals that were at on Front Street aren't quite that big, but it's still no easy task. Now, when it comes to making your drawings like that giant, that seems so daunting for non-mural artists. How do you approach that, getting it from a drawing and a page to like a building size?

Oh man, well, it really depends what your wall texture is like and how big it is. But what we do usually with mural arts in Philadelphia is with parachute cloth where we kind of ghost print it. So we do a transparent print on the cloth and we paint over it so that we can, you know, really get the anatomy or, you know, things very precisely. Another way is a doodle grid.

which is very easy to do. Doing a random doodle as your grid, drawing whatever you want, and then taking a picture of it, and then double layering your photo on top of it. And honestly, you can get really precise with that as well.

So you can use a grid to upsize your work. So you follow square by square, but you could also do random squiggles or lines or dots or zigzags all over the wall itself. This doesn't seem to make sense, but a lot of artists do it and it works.

So you do all these dots and squiggles all over the wall. You take a straight on photo of the wall and then you superimpose that photo over your digital mock-up of your mural design. And then you use the random squiggles on the wall as markers for where your design should land. Like, you know, the hairline should start at this dot and the lips should only go up to this part of the squiggle. Or if this doodle squiggle or square grid is not for you, you can paste your workup.

Honestly, parachute cloth is where it's at since you can be in studio and you just need to glue it up and worry about touch-ups later. So you glue the parachute cloth onto the wall then? Yes. Oh, what about advice for someone who has always dreamt of being a mural artist but they don't know how to get into it? I mean, you always got to start somewhere. So, you know, just keep reaching out to local artists.

restaurants or companies that possibly might need a mural and then just do your research. Just ask questions and reach out to other local artists. You know, see if you want to assist or you can just ask specific questions to get yourself started. But definitely just go for it. Thank you for talking to me, Grace. Oh my God, thank you so much. This has been a dream.

So we walked about 20 feet over to meet the next artist as the team fiddled with a projector which was being blown out by the streetlight overhead. And the artist, Iris Barbie Pendergrass, who also owns the clothing brand These Pink Lips, was working on this colorful portrait of a woman with full lips,

So these are two of the lead artists that we're working with. Hi! Yeah, Iris. Hi, Iris.

I'm Iris. I'm Allie. Nice to meet you. Do you just go by Iris or do you have like a last name too? My brand is called These Pink Lips, but it's Iris Barbie Pendergrast. And Iris' work and the These Pink Lips brand is really recognizable. It's got a stark color palette, usually black and white painted scrawls of text that

Iris, do you have a strategy for getting it from your design to big? Vote!

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to trace the out of her face just so I can get the scaling right. And then I'm just going to freestyle everything else. I normally like freestyle, but I've never worked this big before. Probably like 12 feet, the biggest. But yeah, I just want to trace her face so I can get the proportions right and her lips and just freestyle. What about the type of paint? I use acrylic paint.

Using a lot of spray paint. That's what I use for the background and the font and everything like that. Or probably do it by hand. And then I understand you need a good clear coat for weather, right? Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know about that until today. I know, because this is going to be here for a minute, so...

And you do fashion as well? Yeah, I paint, like, on a lot of clothes. So I paint on clothes. I paint on furniture. I started off painting on canvas, and then I went to shoes. Then I went to clothes. Have you always painted, or did you pick it up in your teens? I just started drawing, like, since forever. Like, I was a kid. And then I went to college. I wanted to do graphic design. I was like, okay, I could do graphic design because it's a little bit of everything you can do. I hated painting when I was in school because I sucked at it. Like, we were doing, like, oil paints and...

like draw fruit or people. And I'm like, I'm not good at this type of stuff. And I was just like, you know, oil paints take a long time to dry. So I was just like turned off. That's the boring part. But when I graduated, I was just like, all right, I can kind of do what I want to do. So I can turn my drawings into paintings. And then that's what I started doing.

And again, we stood under the train tracks, late at night, craning our necks up to take in these works in progress. How long do you have to make your mural? Maybe like a couple of weeks. Okay. Probably two weeks, but I feel like I can knock it out in like five to six days, maybe.

Like, once I'm in a zone, then I'm in a zone. And this is new for me because I never used a projector or anything. I've never, like, done anything. This is super big. Did you do a few drafts of things that you wanted to do and decide on which of them you wanted to make your own? So I did two. Originally, I did two different sketches. And the way I work, I never sketch. Like, I don't like sketching. I just like to...

just do it on the cameras but you have to sketch like for something this big yeah so I did two different sketches so kind of rad where I was like I don't know which one I really like and we both like really like the one that I just showed you so I sent them that they gave me a little bit of feedback and I changed like some things and then that was it it sounds like people are very excited you're doing one thank you for letting me of course thank you

Next, we met up with a Philly-based graphic designer, an artist, an educator, a curator, and the founder of Oona Design and muralist Emanuel Wisdom, who had been on a scaffolding working on what looked like lettering. And now Emanuel, right? Yeah. My artist name is unapologetic spelled U-N-A-P-X-L-X-G-E-T-I-Q. Awesome. How long have you been an artist? What medium do you typically work in?

I'm a graphic artist, mostly digital things. I'm doing mostly murals now, so most of my digital work is transferring onto wall or clothing or canvases. When you were coming up with the design for...

This particular, this is Front Street, right? Yeah, Front Street. And he showed me a mock-up sketch of the word HOPE in all caps, in various colors, and really reminiscent of the iconic love sculpture. This was made by Robert Indiana. And it's the word love. It's four letters, the L and the O and then the V and the E underneath it. And it has an off-kilter O. If you saw the love designed by Robert Indiana, you would know it immediately. You would recognize it from so many shirts and even stamps.

And Unapologetics is a nod to that. It's called Hope. Oh, that's beautiful. It's basically almost playing off of the Philly love. It's more like Philly Hope and the Liberty Bell.

Hope for Liberty. But mostly I'm a typography and hand lettering artist. Oh wow. My work is heavily type-based and so what I was doing is mostly using the letters almost in an architectural way to give the meaning and utilizing the colors. And I went with like elementary colors because it's almost like a resetting of the brain and it provides kind of a different perspective.

Because it's such a public space and the wall textures might change and the weather might change. It was like raining yesterday and tonight you might have a blaringly bright street light in front of your projector. Do you find that you're constantly like problem solution, problem solution when you're working outside?

It's life, you know. It's like you got to work with the environment, the people, the noise. You got to work with anything that comes up. You know, it's part of the art. It inspires the art, I feel like. But as far as the conditions, it does help if the conditions are a lot nicer, especially for the paint to dry or for the paint to be more fluid when you're painting. But as far as the external...

Once I get in the zone, it just kind of naturally blocks out things. Yeah. Do you have a favorite mural, either in the city or in the world? 2021, I put up a mural with a buddy of mine, Eric Buzzart.

and it was an MLK mural. And it was a picture of MLK in a purple floral background and the text on it said, "I've decided to stick with love." - And I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. - Hate is a great burden to bear. That was one of my favorite murals because it kind of embodies the energy of MLK. It was more of a social mural.

and people receive their well. So for me, that kind of always sticks with me. I almost like looking at murals as like exterior decoration. But as far as the artists, you have the creative liberty to kind of almost warp the space and take the viewer into like a different time period. So that was one of my favorite mural because of the impact of it. And this Scranton, New York mural called The Dream features bright kelly green leaves, white

with pops of deep purple trumpet-shaped morning glory flowers, with Emmanuel's graphic, absolutely perfect lettering, with font choices that are just dazzling. And of course, the one he's working on is in a similar vein with these bright colors and the word hope and details like a Liberty Bell using language as an art form. It's both energized and it's also impeccable all at once.

It's really, really cool to see a mural installation like this, to see it and to know in a matter of weeks or months that it's going to look completely different. That's really cool. Yeah, that's the power of art. It's the ability to be able to transform and kind of take people on a journey, whether it's through color or symbol. Or even if you're fortunate enough to watch other artists put up the work, it's almost like a mesmerizing and therapeutic process. Yeah.

Shout out to Conrad for putting a project together. And again, for more on Conrad and his work as a documenter of Philly street art, you can see his blog and his Instagram streets department, as well as all of his curation involvement for the Mural Arts Foundation. And our recent Modern Toycographology episode is all about murals and about the process and the impact of public art. And it's lovely. He's lovely. Public art is lovely. And as it turns out, essential.

It's a great way as far as being an artist to create a piece of work that's not necessarily permanent. So it kind of gives you a bit more of a freedom to create without attachment.

So which is a beautiful thing. It's almost like, I think some like Buddhist monks, they do these kind of mandala with like sand or salt. And it's very beautifully done. And at the end of it, it kind of wash it away. It's kind of a process, you know, let you understand that you're not necessarily the end result. You're more of the vessel that's delivering the message. And then there's a time span for everything, including us as humans. So it's a beautiful process. But at the same time,

Sometimes you want to work to stay up a bit longer. That street light was still really ruining the vibe, glaring from overhead. I hope we figure out a fix for that light. Yes. I've come up with so many bad ideas. Like I was telling you earlier, you know, it's part of the art. It's not so much...

just putting paint on a wall but it's thinking about the environment the people the proximity either to the street or to the wall and it all kind of informs the creativity so as an artist I'm going to challenge myself to you know just freestyle but the approach I'm taking I

Actually, he was talking about the mirror way of transferring. The approach I'm going to take is a grid system. So rather than the projector, using the grid system to transfer square by square to preserve the scale and perspective of a big work. I'm gridding the art on a smaller scale and then I put the grid on the wall. And then at that point, you're just kind of working in squares. So it's not so much of a scale. It's just almost adding little pieces as you go along. That's a good way to look at life.

take things in smaller chunks and just keep going. Yeah, it's just like everything else. It makes it more fun because now as an artist you are leaving with a different experience because almost like you hit a roadblock and you kind of

thought around the roadblock, and you executed a project. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's great. Well, this is such a joy. Thank you for letting us come down here and crash your mural. Okay, so next I moseyed over to a guy named Mr. Scoot, or McKellie Scott, but you can find him on Insta at m.scoot. And his work looks like if you took cartoon heads in the brightest colors imaginable, and then you put them all in a purse, and then you dumped the purse upside down, like a waterfall of faces. Mm-hmm.

And today he isn't putting up his own mural, but he's on hand to assist the other artists. My name is Michelle. Michele. Michele. I was just curious. I'm also asking people if they have any murals that people should see in Philadelphia. Oh. You're in class in general. There's the raccoon mural in Port Richmond. It's probably the best mural in Philadelphia. What do you like about it? I like raccoons. Okay. Honestly, same. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like people in Philly get a bad rep.

like raccoons and it's just a raccoon eating a pretzel in Port Richmond so feels like a good symbol of the city I think I mean one of my favorite murals was the Welcome to Fishtown one with the cats but now it's getting covered up by an apartment building which happens to a lot of murals um which kind of sucks but uh

The Welcome to Fishtown cover-up is a tragedy because this mural spans the length of a building horizontally, and it features a giant cheese puff orange colored block letters, Welcome to Fishtown, with these three very languid orange tabby cats draped over a few of the letters. It is not subtle or subdued aesthetically, and it is a treasure. Isn't it crazy to think, though, that in like

a hundred years or a thousand years if they do an excavation that they might

find those like they find old frescoes i do think about that a lot yeah that would be crazy yeah like if one day they're like in you know post-apocalyptic whatever aliens land and they're like what's this fish town mural you know what's this raccoon holding a pretzel what does it mean this must be the food they eat all the time at least in this region which is which is true every time i do like a freelance project and they always want me to do something like oh like uh

we want it to be Philly themed. I'll do like Drumline Elmo or something like that or like something that's like a little bit more obscure Philly wise like the Mütter Museum or something like that and they're like can we get a pretzel in there and the Liberty Bell and I'm like if you go to like St. Louis or Miami or San Diego they know Philly because of the Liberty Bell the Eagles maybe but they don't know about Drumline Elmo.

They don't know about Drumline Elmo. They don't know about the Mütter Museum. I had to look this up, but Drumline Elmo, side note, refers to this viral 2018 video titled Elmo at the Great Philadelphia Trash Fire of 2018. And in it, you will see a person walking on the sidewalk in a very weathered, possibly off-brand, full-body Elmo costume, shuffling along with just a two-piece marching drum band. And then the camera whip pans flashed

to a large industrial fire raging in the background nearby, very nearby. And drumline Elmo has become kind of an unofficial but beloved mascot of the city and shows up at sports events and protests. And the Mütter Museum is the very famous Philly institution that houses a lot of dead human body parts. So it's grim. It's science.

It's Philadelphia. And we're going to get to that in a second. But first, we're going to take a quick break. And of course, we always choose a charity of choice. And this time, we're going to send it to the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia to keep supporting artists and keep supporting murals. We love what they do. So thank you to sponsors of the show for making that possible.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Listen, it's Spooktober, which means it's the season of costumes and masks. One mask that you might not want to wear is the kind when you pretend to be someone else and to think and say different things in order to just survive in a social setting.

I get it. I've been there. How do you get over this? Therapy. Therapy can help you learn to accept all the different parts of yourself so you can take off the mask and you can be authentic in whatever situation you find yourself in. Now, if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's totally online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and

and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a quick questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at no additional charge. If you are not vibing, no drama. I'm a big fan of therapy. I've used BetterHelp during tough times. I love that it's convenient and I love that it's helped me get to know myself better. So visit betterhelp.com slash ologies today to get 10% off your first month. So that's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash ologies.

We recently had an episode on fun. And what did we learn? Working on hands-on activities away from a screen is fun. These are actually things that help our well-being. And KiwiCo delivers seriously fun learning for kids of all ages through hands-on projects and activities. And each month, kids receive crates packed

with activities designed to introduce them to exciting science, technology, and art concepts. And there's always something new to discover. I love this. They have everything from engineering robots or learning about the science of ice cream. So KiwiCo has something for all kinds of kids ranging from infants and preschoolers to teens and beyond. I love that they test these crates with kids. They have experts creating them. I give KiwiCo crates

kids in my life and i love getting videos and pictures back of them working on it kiwi co we love you kiwiko i usually sing their name at the top but i decided to hide it in the bottom here so redefine learning with play explore projects that build confidence and problem solving skills with kiwico so get 50 off your first month on any crate line at kiwico.com with the promo code

ologies. That's 50% off your first month at k-i-w-i-c-o.com with the promo code ologies. They're gonna love it.

Listen, we're ologites. We love a fine print. Are you kidding me? I spend my job and my free time reading papers to find out what's true. And if you can spot a too-good-to-be-true health hack from a mile away, congratulations, you're one of me. So Ritual knows every good skeptic deserves a multivitamin that exceeds your standards. They have a clinically-backed Essential for Women 18 Plus multivitamin. It's got ologites.

high quality, traceable key ingredients. Only about 1% of supplement brands are USP verified. Ritual is one of them, which is why I take them. Ritual vitamins are vegan, they're gluten and major allergen free. Ritual has industry leading sustainability standards, which helps select

lower carbon packaging. They prioritize sustainably sourced ingredients. They have ambitious climate goals. I also love that Ritual is a female-founded B Corp. I have a few key things that I take in the morning. Ritual is one of them. I love knowing I'm taking the right stuff. I'm not taking a bunch of stuff I don't need. So no more shady business. Ritual's essential for women. 18 plus is a multi-battery and you can actually trust. Get 25% off your first month at ritual.com slash

Start Ritual or add Essential for Women 18 Plus to your subscription today. So that's ritual.com slash ologies for 25% off. Down the hatch and into your body.

New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom Rack Stores now. From fresh kicks to perfect gifts, there's always a find. Levi's, Paige, Frame, all the best denim. Why do I rack? Because check out these boots. I always score at rack. Head to your Nordstrom Rack Store to find amazing deals on all things winter. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

This episode is brought to you by Opel, the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill available in the U.S. Opel is FDA approved, full prescription strength, and estrogen free. Plus, there's no prescription needed. Finally, the days of needing a prescription for birth control are over. Opel is available online and at most major retailers. Take control of your health and reproductive journey with Opel. Birth control in your control. Use code birthcontrol for 25% off your first month of Opel at opel.com.

you

Okay, where were we? I think we were talking about the museum with a lot of dead body parts. But on to something more appetizing. So we met an artist who goes by El Toro. Typically doesn't share his true identity. We'll call him Justin because that is his first name. Or just El Toro. He's using Sharpies to trace out what appears to be a food-themed mural. So my piece is called Sweet Dreams. It's full with just nostalgic candies you liked growing up. Ice cream, donuts...

Little mochi balls, a drippy rainbow, and just fun characters. I'm just going to pause for the train. Okay, so tell me a little bit about when you were designing your mural. Do

Did you have a color scheme in mind? Did you have themes you wanted to include? Totally. I definitely wanted to include ube since ube is so hot right now. And then there's another flavor called pandan, which is the green that I wanted to incorporate as well. Because I feel like, you know, you see traditional ice cream, it's usually pink or chocolate or vanilla. With this, I wanted to catch like some people a little bit off with like the green flavor and the purple icing. And like, you know, just to be like, okay, you can interpret as icing, but if you know, it's ube.

Okay, just a culinary pit stop here. So ube is a yam from the Philippines. At first glance, it looks like a dirt-colored potato on the outside, but you cut it open and it's bright purple. It looks like a cartoon and it tastes sweet and kind of nutty. Filipino desserts are the best desserts because they are purple and ube a lot of times, and I always love them.

Now, pandan is a tropical plant. It has spiky leaves and its flavors described like vanilla and hazelnut. And it turns desserts almost like a neon lime green.

Also, as long as we're just doling out context, El Toro, bit of a street art icon. And he has this horned avatar that's inspired by the Philippine water buffalo. So picture a bull in a candy shop. And what about your El Toro character? What story did you want to tell? Did you want to depict in this mural?

wow yeah i mean i just really wanted to have fun you know when i make art i don't feel like i cater to adults for art it's a lot of like the kids basically yeah i just want it to be very playful i feel like art is very art is subjective of course but it's very geared to like adult or like you know more high class or high sophisticated quote unquote but then like nobody think about the kids to just enjoy and then you know they watch cartoons or whatever but like

like a mural for kids would be nice. There's a bunch of families here in Fishtown now. So I really wanted to some sort of like anchor point for kids to be like, oh, I know that candy or oh, that's like really bright and sweet. And there's like a like a throwback of that strawberry candy that somehow your grandma had. Yes. Yeah. Nobody knows where to buy it. Yeah. Where does it come from?

Can you believe that just last week we did a whole episode on candy, confectiology, with candy historian Susan Benjamin? And yes, we did cover those strawberry purse candies in every great aunt's handbag. But also, as long as we're talking kids and candy, we have shorter classroom safe smologies episodes, just in general. They're now in their own feed, just for your smologites. But yes, a feast of a mural.

So those little like visual anchors I like to put in the mural just so like everyone can connect to something. And now when it comes to the work you do, because you're a prolific and well-known street artist. Oh, thank you very much. And you work a lot in stickers. Tell me about the change in media to you and how did you approach that?

Oh, I mean, I've always drawn since I was a small kid and that's always just been inherent to me. The stickers was just a medium that when I started, nobody was using too much of. And being like,

like a young college broke artist. Stickers were free from the post office. So there wasn't a lot of buying of materials, let's say, that was needed to get this like hobby accomplished. And so from that, it's been 20 years since I started. I just try all the mediums and see what I kind of gravitate to, what's fun to me. You know, I do a lot of spray paint, but this mural I'm going to do with brushes just because I've been painting a lot lately. So I think that'll be a nice transition.

It's bonkers to see you on a ladder and on a scaffold, and you're using the projection method with Sharpies.

You have a few in your pocket in case you drop one? Yes, yes. I have a pocket full of Sharpies right now and a bag full of markers as well. Have you had a Sharpie run out on this wall yet? Because it's a lot to draw. Yeah, the thing is, it's not even the ink. It's the nib of the Sharpie that gets eaten up by the texture of the wall. But other than that, it's all right. How about the application? When you're up that close...

Is it difficult to figure out what color goes where? Or are you mostly thinking of it in blocks?

Oh, I like to work basically in blocks. With this, it's just for the outline. And then after this part is finished, it's just paint by numbers. Okay. Yeah. Do you feel like you get in a zone where you could be going and going for a while, but you're like, oh. Your legs and muscles just to like kind of quiver a lot more up there. You know, you try to focus, but I still have to come down a lot of times. What about murals in the world or in Philly? Do you have any that have really made an impact on you? Any public art that really...

So D-Face are Dean Stockton's work.

is kind of Lichtenstein-esque with vintage comic book images of leading men or ingenues that are locked in an embrace. But maybe one of them has a skeleton face or has the green pallor of a zombie. And D-Face's Amsterdam mural is called I Feel So Incomplete, and it depicts this 1950s blonde woman wincing toward a huge spray paint can of pink graffiti that's coming her way. So maybe old aesthetics,

threatened by the new, I'm not the artist, but it's cool. So the D-Phase mural definitely is one that I keep thinking about just because of the scale and like...

How do you do something like that? Especially, you know, with this 17-foot wall, it's already been, like, four hours and I'm dead tired. Yeah. Four hours is a long time. And it's just that he covered, like, a full, like, it looked like an apartment building's facade full of everything. So I just think about that sometimes. Like, okay, it's possible. Or, like, you know, don't complain about the 17-foot wall. Yeah.

Maybe you'll get a full building. You never know, man. You know, you got to be prepared for it. Any advice to people who have no idea where to start if they're just like an artist who would love to do either street art or public? Any advice for your former self? Yeah.

Don't get caught. That's actually good advice. That is one of my biggest advices. Don't get caught because it is a bitch to pay for lawyer fees and other court fees and community service. It's not that fun. Is community service having to paint over anyone else's work? Because that was fucking Zach. No, thankfully not. What's the best way to not get caught? Aside from like not breaking the law or whatever. Of course.

Work on your cardio and run fast. Thank you for letting me ask you so many questions. Oh, any time. The sillier, the better. Okay, good. So ask artsy people maybe obvious questions, like how do you do that? And thank you for joining us on this little field trip to mural making in Philly. Again, huge thanks to the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, to Conrad Benner, to all the artists, and to Skype of Scientists, Dr. Sarah McAnulty, for the intro. And you can find links to the artists' work right in the show notes below.

as well as a link to our website, which has more research and links to photos and everything you might need. And keep an ear out for more field trips and patrons at patreon.com slash ologies. Let me know in the comments for this episode where else you want me to visit because I'm game. Now, we are at ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Allie Ward on both. Smologies are our kid-friendly classroom-safe episodes. Those are available wherever you get podcasts.

Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch.com. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Dwyer does the website. Jake Chafee, assistant edits. Susan Hale is our managing director. Noelle Dilwith is a scheduling producer and the lead producer and lead editor who also did some writing for this episode. Thank you as the multi-talented Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Huge thanks for taking the reins on this.

Nick Thorburn made the theme music, and if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret this week. It's that I have realized the most comfortable garment to wear is, well, first off, my ragged yellow sweater I've had for like 10 years, and I still wear in public despite having a stain on it. OxiClean couldn't bust it. I don't know what to do. But yeah, the best, most comfortable garment I have just realized...

is a turtleneck tank top. Your neck is warm, your pits are aired, you can layer a cardigan over it without the sleeves getting bunched, and it's oddly...

dare I say a little sexy in like a vintage Sharon Stone kind of a basic instinct kind of way, but without exposing your crotch to the camera. And last year I bought like a 10 pack of black t-shirts to wear. And the other day I was like, wait a minute, I cut off the sleeves. So I got a tank top and then I used one sleeve and I crudely sewed it at the neckline and

People, I made myself the first of what I assure you will be many DIY Franken shirt turtleneck tank tops. I'm calling them turtle tanks. If you have an old t-shirt to sacrifice, there's a little tip from your dad word. I love mine. I'm making more. Okay, bye-bye. Hacker dermatology. Homeology. Cryptozoology. Littology. Technology. Meteorology. Neurology. Painting is fun. It does nice things to you.

If the new Chicken Big Mac at McDonald's looks like a Big Mac, has sweet buns and sauce like a Big Mac, but has two chicken patties, then it's not not a Big Mac. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet.

The Shop Pay feature even boosts conversions up to 50%. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout top brands like all birds use. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash podcast free, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash podcast free to upgrade your selling today.