Modern Toichographology (MURALS & STREET ART) with Conrad Benner
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I know I usually save my secrets for the end of the episode, but I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

It's really Reese's anything. But Reese's peanut butter cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these. Chocolate, salty peanut butter, the textures. I love everything about them. Also that there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's peanut butter cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's peanut butter cups now at a store near you. Found wherever candy is sold. And I am.

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Oh, hey, it's the acquaintance who always reintroduces themselves in case you forgot their name. Allie Ward, this is Ologies. Here we are with a trip through time, space, art, ideas, paint, and guest starring Philadelphia. So this ology is in fact real. I was just tickled to discover that toiko means wall, graph means writing, and that scholars have used this term to discuss wall paintings dating back like thousands of years. But this episode is going to be more of a modern look at

at big street art that either, uh,

colors your day without you even noticing, or maybe it stops you in your tracks and then you're like weeping into a to-go latte. Thisologist hails from Philadelphia, and as it happens, so does street art, we shall discuss. But he has been on the scene as a journalist for approaching 15 years as the editor and the founder of this really popular blog, streetsdepartment.com. And he's a curator for the public arts program, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and also has a podcast called Wise Art Outside. And

And through all this work, his focus is really about spotlighting and elevating artists. He's the best. And I was introduced to him by your favorite squid expert, Toothology guest, Dr. Sarah McAnulty. And this interview took place on her living room couch. It was a sunny summer day. The walls around us were brick on one side and then various pieces of squid art on

on the other with her cat holding court between our microphones. And we're going to get to that convo in a second. But first, thank you to everyone supporting and sending in questions via our Patreon at patreon.com slash ologies. Thanks to everyone out there in ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. Also, heads up, we have a new show spinoff called Smologies. I know you've seen Smologies in our feed, but you can now subscribe and listen on a separate feed wherever you get podcasts. We're making them every week. We'll link it in the show notes.

And also for no dollars, you can just leave us a review, which I read, and then I read one to you. And thank you this week to Cody Halt, who wrote, in a world of division, endless trolls and sleuths, this show grabs you warmly by the hand and says, hey, it's okay if you don't know much. Let's go explore together. Cody Halt, thank you so much for that. Let's explore murals. Let's explore Philadelphia, shall we?

Okay, now this episode also has a bonus field trip episode that we're going to release in a week or so that will take you to a series of murals in the process of being born. But in this episode, we're going to be looking through the lens of the inception of street art and public versus private art, cultural movements, commissioned versus uncommissioned

murals, how to make murals without everything looking wonky because you've scaled up, how murals are chosen, how much it costs to make a mural, where to get that money, vandalism and murals and a fine line in between, and how everything you do is art.

Trust me. We'll also be talking a lot about the history and art in Philly. And because we cannot and should not attempt to touch on every mural in every city across the globe. We couldn't do it. Do you know how long this episode would be? And we shouldn't just highlight the most famous ones. So rather, let this look into the workings of public art and murals where they started, inspire you to find out more about what's in your city and who made it and how you can get involved and why it matters. So stand back.

Conrad Benner and he, him pronouns. You live in Philadelphia. I live in Philadelphia. Yeah. Did you? Best city in the world. Is it the best city in the world?

I believe it so far. I've been here a couple hours and it's feeling good. I think it's a fantastic city and I'm so glad to be from here. I grew up around the block from where we're recording this. Everyone in Philly is so awesome and I think we're just, you know, we're the salt of the earth. We're, I don't know. I don't know. I love everyone here. I only learned recently that Philadelphia, Philly, has a culture of murals. Yes.

Oh my gosh, where do we begin? I mean, yes, when we're talking specifically about murals, not only do we have the nation's largest public arts program that is Mural Arts Philadelphia, and they have been responsible for creating somewhere around 4,000 murals in their 38-year history. Dang.

And yeah, mural arts, a number of years ago, created the nickname Mural Capital of the World. You know, you have to self-brand. Yeah, yeah. Oh. And it's kind of stuck. It's like on Wikipedia now when we get written about internationally. Of course, there's other cities with great murals and some with great mural programs.

But yeah, we're the one who took that name, Mural Cop of the World. I've been wanting to do an episode on murals for years, and I was like, there's not going to be an ology for that. I was like, I wish there were. Maybe I have to invent one. Because very rarely I'll work with an ologist to be like, can we coin a term, please? Right. But I was doing some research. Ooh, the phone has come out. I know, because there's no... For those listening, which is everyone. Twicographology. You just called me a twink? No. What did you say? No.

I am 38 years old. Your skin is amazing, though. Oh, thank you. Forever young. You are a toycographologist. You're a modern toycographologist. Nice. Did you know that?

You know, I did know that. No, I did not know that. And it comes from, it's a real term. It's used the world over. It's used in academic journals. And a toicographologist is someone who studies mural arts or makes them. And it comes from toico for wall and graph writing, wall writing. And so modern toicographology would be mural. Hold on, I have to update my about page because that's in my new bio. Can you tell me a little bit about...

Take me back. Sure. But yeah, I grew up in Philly. So I did take an art class, but I really don't remember it. I remember like all the math classes. I was really obsessed with math. And then the long story long, because this is a long podcast, is I got sick my junior year of high school. They couldn't figure out what it was, but I was just lethargic all the time, like would sleep right through my alarm. So they ended up homeschooling me. Public school system here had a great program where a teacher came out a couple times a week and I graduated on time. But

Long story long, it messed up my transcript and I didn't go to college. So the reason I got into the arts is because in my late teens, early 20s, worked at Whole Foods.

worked at czar i worked a few jobs i was late everywhere so i got fired after a few years at all these places so but around this time i met a lot of great people a lot of like you know i was 19 20 and the folks i were meeting were in their early 20s and a lot of them had just graduated from art school you know this is like early 2000s whole foods which for the young folks out there it was a different world whole foods was a different it was very artsy and fun at least in philadelphia

That's where it attracted a lot of young artsy folks. In Philly, we have this thing called First Fridays that was started about 30 years ago in the 90s here. And they said, let's do this thing where every First Friday we open our doors, we give folks free wine and free snacks, and maybe people will come out. And they did. And seeing the art there when I was like 19, 20, 21, in an old city, seeing really experimental art. It wasn't the stuff you see in the PMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, or other galleries. It was really exciting. And it was fascinating.

Stuff I'd never seen before. And then just like really interesting themes, lots of queer art, lots of queer themes, lots of like really beautiful representations of people who, you know, were from my community. I'm part of the LGBT army. And yeah, I think my experience with art before was sort of like whatever I was taught in the textbooks and whatever I saw in like the museums. And it's kind of, you know, a lot of European art, a lot of from Renaissance painters and stuff. And it's great. Yeah.

Bowls of fruit, dead pheasants. Yeah. But what Conrad was seeing in the more underground and experimental art scene really spoke to him. And it was more colorful, it was more daring, and in more evocative settings, like art showcased in an otherwise dark room or with more vibrant palettes. It felt like what I would see on Nickelodeon as a kid, but cooler. Yeah.

So it was around that time I was out actually one time and this woman who I went to elementary school with, her name was Kelly White. This was 2005, 2006 and blogs are so new. And she was like, I'm looking for someone to help me co-write a weekly article where we talk about arts and culture in the city. Would you like to co-write it with me? And I was like, what? Of course, let's figure it out. And all I wanted to do was write about the arts. It was just this like thing I found myself in because I was going to these first Friday shows. And when I was 24, I,

I broke my leg. I got hit by a van that was turning right on red and broke my leg. I had to move back in with my parents for a minute. Went through this depression. By then I was 24, making most of my money at a coffee shop job, making like $7 an hour. Like, what am I doing with my life? I'm so scared. So,

So Conrad enrolled in the local community college, and at the suggestion of a friend, he took up photography. And then his love of photography and the art scene and writing kind of coalesced into his own blog about street art, streetsdepartment.com, which is now this long-running staple of the art scene in the mural capital of the world. And he knows everyone. Everyone knows him. Conrad is like a city treasure.

Did you find that transition having written about and consumed and been in that art world that your transition to photographing it kind of felt like it scratched a different itch for you? Yeah. First of all, it's so funny. I was just listening to a podcast on the way here that

Maybe it was your podcast. But it was some quip about how like everyone hates to write, but everyone loves to have written. Yes. Was that your podcast? It was. I hate writing, but I love having written. And I literally laughed on the L. I was like, that's how I felt.

So this quote is usually attributed to early 20th century poet and screenwriter Dorothy Parker. But some people online fight about if that's a misattribution to this writer named Frank Norris. But it doesn't matter. Writing could be daunting, Conrad says. But he loved being out cataloging street art with his camera. So yeah, it did scratch a different itch for me. And it was so different. I mean, within the first few months of creating this blog, Time magazine had republished one of my articles on their Tumblr. What?

Used one of the photos. Very small. It was very small, but used it in one of their like wrap-ups in the print edition too. No. By the end of that first year, the Encyclopedia Britannica used a couple of my photos to talk about yarn bombing. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Let's talk about semantics. Sure. Street art, graffiti, murals. Can you break down some of the terminology for people that don't know jack shit about this? Great. I would love to. So when you see art in the public space, there's two broad categories, commissioned and non-commissioned.

Commissioned work is stuff that's approved. So you have the wall owner's approval or the landowner's approval. Usually there's funding, whether that be city, state, federal funding or grant funding or private funding. Usually there's a curator involved. So an artist is selected through a process. Oftentimes there's decent amount of community involvement. So maybe the community is consulted before, during or after all of the above process.

Sometimes the idea comes first and then the artist is selected. Sometimes the artist comes first and then the idea comes through that. But the general idea being that it's this big, purposefully bulky process to make sure that artwork is created in the public space that has some reflection of the community, city, town, block, neighborhood, home, whatever that it's around.

Here in the U.S., there is this government art and architecture program. I did not know about this. It's been in place since 1962, and it reserves half of 1% of the construction cost of every federal building for commissioning artworks, and that includes murals. Now, what if big government or nobody asked you to art on them? On the non-commissioned side, it's artists speaking directly to the people around them. No approvals, no

Usually self-funded or almost always self-funded. And the two sub-buckets there are street art and graffiti. It all really started with modern day graffiti. The modern day graffiti movement started here in Philadelphia, so you're in the right place. Some could argue also in the Bronx right around the same time. But if my memory serves me correctly, even the New York Times credits Philadelphia as being the place it started. Yeah.

There were writers like Cornbread and Cool Earl and a number of others who would go around and write those tags, those names on different walls around the city. Cornbread famously did like the Jackson 5 jet and the elephant at the zoo. So he became a huge name and is still a working artist today.

Okay, so this is wild. You're not going to believe this, but Cornbread is not his given name. He was actually born Daryl Alexander McRae. And after getting into some trouble in his youth in the 1960s and asking the cook at a detention center for Cornbread every day, people started making fun of him by calling him Cornbread. And he embraced it. And he said, so freaking what, haters? And then when he was out, he used the tag Cornbread around his neighborhood to tell this girl named Cynthia that he loved her.

I don't think that this led to a relationship, but it did lead to more writing on walls, moving up from marker to spray paint. And then when this rumor spread that Cornbread had died, he was like, no, I didn't. And so he snuck into the city zoo in Philly and he painted Cornbread lives on an alive elephant. Also the Jackson fives private jet when it touched down for a Philly gig. So by the early 1970s word had gotten out. That was some paint that,

you get the word out. And graffiti was invented about 12 years after the invention of the spray can, which makes sense. You know, there is roller graffiti. So, you know, dipping a roller into paint and rolling it that way. But really the quickest form of graffiti is spray paint. And oftentimes you want to get in and out really quickly because you don't have anyone's approval. Yeah.

And then street art is kind of everything that's not graffiti. So graffiti is a tagline, sometimes a character. A tag is just a couple of letters usually that spells out a name. And it's spray paint on a wall. It's all about like hand control. So it's like the style of your hand that you have on the wall.

And as I said, sometimes there's characters. And then street art is sort of everything else you can imagine. So there are street artists who do stickers. There are street artists who do wheat paste. Wheat paste is paper and glue on a wall. Yarn bombing, it's creating some sort of insulation with yarn and attaching it to something. There are artists who do projection work. Street artists do projection work. Anything, this, that, and above, you know? So yeah, on the commission side, there's murals, monuments, and public art.

On the non-commissioned side, there's street art and graffiti. Those are the super broadest strokes we could take. When it comes to murals, I feel like the biggest thing I've always wondered is what counts as a mural? If I do something that is a postage stamp size on a wall, is that a mural? No.

At what point does something go from, this is a painting on the wall to this is a fucking mural? That's like, when does a drop of water become a lake sort of thing? So really kind of any paint on a wall that's commissioned would be a mural, even if it's just a dollop. Okay. See, this is good to know. I always wondered about that. And do you ever look back at like frescoes say in antiquity, where do you think frescoes lie in all this?

Oh, this is a beautiful question. I even remember taking art history when I was going to community college and my art history teacher saying like, yeah, graffiti has kind of always existed. They would carve things into like different buildings and you could say like the cave paintings of France are right. There's no permission there. I mean, we didn't even have property then. So like, is that commissioned mural work or is it street art or graffiti? Whatever it might be, this

urge for us as human beings, as this like consciousness on this earth, we want to paint, to decorate, to have the space around us reflect us and our experience in some way. And if you look at the murals in Philadelphia or a lot of cities around the globe, a lot of them kind of just depict the city around them and the people around them and the culture around them or different cultures in the world, different histories, different

So when we're talking about frescoes, yeah, maybe some of the earliest murals, right? Because certainly commissioned, certainly approved, certainly funded. So, and they're beautiful. It's so interesting. Yeah.

Just a side note, don't call just any mural that features people in robes and stuff a fresco. So fresco comes from fresh in Italian, like a fresco. And frescoes are painted using pigment that's laid directly into wet plaster. So like the wall's going up, the fresco is going up. Hey.

Hence, fresh. Is that fun? Also, it's a huge pain in the ass. I drive by a mural and go, that's pretty. But I don't know anything. I'm like, is that acrylic? Is that enamel? Is that spray paint? Do certain media lend themselves better to elements on the East Coast as opposed to like a mural in Joshua Tree or something? Like when people are making murals, what do they have in their trunk when they roll up to make murals?

Yeah, there's a few different ways you can make murals. That's a great question. And we're actually making some right now on Front Street here in Philadelphia. In addition to running a blog, I have a curatorial part of Streets Department called Streets Department Walls. And right now we're creating four new murals with four up and coming artists on Front Street.

Stay tuned for a field trip where I stand on a Philly street corner at midnight with Conrad watching muralists do their thing and asking them what their inspo was, how they do it, where to get a good cheesesteak, etc. You can make murals with acrylic outdoor paint.

or with spray paint. But I would say most murals are created with acrylic outdoor paint. Most murals are created to have some length of time. If you wanted to live more than a couple of years because weather will deteriorate it, the sun will start to remove some of that color, you'll often want to do this clear coat that goes on top that costs a decent amount, right? So they're under the commissioned bucket. So there's funders, there's approvals, there's artist selections.

murals aren't cheap to make for the most part. Yeah, how much does it cost to make a mural? So yeah, murals can go anywhere from a few thousand dollars to a hundred plus thousand dollars. It really depends on who the artist is you're hiring, the wall, all of it, the materials, how long you want it to last. So if you are, let's say, a homeowner who has a great wall, who would love a mural on their wall but can't pay $10,000, $20,000, $40,000, $50,000, whatever it might be to create a mural there, you

In a place like Philadelphia, what you can do is submit your wall to the mural program and it'll be put into a batch of walls that project managers and curators can look at as potential opportunities for murals. And it can be funded through that organization. And you can have a mural on your wall with that money. So for you, it's free, but everyone's still paid. What about trends in murals? Because you've been covering this for so long. You're such an expert in this.

What have you seen in terms of content-wise over the last decade or so? What used to be depicted and where is it trending? So this is a great question. So one thing that's really clear is that we're in an era now where graffiti and street art is so nostalgic. I mean, graffiti is, I can't do the math on that, over 50 years old at this point. Mm-hmm.

So that aesthetic is so nostalgic for people and people just really love it that we're seeing a lot of like mural programs be a little more open to those sorts of styles of mural making.

To give you an example, when the Mural Arts Program, which is 38 years old in Philadelphia, started in the 80s, it's today now the biggest, it started as the Anti-Graffiti Network. And it was a part of the mayor at the time, Wilson Good, wanted to create a division of the city that would cover up graffiti with murals. And they hired a person named Jane Golden, who is now still the executive director of the Mural Arts Program.

And her theory of the case was, well, let's actually hire the graffiti writers. So like while we're out there, if we see someone tagging, we'll say, hey, do you want a job? Now, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know, however you want to see it, you know, think of the 70s. You can think of train graffiti in New York. You can, you know, I think that those images come fresh to a lot of people's minds who've seen movies or entertainment or old photos. There was a real pushback still about graffiti in the 80s. So yeah.

Even when graffiti writers were hired, their talents were used, but they were making more depictorial murals. So murals that would depict, you know, the communities around them, civic leaders, people from history. A lot of those sort of early anti-graffiti murals were very literal, let's say.

let's say. There's a very famous one that's still there now. It's been there for like 30 plus years on the side of a car mechanics place. And the mural depicts a car mechanic and what it looks like inside, you know? So this is the 1985 Blatt Tire mural in the Callow Hill area of Philly. And it was made by artist Joshua Kaufman and commissioned by the then called Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network and Marv Blatt, the owner of Blatt Tire and Auto.

And it's in this flat, blocky, almost cartoonish style. And it shows these cars parked in a line and a few cars up on lifts as if they're getting worked on. And it's now this...

City landmark, and it's been restored twice, and it's 40-year history. And whatever Blatt paid to have it done, excellent investment. So much Blatt for the buck. Mural arts did take chances, though. They did this Diego Rivera mural right around where their offices were in the 80s.

But very few were in any kind of graffiti style or street art style. They were all like... Like are trending toward fine art? Nothing was experimental. There wasn't even like abstract murals, really. By the late 2000s, early 2010s, mural art started taking more risks because they could. The culture had moved to a place where graffiti and street art themes started to be more appreciated and many more abstract murals. So now when you walk around, you're more likely to see abstract murals than you ever were in the 80s or 90s.

And things are just more experimental. So I think that's been the evolution, this acceptance of this culture, which has been really important. Just think of the irony there, right? And mural art started as the anti-graffiti network. And this was the same for a lot of cities across the country. There was this battle against graffiti. I guess it was a part of this like broken windows theory of local governance, right? That sort of took hold in the 80s and 90s. Like how can we fix graffiti?

quote unquote, fix these small problems as opposed to addressing like real systemic problems. Like why don't we raise the minimum wage? No, why don't we, you know? Yeah. And now 30 plus years later, they're hiring graffiti writers to create murals that look like graffiti. It's so funny. It's right. That's the turnaround.

So from its original name of the Anti-Graffiti Network to the now Mural Arts Program. And founder Jane Golden has been quoted as saying, we quickly realized that we were a pro-art program, not anti-anything. And when you go to different cities, if you ever travel to different cities, do you see stylistic differences? Like if you're in LA or let's say you're looking at pictures of Tokyo, are you ever like, oh shit, they do it so differently there? Yeah.

Yeah, I just came back from Mexico City. I spent a week in Mexico City. I loved it. And it's always a response to the city that you're in. Every city's culture is a bit different. All the artists there have different energies and flows.

And that's what I get really attracted to. You know, there is this like growing trend in some cities, I won't name them, where they create little like mural districts. Okay. Where they bring in huge name muralists and they create a little outdoor museum. And those are fantastic. I've been to plenty. Dish the shit, Conrad. Come on. I'll name the most famous one. Wyn Wyn Walls, right? Okay. In Miami. Okay.

And when you do that, it's great. I think those are super valuable spaces, but we also need, you know, to support the local artists in whatever city you're in because you never know who's going to be the next big artist. So look in the work of Aaron, A-R-E-N, who paints clowns in like magnifying mirror level detail with face paint caked into wrinkles and stray silver hairs kind of escaping wigs. Really gorgeous. Yeah.

Like you can almost smell the clowns. And he did one to a very famous clown from that city. There were a couple of famous clowns from Mexico City I didn't know. I think comedy is really important there. But looking at it, I was like, wow, this is really interesting. There's no clown murals in Philly. Yeah. I think in America, like clowns are kind of scary, right? That would not have been something I would expect. Like, oh yes, of course, there'll be a lot of public clown art. That's not a thought I would ever have. And I feel like in L.A.,

Wow.

That mural artists might be getting fucked a little bit more because it's like, well, this is the great exposure. Great exposure. Great exposure. Who are you? Your insight is spot on. So this is... You have just opened up a can of worms. Okay, so let's talk about this. First of all, yes. This is why funding is really important for these projects. So...

And the idea of sort of outdoor mural museums with only big name artists comes from this idea of usually the funding is maybe a developer or someone who wants to create a tourist attraction. That's where like complicated questions around gentrification come in, because especially if you look at Wynwood, there's a huge conversation happening there about like it has transformed the neighborhood around it because it's become such a tourist attraction. And there's a whole debate to be had there about.

So when, yeah, like what is the intent of the funding? What is the intent there? So yeah, when you see murals that are all about like creating Instagramable moments on like shopping district streets. Not to mention the many debates about neighborhoods pushing out long established locals. And the real estate tycoon behind Wynwood Walls called this gentlification. Guess what? People did not like that term.

Sure. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. And I've taken photos in front of those things too. Like, okay, do it. But there needs to be kind of an equal playing field here. You know, there's lots of private funding for murals because there's lots of incentive, especially in the Instagram age and the TikTok age of like, if we put murals here, people will come out, people will photograph them, people will take selfies in front of them. And then the businesses around this sort of district that we create will benefit from it.

But murals and public art can't just exist for capitalism, in my opinion. So we need to make sure that our local, especially our local governments and cities and towns across the country are funding and creating these public art programs because it's really important. You know, a lot of the projects I work on right now are through Mural Arts Philadelphia. They're the partner I work with, the nonprofit partner I work with, and a lot of it's city funding. Right.

So every two years I do this project called To the Polls where we build walls in Love Park, which is a central park here in the city of Philadelphia. And we hire six artists to create six temporary murals about why they vote. Okay.

And they are selfie walls. And the idea is people are supposed to come out, take selfies in front of them, take photos of it. And just like the I voted sticker, it's something that you can share with the people around you about that you vote, right? It's nonpartisan. So you don't have to say who, why, what, or why you're voting.

but it's just like I vote, right? Because one of the reasons people vote is positive peer pressure. And the more they see those messages, they're more likely to vote. Now for more on political sociology, you can see our 2020 episode about voter turnout and suppression. And we also had a stuffology episode about voting from 2018, but the audio was really rough and it was a lot about the 2018 congressional elections in the US. But we also have a two-part nomology episode on constitutional law. It's a two-parter. In one part, I read you the entire story

Constitution of the United States with some added footnotes. So enjoy. But yes, pro-voting murals. And if we did that with Coca-Cola, I mean, Coca-Cola, give me money, I won't be mad. But you know, if we did that with Coca-Cola, who knows what it would be? It wouldn't be a voting thing. It'd be something about Coca-Cola. Yeah. So we need, we really need public funding for these programs. Otherwise, it will all be tourist attractions, which...

Again, nothing against the tourist attractions. I think those are valuable. It's really valuable to be able to live in a city and go, oh, you know, I've never seen this big muralist. Let me go here and see it. But if you're not supporting the local artists there, if you're not creating murals, you know, for the communities around them, you know, you're missing out. What about in the mural capital areas?

Okay.

Kind of like if Pokemons were murals. Go find them. So if you want to get a real sense of the murals, you have to take like a trolley tour or something to go around the city and see them all. In Philly, it's much less about creating these tourist attractions and more about like, how can we use public art to

Hire local artists, work with local communities to tell the history and stories of our cities through our public art. Do most murals have an agenda of some kind, either to raise an appreciation for something that's depicted, to make the experience of walking down that street better? Do you find kind of like a common motivator for a lot of mural artists?

Wow, the way you phrased that question makes me think of Percy Street in Philadelphia for a specific reason. But I would say the overarching answer to that is murals are here to reflect...

us to reflect our lived experiences to reflect our histories to reflect our hopes and dreams for the future even the abstract murals are here to excite us in ways that maybe you know make our brain chemistry work a little different so we can open up different pathways in our mind who knows the way you phrase that makes me think of Percy Street so Percy Street is this weird alley here in Philadelphia you know Philadelphia is mostly a grid system and

So if you're on any street in Philly, you can see all four intersections. But Percy Street, the way it's carved out, when you're in the middle of Percy Street, you can't see either end of the street.

And it's near Pat's and Gino's. I'm sure every listener might know that we have cheesesteaks here in the city of Philadelphia. Familiar with it. Heard of it. As a vegetarian, I will not comment. There's got to be some vegetarian. Oh, there are. There are. Are there any? What's a good, just a quick internal aside into this Percy Street comment. Is there a good vegetarian cheesesteak, vegan cheesesteak in the city? I think Govinda's. Let's say Govinda's. I don't know if they're still there. Here's the secret about being a

You don't eat that many cheesesteaks. I know. I imagine. Well, also, if you want a cheesesteak in Philly, everyone's neighborhood shop is their favorite place. It's none of these places you would have heard about. Maybe Jim's. I've heard good things about Jim's. But anyway. But that's a cheesesteak aside. But Percy Street. Percy Street. So, yeah, it's this weird street where it's near Pats and Gino's. So there's Nightlife over there. Pats and Gino's is famously open 24-7. Yeah.

So what the neighbors around the street started noticing was like people would go back there, maybe take pee and poop. Sure. Oh, yeah. Okay. Outdoor the tree. Getting fights back there. What are the qualities that you wouldn't want happening behind your bedroom window? Oh, okay. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Okay.

So they had this really smart idea where they hired an artist named Drew Bellew and David Gwynn to collaborate on a mural. They raised money and they did this light installation mural. So David Gwynn is a painter and Drew Bellew, I might be pronouncing his last name wrong. I'm so sorry, Drew. It's spelled very French because it's French, but you say Drew's last name, Bellew.

is a light installation artist. So the mural has sort of this geometric-y kind of background with bright, beautiful colors. And then at night it lights up because there's like neon tubes or LED tubes. I always say neon and they go, no, it's LED. I know, I know. What do I know? I feel like neon is a descriptor for the quality of the light. Yes, exactly what it looks like. Right. And it became a tourist attraction and

And I wrote an article about it and I mentioned how this is a really interesting way to address, you know, a street where what's the alternative? Like, how would you make that street safer? It's a funny way to make that street safer to make it a tourist attraction of sorts. So instead of people going back there to take a pee after they go to Pat's and Gino's, they're going back there to take selfies and whatever.

There's a whole other conversation about how we should have more public restrooms. That aside... Agreed. I've written that too. I'm a freelance writer still for WHRI, which is our NPR affiliate. I wrote a whole article about it. But it was a really interesting way to think about public safety. Can public art be used to create a safer street? And Percy Street has now become a walkable street with maybe a half dozen murals, and they're kind of rotating. It's really interesting, Percy Street. So...

What's the intent behind murals? It really depends on the project, depends on the funder, it depends on the artist, it depends on the community around it. But one way or another, yeah, it's about reflecting who we are and making our public space better, I think. So this mural is titled Electric Street, and it features blocks of brightly painted stripes and zigzags.

And each one is outlined in these soft purple and green glowing tubes of light. And it looks as though you turn a corner into an alleyway and then suddenly you're just like in an arcade in 1992. And I'm sure you get asked this all the time, so forgive me. But just to get people excited about the notion of murals, do you have a couple murals that you have seen in the world or that are just like some ones that you really remember that just...

made an impact that kind of lodged in your mind? Yeah, I mean, I'll bring it home to Philly. I'll start there. There's a mural here called Common Threads by Meg Saligman. And, you know, I have a streets department podcast. It's kind of on hiatus right now, but I also produce the Mural Arts Podcast. And I got to interview Meg about that. It's a really interesting story. In the early 90s, she saw this wall. It was the sunset. Just imagine it. She's driving down Spring Garden Street, which is like a four-lane street here in Philadelphia. She sees this five-story wall on the side of what used to be a former school. Now it's whatever it is, apartments. And she's like,

And the sun was setting and she goes, I want to do a mural on that wall. This is back in the day when mural arts is yet to become mural arts. It's still the Andy Graffiti Network. And they're doing sort of smaller projects around the city. So this was originally conceived in 1993, although it would be four years before completion. And she goes, how am I going to do this? She spends the next couple of years going to local high schools around the wall, figuring out what the wall could be, figuring out what the mural could be.

and knocking on the wall owner's door saying, "Can I do it?" He says, "Yes." The theme of the mural ends up being connecting performance artists here in the city, dancers, contemporary dancers from the schools around there with maybe like Victorian dancers and that the idea of like performance art through like the decades common threads were all sort of connected in one way or another.

And she applies for like a bunch of different grants because each of the grants she get would give her $5,000 and it just wasn't enough to do this huge mural. She gets to the end. She starts painting it by hand by herself, realizes she needs a bit more money for scaffolding. Down to no money, Meg petitioned the Mural Arts Program, then the Anti-Graffiti Network, and they funded the rest of it. And it still stands on the corner of North Broad and Spring Garden Streets.

And it's this gorgeous kind of sepia-toned scene of this diverse array of people in corseted and bustled gowns intermingling with people in then-contemporary late 1990s fashion. And it's huge and detailed and ornate. It's stunning. And when Dr. McAnulty drove me past it later, I gasped a gasp. I was like, whoo!

Look at that.

We have two seconds to think about this. Let's just do a mural depicting the business that's inside, right? And what Meg did, spending those years she took to think about the idea, work with the community, create it, and the final result, I beg people, as you're listening to this, go search Meg Saligman, Common Threads. The mural is stunning. It changed mural making in the city. It got international press, was beloved by everyone.

And as I believe Jane Golden talked about later, the executive director of mural arts, it opened up new funding. All of a sudden people were saying, wait, murals cannot just be covering up things we don't like, but actually like a huge, really interesting thing for the city and neighborhoods that they're in. And this is where like public art gets really interesting because I've seen so many murals that when you first asked that, my mind went to this artist named Hati, who is

is he works with yarn and he did this installation in Asbury Park, New Jersey. If you've never been to Asbury, it's a great little beach town, very queer, very fun, very artsy. They have a fun little mural wall and they hired Hot Tea for two summers in a row to do this yarn installation. So they have this architecture. I think it's like a, I don't know, some very important part of what the boardwalk used to be. It was kind of run down, but it's this beautiful old architecture and he did this hanging yarn installation. The yarn is,

hung from the ceiling, I want to say 20 feet down, and it was like a full block of it. And every whisper of wind would move the installation. So it was almost like the sea, but in the air and colorful. And I was so drawn to it because of that delicateness of it, because they said, look,

The way this is hung and with the wind from the beach, this could last a day. This could last two days. And then the funders were fine with that. They were like, this is a risk we're taking. This is great. So I went up right afterwards and saw it was incredible. And it ended up lasting all summer. They had to detangle it almost every day.

But that ephemerality was so just my mind, I don't think, could totally wrap around it. And it was just so interesting to me. What do you think the most famous mural in the wall is? In the world? Yeah, in the wall. The most famous mural in the world, I need to fact check this, but I don't know if the Last Supper is a fresco. I don't know if that counts as a mural. But what do you think are some murals when people think of murals, they go, like these? I would...

Bet you that most people don't think about murals. If you said, what's the most famous mural in the world? I don't think people would have an answer. I know. I'm wondering... What would be your answer? I feel like I... If I had to guess, I was going to say Banksy. I was going to say either that or On the Swing. But yeah, the Banksy Balloon Heart. Definitely. I think if you said, who's the most famous street artist? I think he would rise to the top. Maybe Obey. But I think...

When you ask people about murals, I think their mind goes to the ones around them. Yeah. And maybe that's good. You know, murals are so personal. And local. That's the whole fucking point is that you cannot take a mural on a touring exhibition. It is so location-based. And it's a really interesting question to ask, too, because, like, art is so personal, too. So it's like...

What's the most famous TV show in the world? I don't know, but I know what I watch, right? The reason I started this blog is because I was walking around, right? I broke my leg. I decided not to bike. I was walking around with my camera. And I really started to appreciate and notice things more and be curious about them. That's all this effort is, is I'm curious about these works around me.

And this world around me and like, why paint this? Like, why was this painted? How was this painted? What's the next thing that's going to be painted? Yeah, I'm just so curious. And I think that's what's really interesting about this work. But the murals in our neighborhoods are really like...

one of the easiest ways for folks to connect with like visual art painting. And this is so important. I really hate that we live in a world where like some people think art's not for them. Art is everything. Are you picking clothes to wear every morning? That's art. Are you deciding how to do your makeup every morning? That's art. Are you deciding what car you drive? That's art. This is all art. It's all expression. It's all fun and creativity. And don't put a wall between you and paint on a wall just because it's paint on a wall.

It's just such a great way. Art makes you feel things and we deserve to have these feelings. We deserve to go explore how things make us feel and react and open up new pathways in our mind, right? That's how I think about finding these murals. Everyone's like Pokemon Go. You know, it's like every time I find one, I'm like, oh, this is a new one. Then I want to find everything out about it. Or first I want to sit there and be like, how does this make me feel? Okay, what is this saying to me?

And then I'll want to investigate and see what it's about. But yeah, like just go connect with art. That's such a good point. And it's so bonkers to think of how expensive it is.

Yeah.

How much power that image has, I feel like is the beauty of it, is the reach. You know what I mean? Just stand in front of something and go, how do I feel? Yeah.

Okay. And then next one. You don't have, you know, it's not a test at the end of the day. Maybe that's where school gets us wrong. Because the only thing I remember about art school or art class was like names and dates. Yep. It's probably the least important part of art. Yeah, I know. Okay, before we get to your Patreon questions, we're having so much fun yammering just a few more technicalities of murals. Are most murals titled? You mentioned Meg's. That's a great question. It's about 50-50. A lot are not titled. Yeah. Okay. I wasn't sure about that. And then also...

Can we touch on briefly the etiquette of why murals don't get tagged as much as a blank wall? Yeah, it goes back to how we started this. The number one rule of creating in the public space, commissioned or non-commissioned, permission or no permission, is you don't go over someone. It's just a longstanding rule. If a mural goes up, you don't go over it. It's just respect at the end of the day. So yeah, you don't go over someone else's work. It's code. You

You don't do that. And it's generally respected, although there is some pretty great global exposure if you tag a still wet Banksy, which happens.

But typically, street artists show mutual respect, even if it's just not stickering over someone else's sticker. You don't do it. And just in case, though, there are coatings like Mural Shield or there are novel hydrogels that are impregnated with gentle paint dissolvers, according to the 2021 paper, selective removal of overpaintings from street art using an environmentally friendly nanostructured fluid loaded in highly retentive hydrogels.

Although other vandalism removal methods can include, news to me, laser ablation, ultrasonication, plasma spray, thermal spray, dry ice blasting, and soda blasting. And that removes the top few microns of overpaint to restore the mural. And is there ever a backlash against vandalism?

funded public art, like, well, that was a tagging space for the community. And now we've got a commissioned art piece. So there isn't that available real estate for local graffiti. Is there ever any tension with that? Yeah, I think you have to be really intentional about the spaces you use or the spaces you don't use. A lot of the murals, probably most of them in Philly are on the side of row homes. You know, Philly has this great architecture for murals. We have blocks and blocks of row homes, which are...

What's another word for them? Like brick homes? I don't know. And wherever there's an empty lot or if there's a lot before an intersection, the side of it will have no windows. So it's like a perfect wall for a mural. A lot of like where street art and graffiti is happening is on abandoned like warehouse structures and construction materials where it would be like

hard or impossible to create murals. There have been instances like about 10 years ago and part of that project was it covered a lot of tags and big graffiti pieces along the Amtrak corridor.

According to the project's creator, they talked with folks in the graffiti community to make sure they didn't go over the tags of anyone who had passed on to protect their tags. Because if you see a tag that's old, there's a lot of respect for that artist and or potentially the artist or that writer has potentially passed away, unfortunately. But it still got a lot of pushback. It was sort of like...

This is our spot. This is a graffiti space, so get out of here. So this was the German-born installation artist Katarina Gross, whose work looks like pigmented explosions went off and detonated these huge sprays of color over each other. Part of her idea was to do these big sort of

abstract strokes that kind of look like if a giant came down from outer space and painted this with crayons, painted the Samtrak corridor, big crayons. So her intent was the graffiti will come back and it will cover this eventually. But it came back real quick. So there was a lot of tension there. So yeah, I think just the creators and everyone's got to be on the same page. And sometimes, you know,

folks in the graffiti and street art world just want to do graffiti and street art but then some of them want to come into the mural world want to get jobs and get opportunities so find those people too and support them I've seen so many artists so many street artists go from doing wheat paste or yarn bombs to doing huge mural projects with mural arts or other folks um and now do both you know it can be a way to get people's attention you know creating street art questions from the audience questions bubble

But before your questions, let's contribute to a few worthy causes. And this week, Conrad shows the William Way Center, which provides everything from social groups, networking events, counseling and support services to art exhibitions and cultural experiences for the LGBTQIA plus communities throughout greater Philly. And Conrad says they do incredible work and they also have a whole art gallery.

So they support local artists as well. And because this episode would not have been possible without the knowledge and the intros from squid scientist, community organizer, and street artist, Dr. Sarah McAnulty, we're also sending a donation to her nonprofit, Skype a Scientist, which matches scientists with groups and classrooms for free. They're amazing. And right now, Skype a Scientist needs our help. So to fund their program in 2025, they're

Ologies Toothologist, Sarah McAnulty, is selling these extremely adorable Frog Facts Advent Calendars. Every day you scratch off a sparkly sticker to reveal a new frog fact. They're so cute, so wholesome. And if she sells 5,000, she can fund Skype a Scientist for all of 2025. So let's

Let's help her. I really want to help her. Get one at squidfax.net. They're 25 bucks, squidfax.net. Get one for every child in your life. You will change their life. They will always know about frogs. So let's sell out her Frog Facts admin calendars. You deserve one. Everyone deserves one. Squidfax.net. Okay. Thank you to sponsors of the show who make those donations possible.

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Okay, so on to your questions, which you can submit via our Patreon, patreon.com slash ologies. Many of you wanted to know how murals and public art can affect change. And I'm looking at you, patrons. Sarah DeJesus, Sinead McDonald, Nico Price, Maddie Gordy, Becky DeSassi, Seagrass Scientist, Matt Herschel, Michelle Boyle, Lisa Saint, and Emily Stauffer. So revolutions, labor movements, civil rights.

pandemics. How does public art change us as a whole? A lot of people had questions about murals and their community. In Shelby Reardon's words, is there a way to measure the value a mural brings to a community? And have murals been used to change public opinions of certain parts of cities? How is that looked at critically? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And there are

I mean, certainly there's value, right? That's why there's public and private funding for this art form. There's real value. I mean, colloquially, that's why these business districts will often create these murals and sometimes selfie murals to attract people, right? Murals, especially in dense quantities, will attract people, right? So these mural districts end up popping up places.

For community, it's different, right? It may be harder to measure. But, you know, in Philly, for example, I'll give you, we're in Fishtown. There's a mural here created by Ka Yaney that celebrates Philly's trans community, right? So Ka worked with the Moore's Home, which is, I think, the country's only place where if you're trans and recovering from addiction, it's the only place you can go, where they have, like, housing. So they're hugely important.

and worked with the organization and folks from that organization for about a year, found a wall here in Fishtown, and now there's this incredible mural that has words from a lot of the trans folks who participated in this mural making process.

It says, we will survive. We are strong. We are frustrated. I'm paraphrasing here because I don't remember the words exactly. So this is at the Morris Home, which is a residential recovery program specifically serving the transgender and gender expansive community. And the mural reads, we're trans, we're survivors, we are joyful, we feel rage, we are universal. But all the different emotions that folks in this community felt were

So how do you measure that? How do you measure, you know, particularly now being a trans person in this world, the value of like seeing yourself and your community represented in a mural that's not tucked away anywhere. It's on Frankfurt Avenue, which is a big street here in Philadelphia. It's huge. Lots of people pass out every single day. So I imagine that for the folks in that community, it's really valuable. Or I can tell you as a queer man, I love that we have a gayborhood with lots of murals that celebrate gay men and queer culture and,

LGBTQ rights and different victories that we've won over the years. And I think that's where it gets really personal. It's hard to measure the personal. I'm not doing lightning round, am I? No, no, no. That's a great answer. And on the way to get a breakfast sandwich, we passed a great...

painted on masonry for fire extinguishers. And it was peeling and it looks like it's been there for a while. Ghost sign. I mean, it looks like art at this point, but there's also old advertisements on masonry buildings in like downtown LA for like cigars, like five cent cigars. And I'm wondering if something deteriorates enough and it no longer has a purpose to advertise a brand, does it become...

Like an artifact.

Do you know what I mean? People email me all the time about ghost signs. Patron John Worcester asked, have murals replaced the billboards that you used to see on top of buildings? But as Conrad explains, those old signs aren't always hastily replaced. Same with the painted ones on the side of buildings. I love them. So like a lot of old advertisements were like painted onto walls. And then yeah, when that company is long gone and they, you know, it's the other ghost signs and there's a whole contingent of people who love them and

Oh, yeah. Ghost signs. People love them. I never knew there was a word for them. We love nostalgia. Yeah. You know, it fits in that nostalgia. It's like apocalypse light. It's like archaeology. Michaela Humiston and Tarina both wanted to know, how does an artist scale a mural? Marissa and Hester Dingle wanted to know, how are designs transferred from the drawing board to a wall and...

Archie George, this is a great question. What tricks do muralists use to preserve perspective on this tall vertical surface? And I've always wanted to know that. A bunch of people ask that. Camille Krauss, Olivia Eliason, and Crystal Simons. How do you make a mural where you don't stand back and go, everyone looks a little fucked up here? Unless that's the point. Right. Or maybe it's the point if you did fuck it up. Right.

This is a great question. How have we not talked about this yet? So there are a couple of ways to make murals. You can paint directly onto the walls. We talked about before with spray paint or, you know, outdoor paint. You can also do it with something that's colloquially, well, I'm really stuck on that word, known as parachute cloth, which is basically wallpaper. So if you paint directly onto the wall, most people will project.

Very few murals are gigantic. Most are a couple stories tall and you will go out at night. This is what I'm doing tonight, by the way, at Front Street with our muralist there. What? You go at night. Come with me for a field trip episode at this location. That episode will be out very soon. You project under the wall, you trace it out, and then when all the tracing's done, you can start painting during the day, basically coloring the lines. That's the most common way to do murals like that.

Parachute cloth, on the other hand, is large sheets of cloth that you can take into a studio. You could project on the parachute cloth. You could print out pieces of paper and trace from the paper.

The difference between parachute cloth and painting directly on the wall is often there's two reasons why you might do it. Painting directly on the wall is cheaper. Okay. But it can deteriorate quicker, especially if you don't have that final clear coat that goes on top that protects it from weather and sun. Parachute cloth, on the other hand, can be more durable, can last a bit longer. You'll still need that clear coat on top.

But what it also allows is for if your mural program is more community oriented, what you can do is you can have the artists work for however long they work to create the design and then

the community, the neighbors, whoever helped influence the mural can come out and paint it with the artists. So in Philly, there's a lot of community paint days for that reason. And there's also kind of a fun aside here. If the neighbors paint the mural themselves, they're less likely to complain about it when it goes up. So one of the things that's... You're never going to satisfy everyone, right? Like art is very subjective. So the idea of creating...

permanent or semi-permanent public art on your block, like someone's bound to not like it. So if you invite everyone out to be a part of the process, they're more likely to like it when it goes up. It's like, I made it. I love it. Kind of subversive, but I love it. Yes, exactly.

I did this little piece in the corner. I did that rose. Yeah. I'm the artist. Therefore, I love it. So right before we recorded this, Dr. Sarah McAnulty had mobilized a bunch of locals to help paint a mural in her neighborhood. And the pictures, it looked like nice, sweaty fun, 10 out of 10, find a muralist to help out, make some friends. And Adam Weaver wanted to know though,

How do you connect your murals to the communities that they're displayed in? Do you speak to people on the street? Do you host town hall sessions? Do you sit at a bar and collect ideas? As well as, let's see, Spencer James Parks says, if you wanted to propose a mural to your city, what department of the city do you have to say, hey, I have a great idea. I got a wall over here. Put something cool on it. Oh, this is a great question. And it's really...

Going to depend on your city. So there are plenty of cities that have mural programs or art commissioners. It's really different everywhere. If you live in a city or a town that doesn't have some sort of art commissioner, doesn't have like a mural program or something like that, your best bet would be to reach out to your city council person, your local representative, and have a conversation with them.

Most city council people, especially if you have a good one, are really open to listen to this. There's also the potential that there's a private organization in your city or town that's doing it that even your city council person could probably point you to. Okay, cool. Lizzy Carr wants to know, what's up with those butterfly wing murals? I feel like every other business I go to now has one on the wall. Instagram. Instagram changed the world. All of a sudden there were artists who would create stuff that could come down overnight. So like...

You know, when I first started the blog in 2011, like Instagram was very new and it was very sort of traditional street art styles. Lots of stickers. In Philly, we have this huge sticker culture, a lot of handmade stickers. We paste. But around 2013, when Instagram was really hot, you saw artists take more risks.

because they knew that even if their piece was up just for a couple of hours, it would get photographed a ton, especially if it was like big and interesting enough. You know, one example of that is a yarn bomber here in Philly named Ischnitz, who famously yarn bombed

the Rocky statue, which is outside. I'm sure you heard of it. Yeah. Outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She yarn bombed a sweater on him that said, go see the art. And of course it was very non-commissioned. I like that language. And so it got ripped off very quickly, but enough people photographed it where those photos now live.

forever online. And that's the weird conversation we're going to have is like, now the public space is the internet. So like a street art quote unquote installation that takes place in the real world could have a longer life in the public digital space after it's created than when it's actually up. It's a different, interesting way to think about street art where you can take more chances. Yeah. On that note, Greg Wallach wants to know, does breaking the law matter if you're making things really cute? What

kind of trouble with the law could a muralist get into? Or is that a thing where a cop might show up and say, I have bigger problems than this? Yeah, well, let's be real here. Okay, so they use the word muralist, and I would use mural as on the commission side. So if you're making a mural, if you're making public art, it's commissioned, so you have approval. What I think your questioner is asking about is the non-commissioned side. Yeah, it is...

illegal to do stuff without permission in the public space, even if it's an abandoned building or construction material, depending on where you're at and sometimes who you are. You might get more criticism from police officers that's driving by or

or a wall owner. Even in Philly, where street art is pretty beloved, I've been out with artists where someone will come up and try to stop them, and usually the artist will just stop. So yeah, there's definitely risk involved there, and you got to know your city and your town to know it. I mentioned before that in Philadelphia and a lot of cities, a lot of street artists, non-commissioned artists, graffiti writers, will go on abandoned buildings or construction materials, often because there's usually like

do it mentality around those spaces, especially in big cities where as your questioner alludes to, there are more important issues to address.

You know, if your concern is about a sticker on an abandoned building, why not go question the person who abandoned the building and say, why don't you reinvest in the city as opposed to worrying about the sticker? Can you imagine if we had an episode on abandoned buildings, Syke? We do. It's the Domecology episode, which we will link in the show notes. An entire episode about abandoned buildings. So definitely like it's not without risk doing that non-commissioned stuff. Yeah.

It's why I'm particularly in favor of places like free wall spaces. So in Philly right now, we have this place at 5th and South Street. It is a free wall space. It's a construction wall that's put up around where a fire happened on a famous cheesesteak place, Jim's.

And the neighborhood association and the wall and the building owner has given approval for street artists and graffiti writers to come out and do whatever they want to the construction material while reconstruction of the building is happening for the next however long, couple months, year. I love that. You know, and the walls become this magnet for artists and photographers and people over the last couple of months. Okay, so I made fun of LA earlier for having too many photo op murals, but I shouldn't because as they say, no cap, LA.

Actually, a bonkers artsy place. It's great. And LA has been called the mural capital of the world too. But both Philly and LA have Wikipedia footnotes acknowledging that the other one gets called that. So I'm going to just consider them sister cities in that distinction. And in LA, we got a lot of blank stucco that can host people's dreams and visions. But we also have a lot of very expensive real estate that sits empty while the cost of living soars outstripped.

out of reach for, like, everyone. NBC4, people in action here spraying the graffiti towers in downtown L.A. It is a crime, a violation of city law, but some call it art. So very rich developers bankrupting luxury projects means...

I guess, free wall space for those brave enough to confront their fear of heights and also potential arrest. So if you are in a city or a town where maybe there aren't free wall spaces, maybe you could talk to your city council person and fight for them. We want to have these places to reflect ourselves. And look, you can set guardrails there too, right? Like,

You can have rules for your free wall space. No derogatory language, no curse words, no nudity. You can make the rules whatever they are, because certainly we wouldn't want someone to put something up that was harmful to anyone. But yeah, I think the more free wall spaces in cities and towns, the better. And I feel like this dovetails with a question a few people had. Hannah Boyd asked, how is it that some street artists like Banksy are praised for their work when other artists are viewed as vandals? And Tim and Ashley Flintoff asked,

asked, does the difference relate to issues of racism and classism, especially in urban environments? Michelle Lee asked that as well. And Gemma asked, how has anti-Black racism affected Black muralists? What are the conversations like, you know, in different cities and also just as time goes on since you've been doing this? Yeah, absolutely. This is like any sort of graffiti or street art panel I watch or participate in, you hear that

from artists and writers who are Black that this,

they get more stops, more criticism from police, unfortunately. So we've talked about the same factor in many episodes, like wildlife ecology with Karina Newsome about doing field work in the marshes in Georgia and being forced to stay on plantations as university housing. And check out the Black AF in STEM episode that was sparked by an incident in Central Park in which a woman named Amy Cooper verbally assaulted birder Christian Cooper.

no relation to each other, with slurs. So it's not just in art. This is obviously systemic. And absolutely. That is why folks like Banksy and Obey were able to kind of get away with it and potentially other artists weren't. One of the reasons why I'm really in favor of this free wall space, right? We deserve to have spaces in our public space that we can be creative on. The other thing I would say too is make sure, if you're interested in this, which I hope everyone is,

Find out who's making the public art in your town and make sure that they're selecting from a diverse array of artists as well. Make sure, you know, that it's not just all white men who are getting the public art sculptures in your town, that your monuments aren't just to white men. I mean, that's a whole other conversation. And that the artists making those monuments are diverse. It's another way to sort of push back at this.

systemic racism that's involved in sort of all many parts of American life, all parts of American life, including this part. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look around. That's another reason to be curious about the public art in your town, the murals in your town. Not only what are they depicting, what stories are they telling, but what stories are missing from the town you're in? You know, we live in Philadelphia where,

I think we have a really good mural program that has done a lot of great work when it comes to diversity and inclusion. But when you look at our monuments, for example, there are almost no monuments to women. And I don't know if this is a fact, but women were in history. Did you know that? We've been around. We've been around. Seriously? Publicly or mostly just making soup at home? So...

Just in Philly, it's just that one flag. I think the one woman did, I forget her name. Mrs. Ross. Betsy. And that's actually where you could kind of like things get a little blurry. There is the Betsy Ross house, but there's a project called Monument Lab that I encourage everyone to look at. They're doing a lot of really great work. They started in Philly. Now they're around the world asking the question about what is an appropriate monument for the current age? What is an appropriate monument for your city right now? Just literally holds a different weight in our physical space.

in maybe how we honor it or pay, you know, it feels heavy. Now that's particularly interesting here in Philadelphia. We live in a city that's majority black. So the fact that most of our monuments don't represent any of that history is really a problem that will slowly hopefully be fixed.

A Harriet Tubman monument will be built here in Philadelphia soon. I think there's a commission open for that. Yeah, but I think there's like three or four monuments to women, bronze statues of women in Philadelphia from history. Very little. Meanwhile, hundreds to men. Well, at least there's a couple. There's like a dozen to Benjamin Franklin alone. Jesus, Louisa.

So that's the past, but what's ahead, asked patrons Cassia Sword and Sarah Bowen. And looking to the future, some people ask questions about the future of murals. Katie Stalter wanted to know, what role might technology play in creating large murals? And I was talking to Sarah McAnulty about QR codes in murals, being able to find more information out. Are we seeing any technological changes? What's coming next?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm of two minds of this. Certainly, we've seen technology assist in helping people understand murals or explore murals in different ways. So QR codes might lead people to a page that has maybe audio interviews. You know, if the mural is about some history, you can maybe click the QR code and go to somewhere where you could hear archival information.

audio of some interview with some person from that piece of history that's being documented in the mural and it can add that extra layer. Those could be really interesting. There's also like augmented reality murals. There's a new mural in Philly right now where if you download a certain app and you put it up to the mural, the mural will come out and be all kinds of 3D.

And this is an augmented reality for the mural Dreams, Diaspora, and Destiny on Lansdowne Avenue in Philly. And the artist's statement reads that 3D visual elements extend and enhance the experience of an otherwise flat work of art. And spatial audio is tied to every augmented object.

providing a narrative theme with music and sound bites as the space is explored. So the digital element can add more texture and dimensionality or context if you choose to opt in and look at it. But you don't need to. And Conrad says that's a point. The point in the future of murals is that IRL experience, that in-real-life experience, paint on a wall, how does it make you feel?

We're so overloaded with content every day. The last thing I want to do is go to a mural and then click a QR code and watch 500 videos. I'm already on TikTok enough. So I think the future of murals is what it's been, which is not only paint on the wall, but the future might be who are making these murals, right? We were just talking about diversity when it comes to murals. Hopefully there's more diversity. If your city or town has not had a mural program that's been very inclusive, then

in the histories or the artists that it hires. Hopefully it gets more inclusive. But yeah, the future of murals is the future of humanity because all it does is reflect us. And your advice to muralists, toss an ad on there, toss a handle on there so people can find you. Sure. So you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter at streetsdep. So it's streets with an S-D-E-P-T, like short for department. Okay. What about for muralists? Do you think that they should put their handles on things?

Yeah. Yeah. So people can find you. We live in that Instagram era and people want to credit the artists. A lot of murals will have plaques on the side, which sometimes might include that handle. But most murals I'm a part of curating, the artists will include their handle just because it's too important. People are taking photos of the mural. Most people are not going up to the plaque. So you might miss it. Just have it in the corner. Why not? Okay. That's a good idea. What is something that the public gets wrong about murals and public art a lot? That they're permanent. Yeah.

that's so existential. Yeah. Because nothing is. You know, nothing is, period. Yeah.

So when it comes to paint on walls, murals, development can make a mural go away. Time and weather can make a mural go away. Disinterest from the community can make it go away. Murals, even if they have all the best materials in the world applied to them, that coat I'm talking about, the parachute cloth, will still need to be touched up every decade or so. So if a decade goes by, two decades go by, and the neighbors, no one really cares about anymore, it might be refreshed. Yeah.

In that sense, murals can be that semi-permanent stamp in time where they're going to come and go. Some might last, like Common Threads, for example, the one we talked about earlier from Meg Saligman, was so beloved that when it started to show signs of deterioration, fundraising happened. It was updated. I don't want to say repainted, but it was fixed.

And then a building was going to be built in front of it. The neighbors freaked out, started a petition, got whatever. The developer changed the plans of the building so that the mural would still be able to be seen. Oh my God. Now, since that developer has lost funding and he's gone away, so maybe a new developer will come in and do the same thing. Yeah, most murals are going to come and go. Well, what's the hardest part, do you think, about creating a mural? Is it prepping the wall? That's what my guess would be, prepping the wall or having people throw milk cartons at you if they don't like your mural.

Most of the projects I curate and work on, I'm working with artists who've never created a mural before. And it's their first mural. And most of the projects are temporary. But even in the temporary situations, the biggest concern is what is the mural about? So even if you have a lot of freedom, you know, some projects need to represent one thing or the other, right? Like if we're creating a mural in the gayborhood, maybe it's themed around queer history. But a lot of the projects I work on, we're building walls somewhere. And maybe the general theme is voting. Go. Oh my God, I don't know what to do there. Yeah.

But it's always that. I think the most challenging part is like, what do I want to say to the world? It's what we all do every day. I'm on this podcast. You create a podcast. It goes back to that, like, what are you wearing every day? What do you want to say to the world with your actions, with what you choose to put out there? You know, most people have social media and post things every day. Like, what do you want to say to the world? So I think some people maybe are...

less intentional or thoughtful about it, but artists really are. I mean, I think they feel that weight of like, not only will people judge me, but just like, I have this opportunity. What do I want to use it for? What about your favorite thing about murals? I really love how, you know, I think ads in the public space work and advertisers spend millions of dollars on them because they make you feel things and feelings change our behavior. Yeah.

When we... Swoon is a really incredible artist who came from the street art world in New York City in the 90s. She did Wheat Paste back then, got very famous from it, and now does projects around the globe. I interviewed her for my podcast, I think, in the first season. Swoon, very incredible person. And she said something really interesting that has always stuck with me on a panel once, where she said, you know, take climate change, for example. We know it's here. The climate crisis is here. We know the numbers. We know the science. And yet we still...

are doing so little, you know, to change the future that's on our doorstep. Numbers and stats and articles and journalism are so important, but they rarely make us feel things in our heart and in our souls. So art can do that, right? Art can make you feel something and then that feeling that will change your behavior.

For more on the intersection of art and climate, you can check out the nonprofit functionalmagic.org, which makes these gorgeous collectible gig posters with climate messages. And we have a whole interview with founder Andy Hall, who, because of that episode and you, Ologites, was able to raise $25,000 for rainforest conservation on his first project.

print run. So we also have a field trip episode with him coming up. So functionalmagic.org. But yes, dream big and don't quit, as they say. So when I think about the projects I want to create with like the streets, department walls, part of my project, you know, I think about the voting project. How can we create art that can make people feel things, right? Feeling is really important. And when we feel things, we change. I wonder if there's anyone listening who's like, you know what, I'm going to make a mural. I hope so.

You know, and can I put that in another point of view too? I don't know if I mentioned this, but I'm a gay man, 38. So when I was growing up, when I was in high school, no one even talked about gay. It was really hard to come out. Luckily, I had great parents. Like my experience was fine. I lived in a big city. It was pretty accepting of it. But the idea of gay marriage was insane. And look, it was never going to happen. Not that it was insane, but just that it was insane that it was never going to happen. And the idea of like gay rights, that a politician would ever be on the side of gay people was so outlandish.

But over the last 15 years, we saw modern family. And I know you could roll your eyes at it because they couldn't even kiss for the first couple of seasons. It's so annoying. Mitchell, do you take Cameron to be your husband? I do. But, you know, if you live in a small town or anyone who votes, you might not know a lot of gay people. You might know one. You might know none. So being able to see through art the experience of gay life

Yeah.

So that's the value that we can create with art in the public space. You know, the public space, advertisers use it to sell us Tylenol. God bless Tylenol. If you want to work with me, let me know. But we can also use the public space to share the lived experiences of folks from our community, from the folks around us, and maybe open up our hearts, minds, and souls a little bit. You know, what is the experience of

of being elderly in this country, it seems from what I hear, very isolating. Can we create public art that reminds people like, hey, there are elderly people in your community that might be alone right now. Maybe you would volunteer at some community center or make a friend who's outside of your age group. Why don't we have older friends? You know, maybe a mural depicting the lack of murals to black and brown histories in your city, whatever it might be. You know, I think that that's the power of art. Art is really powerful, you know? And yeah,

I think it's so wonderful that you are celebrating it and cataloging it and amplifying it. I will leave us with one last listener question. Gordon Haas wants to know, Allie Ward, I assume you've talked with toothologist Sarah McAnulty. She's working on a mural in Philadelphia right now with muralist Sean Martirana. That's right. Yeah. Have I talked to Sarah about it? Hey, we did a mural. It's in Fishtown.

I just thought it was funny that that was particularly mentioned. That's a mural that's supposed to teach us like, hey, this is our river. Don't put stuff down the drain, you know? So yeah, the mural reminding us like, oh yeah, the river's right there. This is what's there. Life is precious. Thank you so much for letting me ask you one million questions forever. I couldn't have enjoyed this more. This was great. I really enjoyed this interview. And yeah, I encourage people, go be creative and don't put that wall between you and the art. Art is nothing but feelings. Go feel stuff. Go feel stuff. You're the best. Yay! Yay!

So ask articulate people artsy questions and vice versa. And thank you so much to Conrad for letting us ask you so many and for letting me tag along for that upcoming field trip episode to watch some local muralists doing their thing on a summer street in Philly. And thank you again to Dr. Sarah McAnulty of Skype a Scientist.

for the intro and for hosting me in your house in Philly while we gallivanted around town on some science safaris. You can go to squidfacts.net to get a handcrafted frog facts advent calendar. Let's sell 5,000 because someone told her there's no way she could do it. And for 25 bucks, you can help prove that jerk wrong. So you can also find Conrad's work at streetsdepartment.com and we'll link the charities in the show notes. And we have more links up at our website, alleyward.com slash ology slash toycographology, which is

All linked in the show notes. We are at Ologies on Instagram and X, and I'm at Allie Ward on both. We have kin-friendly episodes up on a new feed with a spinoff show called Smologies, which you can find wherever you get podcasts. They are classroom-safe, kid-friendly episodes. We put them up every...

Every week, there's a new green logo designed by Portland artist Bonnie Dutch, and you can seek her out for your custom art needs. Bonnie Dutch is working on a new mural right now in Portland for Uptown Properties on Southwest Capitol Highway. You can go check it out. Wave to her as she's painting. Bonnie Dutch also does amazing customs like pet portraits and illustrations. So B-O-N-I, Dutch.

Also, Hay Arden, who works at Uptown Properties. Aaron Talbert, admins our Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwired is our website. Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is managing director and did so much extra research and fact-checking for this episode. Thank you, Susan. Jake Chafee is our wonderful assistant editor, and putting it all together is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn of the band Islands made the theme music, and if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.

And so I'm recording this in a closet in New York. It's so noisy outside my hotel room, but I'm in the closet and I'm surrounded by pillows. So I came out here because the UN is meeting up in New York right now and there are a bunch of climate events.

around it. But when I was asked to come out here and do this fireside chat for the Wildlife Justice Commission this week, I was like, I'm not going to get on a plane and go do a climate event that seems counterintuitive. However, it is also our favorite diabetologist, Dr. Mike Natter, his wedding is this weekend. So I was like, okay, I can pair that. And I'm also doing a couple different interviews while I'm out here, one of which will be up first October. So I'm having a little bit of a

galamenting around New York this weekend. And hence, I'm recording this in a closet. And the other thing, the other secret about this is that we actually did this interview, not this past summer, but the summer before. It was right before I got pneumonia and went into the hospital. And if you listen to our recent episode on suicidology, in which we discuss mental health

I took a little break just to chill out and get my stress levels down. So this episode has been a long time in the making and I'm really stoked to get it up finally. But I've got a bunch of things I have to go to this week and I did not have time to dye my hair before I left LA. So I had to pack my hair dye with me and now I've got to go and ask the hotel folks if they have any old rags I can use on my hair or some paper towels. And the reason why I know that I can do that is because I've had to do it before. Many times I have left LA with hair dye in my luggage and been like, well, I'll do it on the road.

We'll do it live. Okay. Bye-bye.

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