A recent article in the Philadelphia City Paper alerted us to this exciting new project by the Mural Arts Program. After creating an open call for new ideas, the Mural Arts Program responded to Shira Walinsky’s brainstorm and worked with West Philadelphia High School’s ArtWorks program to design graphic wraps (essentially really big printed stickers) for a set number of lunch trucks around the city. Keeping with the locally relevant mission of the Mural Arts Program each lunch truck is custom designed for the owner and their personal history.
From the Jane Golden interview with the City Paper:
Over the past year, the Mural Arts Program reserved a number of projects to represent the vision and ideas of Philadelphia artists. We put out a call for ideas and artist Shira Walinsky came up with the idea to do murals on lunch trucks. This appealed to us for several reasons. One, we are interested in doing projects that go off the wall — increasingly more so, we are working in new and exciting ways with projects that include light, sound, and sculptural elements. In fact just this year we finished wrapping a series of city recycling trucks that created design in motion. So the lunch trucks appealed to our notion that the contemporary definition of muralism can be broad.
Secondly, we are very interested in creating art that serves a social purpose. The lunch truck idea, beyond being an art project, speaks to the idea of immigration, the notion of journey, and how there is dignity and wonder in people’s stories. And because the heart of our work is about giving expression to people’s identity, concerns and aspirations — because we want to do work that stimulates creativity, participation and equity — this project seemed to be very much connected with our mission as well as our new interest in innovation.