The citywide printmaking project I am leading for Mural Arts Philadelphia took a big leap last weekend with our first public pop-up workshop at Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll street festival. The project, Printmaking by the People, is marking the 250 the anniversary of the Declaration of Indepedence by asking people what declarations they would add if they were writing the document today.
While we had hosted about 10 scheduled workshops throughout the summer, this was our first pop-up in a public place. We wondered if we could create a meaningful experience and artmaking activity if we only had the ability to connect with people for about ten minutes so. To figure that out, we turned to Belle Handler at the Soapbox Community Print Center and Zine Library.
The workshop was set up in two parts. First, passerby were encouraged to stop and make a print, using a tabletop “Provisional Press” letterpress with a template that Belle had designed. It wasn’t hard to get people’s attention by asking, “Would you like to make a free poster?” Within a minute or two, they had a fresh print in their hands! (Spoiler alert: The pop-up ended being so successful that we ran out of paper for prints before the event ended.)
For the second step, people were asked to turn their print into a poster. We asked them describe what the ideas of “Life, Liberty and Happiness” meant to them, or what other rights they would include if they were able to update the Declaration today. We provided rubber stamps and other materials that they could use to create their posters.
The goal of the project is to prompt people to think more deeply about the relevance of the Declaration to our society today, and what we might do individually and collectively. Rights that were addressed by participants ranged from more tangible things such as universal healthcare, housing for all, and better access to fresh food, to more abstract ideas such as “rebirth.”
Mural Arts will host dozens of workshops throughout the city over the coming year. The project will result in a mural in a prominent citywide location, as well as an exhibition at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Printmaking was chosen as the main medium for this project so that participants could reflect on how printing was one of the primary means of communication in the revolutionary era.
My co-manager on this project is Lindsey Rosenberg. Printmaking by the People is an ongoing
collaboration with Philadelphia250. The Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll was organized by the University City District. Soapbox printer Hannah Moog assisted, as well Mark Dellostritto and Maho Sakuma, Penn city planning students who are interning with me.
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