On the second half of the Center staff’s Journeys South tour, we ventured deeper into South Philadelphia and were privileged to hear from the artists behind two more projects: RA Friedman’s “7th Street Memory Box” and “Start Here,” a collaborative project by dancer/choreographer Amanda Miller and video artist Tobin Rothlein. [See part one of our recap to read about the other two projects that made up Mural Arts Program’s Journeys South.]

Philadelphia is a place for public art, from traditional sculpture to imaginative expressions of community and identity, which can be found all over the city. This is due in no small part to Mural Arts Program, which received a 2009 grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP) for Journeys South, a group of four interactive public art projects meant to explore, celebrate, and give voice to the multitude of immigrant histories that make up the diverse neighborhoods of South Philadelphia. The Journeys South festival has offered free public walking tours every Saturday since April 27, and is scheduled to end this Saturday, June 11—last chance, so pencil it in!

Mural Arts and HPP invited a lucky group of Center staffers along, on a hot day in late May, to experience the tour and hear from the participating artists in their own words. We snapped photos, tweeted, and took extensive mental notes on the stories of our very own neighbors. Read on for part one of our Journeys South experience.

Zoe Strauss. Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Weekly.

It's that time of the year when list-making is all the rage, and Philadelphia Weekly has named its Noisemakers of the Year. The list features Pew Fellows Kara Crombie (2010) and Zoe Strauss (2005, pictured above), as well as Steve Powers, the artist behind Philadelphia Mural Arts Program's Love Letter, which received support from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI) in 2008.

Check out the list to read more about these Center grantees, including what they've accomplished this year and their plans for the future. Strauss has just completed her 10-year I-95 project, in which she displayed and sold prints of her photographs underneath the highway, and Steve Powers' artwork may extend its reach in Philadelphia as Mural Arts plans to extend Love Letter to North Philly. As for Crombie, who was recently named a Pew Fellow in October, she'll be putting her fellowship to good use: “Whether I’m poor or rich, I’ll spend the same amount of time working on these videos, but the Pew will enable me do more in the same amount of time,” she says in the article.

Learn more:

Read about Crombie, Strauss, and Powers in Philadelphia Weekly's full article >
Visit the Love Letter project grant page on the PEI Web site >
See the October 2010 press release on Kara Crombie and the rest of this year's Pew Fellows >
Read more about Zoe Strauss at her Pew Fellow profile page >