Philadelphia Story
August 23rd, 2008 | | Art, Travelogues |
Well it’s been a busy vacation week here at tom-mcgee.com World Headquarters, which is why our usual flurry of fascinating posts on diverse topics has dried up a little. While I sort through the cartons of photographs I brought home, here’s a few from Thursday in Philadelphia.
Following up on a suggestion to see a mural that a friend-of-a-friend had done, we hiked west down Walnut Street to check it out.
Excuse me if you’ve heard this one before, but you can already see the mural in the photo above. Here we’re getting a little closer:
And closer still:
Here’s a hint: that church reflected in the windows of the building next to the gas station? There is no church. There are also no windows. 
There’s not even any bricks. The artist turned a blank plaster wall into this. The companion wall is perpendicular to it, and shows another aspect of the ghost church.
Here’s a closeup of one section. We appreciated the effect of wavy glass and partially unseated window panes, the inset windows and beveled limestone sills:
Closer still, finally at this level you can see how the brickwork is also tromp d’oeil:
Here’s the plaque adjacent to the murals, that tells their story:
I got some nice photos of a second mural by Michael Webb, “Tree of Knowledge,” which I’ll post later on.
Tags: Outdoor Art, Philadelphia, tromp d'oeil
[...] all the good stuff just on foot. Last week we spent a couple of days there, and in addition to the murals here are some of the other [...]