The pitch clock was running out. That’s when Christina Di Michele stepped up to the plate.
It was just a couple of months ago when Major League Baseball contacted Mural Arts Philadelphia with a request for an All-Star mural to commemorate the Midsummer Classic in Philadelphia.
You’d think finding a blank wall in a large city wouldn’t be a problem. But in Philadelphia — known as the Mural Capital of the World — it’s not as easy as you would think.
“They were hitting a wall, finding a wall,” Di Michele joked.
Di Michele, a Girard Estates resident, is the Executive Assistant to Jane Golden, who is the Founding Director of Mural Arts Philadelphia. Di Michele decided to join the hunt and seek out a worthy canvas during the city’s 250th anniversary as the clock was ticking.
“Wall hunters don’t tend to look down here so I asked if I could help,” she said. “I started driving around the neighborhood in early June and started taking pictures of walls.”
Di Michele would suggest walls and get the green light from Mural Arts only to get rejected by property owners.
But as the late great Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over til it’s over.”
Di Michele dreamed big and swung for the fences.
“I came out of CVS one night and I pulled up here for a second and just happened to look up and see this wall,” she said. “I started taking pictures in the dark.”
This was on June 13, less than a month from when the entire project would be unveiled to the public.
Di Michele found a massive wall on the side of Danny D’s Pizza on 20th Street and Oregon Avenue but the group still needed to get the proper approvals. Danny D’s liked the idea, but they don’t own the wall. Di Michele did some digging to find out CVS owned it and started calling around, hoping to beat an incredibly tight deadline.
“This approval was fast tracked all the way up to CVS corporate in Rhode Island,” she said. “They had to go fast and furious.”
With proper paperwork in place, Philadelphia artist Paul Carpenter and his team went to work. On June 29, they began, battling heatwaves and intense storms, somehow finishing up in less than two weeks. On rainy days, the team would huddle under a small overhang and knock out what they could. On triple-digit heatwave days, they sweated out long hours in the sun.
“It’s been a dream come true seeing it finished,” said Carpenter, a Mount Airy resident. “Just to know that we finished before the deadline and how tight the deadline was and how severe the weather has been, it’s been surreal to really soak up the moment now that it’s all complete and looks great.”
Carpenter summoned all his childhood and adult memories of going to games at Veterans Stadium and Citizens Bank Park and displayed them on the gigantic blue wall on 20th Street.
“I just kind of took the ideas from the ether,” Carpenter said. “It’s all Philadelphia iconography. You talk about growing up here and hearing the ‘everybody hits, woo-hoo guy’ and hearing Harry Kalas on the broadcast saying, ‘It’s outta here!’ Then of course there’s Ben Franklin, the Liberty Bell and Billy Penn and all the food cultures. It’s everything Philly loves.”
The wall was officially unveiled on July 11, not long after the final brushstrokes dried of a furious process. It became a prime destination to celebrate the festivities on MLB All-Star week and it even drew an appearance from MLB Hall of Fame outfielder Ken Griffey Jr., who served water ice to fans from a Deer Park truck.
“When I heard Ken Griffey Jr. was in the plans I thought, ‘Are you actually serious?’ ” Di Michele said. “Now he’s literally standing right there, handing out water ice at 20th and Oregon. I watched him for years and now he’s right here.”
And South Philly will have a wonderful new mural to remember the hustle of a community that helped make it all happen.
“I always think that there’s a wonderful similarity between art and sports because of the way public art and sports bring people together,” Golden said. “It’s a way of sort of honoring everyone’s distinctions and lifting up our commonality, especially during this very important week in Philadelphia.” ••
