Posted on 05/15/2003 11:16:35 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Philadelphia was host to one of the first gay-rights marches in the country in July 1965 in front of Independence Hall. Since then, a flourishing gay-friendly community known as the "gayborhood" has grown up around the area of 12th and Locust Streets in Center City.
RON CORTES / Inquirer
Artist Ann Northrup, 54, sits on the scaffolding in front of her mural, “Pride and Progress,”
on the western wall of the William Way Community Center on Spruce Street.
The mural, which takes up almost an entire block, was started in August.
Northrup and 20 others used more than 50 gallons
of special latex paint to create the panoramic scenes.
On Saturday the city will dedicate a 7,500-square-foot public mural, touted as the first of its kind in the country, paying tribute to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people.
Titled Pride and Progress, the city's 2,353d mural is one of its largest, and stretches almost a whole block alongside the William Way Community Center, which serves the city's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community.
At 150 feet wide and 50 feet tall, the mural is painted on the side of the four-story community center at the corner of Spruce and Juniper Streets.
The mural depicts a composite of 1960s gay civil rights marches in Philadelphia and New York, a festival on cobblestone streets with a multicultural throng, Elfreth's Alley and segments of Independence Mall, all under a moody sky with the hint of a rainbow.
"I wanted to create something beautiful and atmospheric," said Ann Northrup, 54, a Spring Garden artist whose design was chosen for the mural.
Northrup, 10 assistants and 10 volunteers used more than 50 gallons of special latex paint to create the panoramic scenes along the western wall of the community center.
Work on the mural began in August. The idea of a mural for the gay community was first raised three years before that, said Jane Golden, who founded the city's mural arts program in 1984.
"We had a lot of designs submitted," Golden said. "Ann Northrup's design really responded to a lot of comments that we heard. They wanted an image that was positive, an image that reflected the diversity of the community. I think Ann was able to hear what the people were saying."
On the northern end of the expansive mural, Northrup designed a composite in sepia tones of three historical photographs of civil rights marches and the gay rights movement of the 1960s.
"That creates a historical and political context for the rest of the mural," Northrup said.
From there, the eye moves to the large figure of a white-haired woman in a rainbow-colored dress pushing a man in a wheelchair.
The center of the mural is a gay street festival with balloon art in the rainbow colors, a trio of musicians. At the south end, people are dancing on the steps of the William Way Center.
"It's multicultural, multiracial and multigenerational," said Steven Huizar, interim executive director of the center.
Golden said that in researching the project, no one was able to find another public mural in the country paying tribute to the gay community.
"I think it's the first... and certainly the largest in the country about this theme," Golden said.
Northrup said people in the neighborhood had been supportive as she toiled through the fall, winter and into spring, traversing layers of scaffolding in sometimes miserable weather.
"One guy came up and he was crying. He couldn't speak," Northrup said. "You really get appreciated out here."
Northrup is an accomplished artist with a master's degree in fine arts in painting from the Boston University School of Visual Arts. She teaches art at Philadelphia University. She exhibits widely and has received several grants, including a 2002 grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. At the intersection of Capital and Brown Streets in Fairmount is another mural she painted, The Capital Street Garden.
Northrup said she was thrilled with the way the mural had turned out.
"You want to have someone up there for everyone to identify with," she said. "You can't please everybody, but I've felt so supported by the whole community. I'm very pleased."
And don't forget "uniuseless".
Perhaps because no one sees any reason to pay tribute to someone's sexual practices. If San Fran was home to the country's largest community of yo-yo enthusiasts (I'm sorry--angular momentum artists) then I'm sure they'd be painting murals that glorified the "courage" and "bravery" of yo-yo-ists. Democracy (defined as two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner) is definitely alive and well in SF.
Equivalency between discrimination on the basis of race and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is something that homosexual civil rights organizations seek to establish and that racial civil rights organizations seek to deny. To accept the equivalency, you have to believe that homosexuality is an innate/genetic characteristic and is unchangable.
If they wanted to do something really controversial, they could have painted a scene of the Last Supper.
....but if it is genetic, homosexuality should have died out along with the dinosaurs. With humans, one must reproduce heterosexually in order to avoid extinction. Hmmm.....
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