Home That Was, 2010 - Present

 

Print installation on thin plaster remains of a house at 13TH and Lehigh and 10th and Vine St in Philadelphia, PA. Created with youth in partnership with the The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

 

Demolishing a building often leaves an imprint of its architecture visible on the exterior of an adjacent building. These cross sections or “ghost walls” trigger memories of a space that was once there but is now gone. The temporary mural installation series “Home That Was” is designed to call attention to these liminal spaces, amplifying precarious transitions between inside and outside, private and public, past and future. The artwork highlights the fact that a building was recently demolished, but also gives to its lost interior spaces an air of vitality, color, mystery, and discovery.

The patterns installed on the remains of the plaster walls are rooted in memories of home and were designed by Benjamin Volta and the young men and women of the Mural Arts Program Restorative Justice GUILD. Within the patterns, hundreds of drawings overlap and merge to show a creative, collaborative thought process. The layers of old and new are intended to trigger both memories of the past and imagination of the city's future, whether viewers are rushing past or pausing to explore the complexity of the work.