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Mural Arts Philadelphia has developed methods to engage Kensington residents in public art projects, where poverty and addiction has taken a heavy toll.
Now those methods have been exported to Ukraine, where artists are learning trauma-informed community art techniques to help residents there cope with the ravages of war.
The fruit of their labor is now on view at the Pearlstein Gallery of Drexel University. “Petrykivka Garden,” a 6-by-12-foot floral mural based on the traditional petrykivka folk painting method, was created in collaboration with visiting artists from Ukraine and day-labor artists hired through Mural Arts’ Color Me Back program in Kensington.
Over the last 18 months, two groups of Ukrainian artists have come to Philadelphia to take workshops with Mat Tomezsko, who has been the lead artist on Mural Arts’ “Garden Wall” project. The mural is a puzzle of triangles, each painted by an individual hired via Color Me Back, a program that identifies low-income and housing insecure people and pays them $50 per 3.5-hour shift to work on public art projects.
“Garden Wall” served as a model for Ukrainians and Color Me Back participants to make their own collaborative mural.
The visit by Ukrainian artists and public health workers was organized by the European Institute of Public Health Policy to have them learn from Health Federation of Philadelphia and the city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. The department has a longstanding partnership with Mural Arts, called Porch Light, that uses public art programs to engage people in mental health and social support services.
Mural Arts Executive Director Jane Golden said the goal was to foster meaningful community support in areas beset by trauma such as Kensington and Ukraine.
“I see it more broadly with our Porch Light work and our Restorative Justice work that people often feel alone and isolated,” she said. “They have lived through trauma and the feeling of being not just alienated from the world, but a sense of loss. That’s something that is very similar. That is universal.”
The Ukrainians were so taken by their visit to Philadelphia in the fall of 2023 that they asked for more. Tomezsko created a four-week online course in his methods of communal mural-making. Then, they set up a return trip where the Ukrainians would design a mural in the tradition of petrykivka, a brushstroke technique developed in a rural village of the same name. The technique is commonly used for traditional decorative painting, particularly flowers.
“It has a million different variations. Everyone who takes it on has their own version of it,” Tomezsko said. “These artists from Ukraine instructed us how to do this.”
Emily Crane, the senior program manager of Color Me Back, was not surprised that the Ukrainians would come back to Philly to learn more.
“I think the work we’re doing is really important,” she said. “We’re using art as a vehicle to invite people not only to participate but to feel ownership in it. That’s something unique that we do in Porch Light, so of course they want to learn about it.”
During the painting session in Philadelphia, some of the artists from Ukraine were including the names of cities that had been bombed during the current Russian invasion. Many were consulting a phone app that tracks Russian bombing in real time.
Tomezsko decided the names of cities would not work in the graphic design of “Petrykivka Garden,” but clearly they were critically important to the artists. So he designed a companion piece, “Cities of the War,” a smaller, mostly black mural featuring a flower with its petals missing. The names of bombed Ukrainian cities are placed in the negative spaces where the flower parts would have been.
The Ukrainian artists who designed the petrykivka floral pattern never met the Color Me Back community of artists who ultimately painted the final mural. The initial design sessions happened well before a Color Me Back crew was assembled, by which time the Ukrainian had left the country.
Nevertheless, a strong sense of community was generated amongst the Ukrainians. During a paint session the artists started singing together. While never diverting their focus from their work, a song spontaneously rippled across the room. It was captured on video.
“They were singing a pop song from Ukraine that I’m not familiar with,” Tomezsko said. “It was one of the most joyful moments. That was one of the moments where I felt like what we were doing — there’s something really special there.”
“Petrykivka Garden” will be on view at the Pearlstein Gallery until May 17. Tomezsko describes it as a demonstration, or a proof of concept that this kind of collaboration can be successful, but so far the mural does not have a permanent home. It was designed for both interior and exterior environments, and Tomezsko hopes a long-term placement can be found.
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