One vision, two walls

One in an occasional series.

The idea was too much for one three-story wall to hold.

A mural for a North Philadelphia neighborhood was supposed to bridge three distinct worlds. But convicted felons, victims of violent crime, and neighborhood residents have had different ideas about what the wall should say about healing the wounds of crime.

In prison classrooms and church sanctuaries, hours of face-to-face conversations about the design have led to surprising moments of connection and painful tales of isolation. The encounters have drawn out raw emotions and bitter memories, too.

Only recently - six months after the project began - has a common vision started to form. And it's going to take two walls.

Jane Golden, director of the city's Mural Arts Program, has called the project "painful, difficult, and at times... almost impossible." She sees it as "a journey of faith and hope."

If all goes as planned, the three disparate groups will find a shared message. Then they will meet at the prison to paint on acrylic cloth squares that artists will affix onto two walls in the 3000 block of Germantown Avenue.

A self-described eternal optimist who believes a strong will can thrash through the thickest weeds of resistance, Golden has brought conflicting groups together before. The peace mural at 29th and Wharton Streets, for example, helped unite Grays Ferry after racial tension tore it apart in 1997.

This time, however, finding one path has proved elusive.

Repentant inmates, eager to give back to a neighborhood they say they once terrorized, want the mural to convey hope as well as a warning to neighborhood children at risk.

"I want them to change," said one inmate, who has family in the neighborhood, at a prison class in August. "I don't want my little cousin to come to jail."

But at least one victim advocate said her priority was the victim's pain, not the offender's.

"I'm speaking as a victim and a survivor: I don't care what he [the inmate] has to say," said Dawn Dixon, a victim witness coordinator in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

And some community residents objected to images of victims on a neighborhood wall.

"That's going to bring back too many bad memories," said Mark Robinson, of the 3000 block of 10th Street.

Unlike most murals, where opposing sides crowd into one room and argue until they agree on a design, the stakeholders in this project have yet to meet en masse.

That's because a third of them live at Graterford, the maximum security prison in Montgomery County.

Since April, Mural Arts has shuttled victims and community members, one or two at a time, to the prison.

In small groups, visitors and prisoners exchange stories, trying to pinpoint the mural's message, probing the meaning of words such as pain, forgiveness, healing, and rebirth.

Unexpected connections have emerged.

"Less than an hour after my brother was murdered, I had a weapon," said Ruth Birchett, a crime victim who visited the prison in August.

Inmates listened as she recalled the rage, then grief, of losing her brother in 1972. The memory of "that pain in the butt" who stole the last meatball at spaghetti suppers still resurfaces whenever she hears Marvin Gaye's voice singing "What's Going On" on the radio.

After she recounted her brother's violent end, an inmate raised his hand.

Someone he knew from the neighborhood was killed about 30 years ago, he said slowly. It happened at that same bar at 18th and Dauphin Streets. The guy was working as a doorman. A regular customer, angry about a $2 cover, shot him four times.

Birchett stared at him.

The room fell silent.

"You knew my brother?" she whispered.

At the end of each session, participants struggled to translate emotional breakthroughs into images.

Golden scribbled pages of notes to read later at community meetings, where neighborhood residents had other ideas.

"How about a picture of children running to Christ?" suggested Juan Negron, a member of Maranatha Ministries Church, a bright blue building on Germantown Avenue, where a meeting was held in July.

"You've got Africans and Muslims out here," Deborah Bentley, a resident of the neighborhood for 17 years, objected. "It can't all be Christian."

Community members didn't like many of the images artists had drawn from Graterford discussions. Some were too obscure: a bee in a Venus'-flytrap to symbolize the temptation of drugs. Others were too harsh: Crack vials and prison bars sent a strong message, to be sure, but wasn't reality already painful enough?

But they agreed on one thing: The mural should speak clearly, with a powerful moral message that neighborhood children would understand.

"They need something," Bentley said. "My nieces and nephews, most of them are on drugs. We need to recreate our children."

In the end, artist César Viveros-Herrera wove together images from several meetings: an inmate behind bars, reaching out; a victim's burning heart; a tree, for the strength and growth of community; an angel shining light and hope.

Muralists hoped they had captured a shared vision. But when victim advocates gathered earlier this month to view the preliminary sketch, muralists realized they still had work to do.

"It's beautiful. It speaks to inmates and the community," said Mary Achilles, the state's victim advocate. "I don't see victims in there. I don't see the anguish and pain, the abyss."

And so, six months after it began, the mural expanded from one wall to two.

"It was clear from the conversation that this was bigger than just one wall," Golden said.

Two days after the meeting, muralists met in Golden's home over coffee and cookies and reworked their plan. They decided that the design just completed would be used for the first wall, to speak for prison inmates; the second wall, still on the drawing board, would reflect the views of victims. Community ideas would be blended into both.

The project, just one of about 30 that Mural Arts is pushing to complete, was originally supposed to be finished by fall. Now it looks as if it won't be done until spring. Golden says the complexity of the project is the reason.

"Our more difficult murals always have engaged people in a process that has been somewhat painful," she said.

Yet, some healing may have already begun.

Clarence Carter, 82, trembled slightly as he told his story to a circle of inmates this month. He had never been inside a prison before. Until a few months ago, he had lived in West Philadelphia for 38 years without ever experiencing crime.

Then he was mugged in front of his house by two men, with a gun to his head, and the threat: If you yell, I'll blow your brains out.

Now he's afraid to leave home. "My life has changed completely," he said, his voice breaking. "I'm traumatized."

An inmate spoke: "As a violator, what can I give you? To take your pain away?"

"I want an apology," Carter replied.

The inmate leaned forward.

"Can I give you a hug?"

"Well... sure," Carter said; the room erupted in applause as he slowly rose to his feet.