At the beginning of this project, I thought about how murals serve as tools to strengthen narratives about place. This “Upstanders Mural” is no exception. In addition to strengthening the narrative of Memphis as a place of Civil Rights struggle and heroism, this mural should shift the narrative. It should widen the scope of the history of Memphis’ civic engagement from one predominantly focused on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to one that includes a wider range of Memphis activists and “upstanders.”

47 Stories reimagined Philadelphia's north-south-running 47 bus route, telling the stories of the immigrant and refugee communities that are connected from bus stop to bus stop. Through interviews, audio collage, alternative map designs, and a wrapped SEPTA bus, artists Shira Walinsky and Laura Deutch activated the public space of city transit in a new way. The goal was to make immigrant and refugee communities visible, to acknowledge and bring attention to their contributions to Philadelphia.

Under Magnitude is a two-story tall permanent structure suspended in the atrium of Orlando's Orange County Convention Center that carves a three-dimensional impact into an otherwise vast space. The story behind the design and construction of the project is that it further evolves my invention of “Structural Stripes”: the fundamental premise of the studio to unite surface, skin, and space into a holistic and never-before-seen system.

Yes, Firmament is an experience. It’s not something you come up to look at and say, “oh, how clever” (as the case with many LED pieces). It’s a place where you go, and sometimes stay. It’s an environment that draws you in and gives you a comfy spot to be. This was my biggest lesson from creating Firmament—that being clever and pretty is great, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as a place and space for people to really enjoy the moment.

Debuting in 2016, the series of temporary artworks commissioned through Boulder, Colorado’s “Experiments in Public Art” program disrupt the traditional commissioning process. Each project’s temporality encourages work responding to “now”: What’s urgent? What is an immediate community conversation? How can public art be an agent to facilitate these conversations? What experimental practices can advance the artists’ body of work, the use of a public site, or the community interaction with art?

Artist Mat Tomezsko’s 2016 project with Mural Arts Philadelphia, 14 Movements: A Symphony in Color and Words, started out as a beautification request from the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee, but it became so much more. Tomezsko created a wash of color along the median of Broad Street, stretching out languidly over 14 city blocks, a full mile-long mural marking a major transit corridor. 14 Movements created opportunities for reflection on the diversity of experience in Philadelphia, the very real, rich, inner lives that unfold every day in simple journeys down the street.