Manayunk Hosts Neighborhood Street Art Exhibit

The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and Philadelphia Water have partnered to present a public street art exhibit in Manayunk that will help promote the city’s stormwater management program created on Venice Island.

Waterways, a work of temporary public art sponsored by Philadelphia Water for the city’s Manayunk neighborhood, is one of the largest public street art installations ever tackled by Mural Arts and the first of this magnitude to utilize vinyl as the medium. Local artist Eurhi Jones was commissioned by Mural Arts to design the piece.

The exhibit will be unveiled during a special celebration Thursday, May 14 at 6 p.m. at Main and Lock streets, featuring the debut of the final piece and a tour of the entire installation.

Stretching across roughly 10 blocks from Pretzel Park in the heart of Manayunk all the way down to Venice Island on the Schuylkill River, the artwork’s imagery acts as a series of “wayfinding” steppingstones with more than 50 individual pieces that pay homage to the area’s industrial history and wildlife while highlighting Philadelphia Water’s stormwater innovations on Venice Island. Installation began during the first week of May.

The collaboration between Philadelphia Water and Mural Arts promotes the power of art to enhance community connections to Venice Island, the Manayunk Canal and the Schuylkill River.

Completed in the fall of 2014 with the support of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation and the Manayunk Development Corporation, the new amenities at Venice Island include stormwater -slowing tree planters , a pump house with a green roof, and an innovative subsurface basin that can prevent nearly four million gallons of untreated water from entering the Schuylkill during heavy rains.