We never tire of reminding Philadelphians how lucky we all are to have city with so much public art. With more than 3,000 murals and counting, we are in many respects the mural capital of the world, led by the collaborative and community-driven Mural Arts Program.
One local teacher in the Philadelphia area has quietly been snapping photos of his favorite murals across the city in order to produce a tribute video to our grand and growing tradition. Jamison Maley, a physics teacher at The Haverford School in Lower Merion, posted the following video to YouTube this week, a collaboration with one of his students.
The music accompanying the video was played and recorded with the help of student Jake Mullin, who handled the drums. Maley gets credit for the keys, bass and guitar.
It seems this Maley is a pretty interesting cat. His bio over at The Haverford School's website offers some compelling answers to what are usually mildly endearing anecdotes.
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His favorite equation, "due to its controversy and implications," is the Drake Equation — the one that argues, based on probability, how many communicative extraterrestrial civilizations there are in our galaxy. That's complicated. We can tell you the Mural Arts Program adds about 50-100 public art projects in Philadelphia every year.
Maley's favorite album is Eugene McDaniels' soulfully funky "Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse."
His mind is blown by the 96 percent of dark and grey matter that comprises the universe, largely unbeknownst to mankind.
"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven," said theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, having heard this from a Buddhist monk. "The same key opens the gates of hell. And so it is with science."
That's Maley's favorite quote.
Unfortunately, he didn't indicate his favorite mural. Here's our best guess.