Just off South Street, pink neon lights up the new sign outside Worm’s Emporium, a boutique-style vendor art mall. Inside the light, airy space, handcrafted fine art and craft pieces delicately line shelves constructed by cofounder Sabrena Wishart. Vendor stalls showcase a variety of mediums including ceramics, drawing, upcycled clothing, stickers and much more. Each vendor has been selected by Wishart and cofounder Rose Ghostly, life and business partners who came up with an idea for a vendor mall in 2021. The pair met on the dating app Tinder three years ago, and they began selling their art ..read more

In the fall of 2020 Maria DiMauro, an artist who lives in Old City, opened her Facebook account and clicked through pictures of warblers, vireos and catbirds that had died by crashing into Center City windows. She saw more than just dead birds. The pictures had been taken on October 2, 2020 by Stephen Maciejewski, who volunteers collecting data on birds that collide with windows. The migrating songbirds, drawn in by city lights on a night with low clouds, had touched down confused, exhausted and hungry, and had done what comes naturally, flying towards trees or bushes that they didn’t realize ..read more

The biggest muskie that Eric Hinkley has landed in the Schuylkill was almost four feet long. Muskie (short for muskellunge) are possibly the most challenging (and awesome) game fish to catch in North America. The long and muscular ambush predators sit and wait for food to swim by, but their discriminating eye makes it hard to get them to bite on a lure. “Even in my best seasons I’ve only caught five or six per year,” Hinkley says. An artist and avid angler, Hinkley estimates that he spends 30 hours casting for every muskie he reels in. Sometimes the fish will swim after a lure but decline to b ..read more

The paintings vibrate with color — bold greens, golds and blues transport the viewers to a quiet space that flourished during the pandemic and was widely loved for its healing powers, magic and beauty: the South Philly Meadows in FDR Park.  Kate Kern Mundie’s series in oil, REST, captures a moment that the Meadows gifted Philadelphians when they needed it most. In recent weeks the City has moved forward to develop the area in a way that will only preserve slivers of nature after cutting the space open for additional athletic fields. Kern Mundie, an East Passyunk resident, said her work is ..read more

During her first class at the local Women Against Abuse shelter where she lived, the little girl stood distant and silent while The Clay Studio teaching artist Nitza Walesca Rosario made a pot. After a few weeks, however, the moist clay and the shapes it took wrought wonders in the child. “Working with clay is healing,” says Rosario, who’s also the studio coordinator. “By the fifth class, the little girl was my assistant, showing other people how to create pinch pots,” Rosario says of the process of rolling clay into a ball, poking an indentation two-thirds of the way down and pinching the sid ..read more

At NextFab, we believe that lasting memories start with the handmade. With an abundance of mass-produced goods stocking the shelves this holiday season, instead choose gifts that have that extra special touch. By shopping small and local you’re not only giving back to small businesses in your neighborhood but giving an everlasting gift made with love. Create memories around the kitchen table, cooking up food and celebrations, with kitchen goods and products, such as Rachel Kedinger’s metal forged spoons and plates, or by cutting Grandma’s apple pie using Ken Holiday’s cutting board. Or find th ..read more

What do you think the Philadelphia Art Commission does? You might correctly guess that it approves works of art purchased by the City or placed on public land, along with some street signs. But anyone who has tuned into a public meeting of the commission will have noticed that the nine-member body does more than talk about aesthetics. Green roofs, stormwater management, native species plantings, public transportation access and bike racks (or their absence) all come up for comment at the meetings. And if the commission doesn’t approve a building’s plans, the developers have to come back again ..read more

Murals are so prevalent in Philadelphia that you can almost take them for granted. Started over 35 years ago, Mural Arts Philadelphia (previously the Mural Arts Program) is the largest public arts program in the country, with more than 2,500 murals completed. Jane Golden, the founding executive director, has been the one constant as the organization has evolved. Before Golden founded Mural Arts, she was an artist by night, an aspiring lawyer by day. As a double-major in political science and fine art, Golden was on track to go to law school. “I really thought I would leave the city and go to l ..read more

At Spiral Q’s West Philadelphia headquarters, puppet artists cut out cardboard, shape it into bulldozers and paint it to prepare for a protest march against the 76ers’ plans for a Chinatown arena. “There’s something childlike about them,” says Jacque (who did not provide a last name), while taking a break from painting cardboard miniatures of the Chinatown Friendship Gate on 10th Street. The miniatures will be attached to cardboard caps for demonstrators to wear. “There’s an absurd quality to puppets that draws people in.” While many people might duck past soapbox speakers, puppets command att ..read more

A certain group that visited Ursinus College’s Berman Museum in the 2000s amazed Susan Shifrin, associate director for education at the time. During the visit, six patients living with dementia from a nearby Montgomery County care facility went from silence to talk to glints of joy while viewing paintings. “I realized there was a need for programs like this, that no one else was offering these opportunities … to come together around shared experiences of the arts,” says Shifrin, 61, an art historian and the founding executive director of ARTZ Philadelphia, a nonprofit that brightens the lives ..read more