What does public art have to do with getting out the vote? Plenty, says To the Polls 2024 creator and curator Conrad Benner. 

“Art makes you feel things,” Benner said when I met him at Love Park in late September, as this year’s artists were beginning their murals. “If you’ve ever danced to a song or cried to a ballad or laughed at a movie or, like me, walked around Philadelphia and had a work of art, of street art, or a mural, stop you in your tracks and make you think something or feel something or just make more curious, that’s what art can do.” 

And the stakes are high. Voter turnout in Philadelphia may determine the 2024 presidential election, and our artists are ready for the spotlight thanks to this bi-annual nonpartisan project from Mural Arts, which will be on view at Center City’s Love Park through November 5.

This is the fourth round of To the Polls, which launched in 2018 thanks to a concept Benner pitched to Mural Arts executive director Jane Golden. The project moved to Love Park in 2020, where it has been every two years since. 

An act of hope

This year, Philly painter and “mompreneur” MsPassionArt (Serena Saunders) created Rise Up, which rejects oppression and honors our responsibility to “rise up and take hold of the next and the new … we did it before, and we will do it again.”

“Serena feels deeply hopeful right now, and her mural is reflecting that hope that she feels and the fact that voting in and of itself is an act of hope,” Benner said. “If you are voting, you are wishing for the future, you are hoping for the future.”

Philly Will Decide

Prolific illustrator Hawk Krall’s Philly Will Decide “captures the spirit of the Philadelphia streets” in 2020 (when crowds danced at City Hall and the Convention Center while the votes were tallied) and today. Krall evokes positive images (can you spot Philly Elmo?) that he hopes will fight the “combative, dark tone of modern politics” and motivate people to vote in 2024.

“I’m painting William Penn and it’s right there. I better draw it right because I have no excuse,” Krall told me as he worked on his mural in full view of City Hall. He said that many passersby were already excited by his mural, even in its earliest stages (one guy even broke into song).

Art transcends

Self-taught Philly native Alloyius Mcilwaine (founder of Cultures Clothing Company) created his spray-paint mural, Liberty and Democracy, to point out that many Americans have “fought and bled and died” for their right to vote. 

“The thing that’s so important about art that I really learned in my travels is that it transcends,” he told me. “You can create a symbol with art that transcends speech, transcends ideas, transcends partisanship … its own language.” Look for the positive imagery of his signature kudoglyphs.

Deciding to vote

Interdisciplinary artist Isabella Akhtarshenas, who created her first mural in 2021, offers Vote? Vote! to illustrate “the journey from doubt to conviction.” According to her artist statement, her piece combines American flag imagery with a watermelon (a longtime symbol of Palestinian resistance) to “represent the intersection of personal convictions and national identity.” 

Each year, Benner says, he wants to include an artist who struggles with whether or not to vote. “Her mural dives into the struggle that she’s had and where she’s landed with the fact that she will be voting. Because I think that’s an important message for people.”

The power of art (and voting)

Crochet installation artist Lace In The Moon (Nicole Nikolich) designed ‘A Drag Queen Goes To Vote And It Is No Big Deal’, featuring a gowned figure in platform stilettos at a voting booth. Nikolich tried to find a reference image for her concept of a drag queen voting but could not find a single photo. So she created this piece. 

The sixth artist, Cuttink Studio (Jeffy Thomas), who hails from Bahrain and India, is not able to vote in the US. “There is immense power in a vote,” he says in his muralist statement. “Children and immigrants are two groups that have no say in decisions that deeply affect their lives.”

Alaina Johns is editor-in-chief of the Broad Street Review, a publication focused on the arts and culture of the Philadelphia region.