Paul Carpenter grew up in Northeast Philly watching the 1993 Phillies take over the city as they claimed the National League East title.
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Witnessing their success gave him inspiration for his first big project. At just 8 years old, the young artist stared at his bedroom wall, visualizing a blank canvas for his very first mural: a painting of the NL East champions.
Now, over three decades later, Carpenter has landed his “dream job,” designing Deer Park’s limited-edition All-Star Game aluminum bottles as the midsummer classic makes its way to Philadelphia.
“This just aligned perfectly for me,” Carpenter said. “Obviously, I’m a die-hard Philly sports fan. This being the All-Star game, such a high-profile game, it’s just mind-blowing. A really great opportunity for me.”
Carpenter has created art his whole life and studied illustration in college at Delaware. After years doing design work for La Vida Hospitality and Liquid, Surf, Skate, Snow in Delaware, he made his way back to Philly in 2009.
Despite his experience designing beer cans for Crooked Hammock Brewery, there still were challenges printing the design.
“The scale was pretty hard to envision, and making sure that everything still’s readable, that the hierarchy of the design holds up and that the different layers of color came out correctly to make the design look exciting and make Philadelphia look great nationally,” Carpenter said. “But, basically, it’s a love letter to Philadelphia. I wanted to capture all the things that really resonate with our cultural fabric as a city.”
The design features iconic monuments like the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin holding a baseball bat. The city’s food culture is represented with images of cheesesteaks, crab fries, and soft pretzels. And there are plenty of Easter eggs for Philly natives — including a reference to the “Woohoo guy” and the William Penn curse.
“This was easy,” Carpenter said. “This was all low-hanging fruit. It’s all stuff that’s in my lexicon and visual language at this point.”
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Now, Carpenter has a new challenge presented to him: recreating the design in mural form.
Carpenter has created over 30 murals — not including the one from his childhood bedroom — many of which are in the Philadelphia area, including 11 pillars at Xfinity Mobile Arena and one at Citizens Bank Park.
The toughest part about this the mural? “The scale.”
“They’re almost polar opposites,” Carpenter said. “The bottle is very small, 12 inches high, and vertically orientated. And the wall, we got is 2,700 square feet. So, basically, it was like cutting, chopping up the design, and redesigning it to a much different scale.
“When it’s on a scale of this magnitude and you’re walking down the street, it definitely impacts you differently. All of a sudden, instead of the water ice being tiny, it’s six feet tall.”
It will take nearly two weeks for Carpenter to finish the mural, known as Hometown Grit, located on Oregon Avenue and South 20th Street. Throughout the process, he painted through all the elements, from thunderstorms to 100 degree heat. The finished product will be unveiled around 2 p.m. Saturday.
“I’m really looking forward to the interaction of seeing the neighborhood come together,” Carpenter said. “We’ve been interacting with people all week, and it’s really cool because a lot of the work is bringing the local culture and community together. That’s really the big part of my work, celebrating the city, and the people, and the cultural fabric of the city. There’s so much pride in Philadelphia. It’ll be cool to see that in real time.”
Baseball’s biggest stars are descending on Philadelphia for the 96th All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park on July 14. Follow all of The Inquirer’s coverage here.
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