It’s been two months since the mural, “A Community of Champions: The Extraordinary and the Everyday,” was unveiled at a festive celebration at Fulton Bank’s new South Philly branch at 1722 South Broad Street, and the Indego team is still glowing. The mural stands 100 feet wide and 17 feet tall and includes an Indego bike with colorful snapshots of various South Philly landmarks in its wheels. Keep reading to learn more about this mural and hear from the artists, Keisha Whatley and Andre Chaney, about how this project came to be and what they learned from this almost year-long process.

Keisha Whatley is the Creative Director of Custom Arts Studio (CAS), a full-service art and design company in East Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. She led the mural project from start to finish after a representative from Fulton Bank reached out to her wanting a mural that showed off the pride of South Philly.

Keisha was excited to take on this project, incorporating Custom Arts Studio’s signature style, which she describes as a blend of surrealism, traditional portraiture, and research. Recently, CAS is best known for creating Philadelphia’s first Juneteenth Mural on the exterior wall of Germantown ArtHaus. It was at an Artist Talk event following the unveiling of the Juneteenth Mural in June 2023 that Keisha connected with Indego’s Community Engagement Manager, Charolyn Mosley, about the South Philly Mural Project.

Since Indego’s operations are based in South Philly and we completed one of our largest community expansions throughout South Philly, it seemed only natural to be a partner in this process. Charolyn reflected on this partnership, “Community is at the core of what we do because, at the end of the day, we are nothing without each other. Overall, the mural symbolizes community relationship and trust; this is the core of Indego’s Community Engagement work, to be relational and not transactional.”

Andre Chaney, a contemporary painter, illustrator, teaching artist, and avid Indego rider, collaborated with Keisha on the design of the mural. He said that to kick off this project, they got inspiration by doing a South Philly crawl, exploring the area to check out stores, bakeries, parks, notable cheesesteak shops, and more. The two then held a focus group with the seniors from Edmond Senior Center, high school students from Mastery Charter School, Indego staff, and Fulton Bank communities, which helped to gather insight from various perspectives about what South Philly means to the community.

Keisha explained, “We ask strange questions to gain insight, like, “If South Philly were a texture, what texture would it be and why?” “If it were a color… shape, word, etc.” The answers and overlapping of answers help us begin laying the framework to tell the visual story. It really is a practice in trusting the creative process.” Andre said that he and Keisha then put their heads together and, based on their findings, combined their artistic styles and visions to create a work of art highlighting the history, culture, and community essence of South Philadelphia.