OUR IMPACT
For over 25 years, Meg Saligman Studios has created over 40 permanent artworks internationally, including three of America’s largest murals. We’ve engaged 160,000+ community participants directly in the art-making process, and we’ve hired and mentored dozens of local artists along the way.
But numbers only tell a fraction of the story. Art, like life, is about quality - what came before, what results after, and the process in between. Community is at the center of this story. Our community-driven practice integrates each artwork within its multi-faceted context, nurturing collective imagination and ownership in pursuit of a shared experience of beauty and understanding.
This video here tells it best. Or as activist Moses Freeman puts it, “it’s a person-to-person kind of deal.”
INNOVATION
We consistently seek better ways to engage communities and facilitate exchange. In 2001, we devised the first-ever community paint day using parachute cloth and paint-by-numbers to include 1,000+ community members in the direct painting of the mural. This process and technique is now industry standard.
We seek to elevate the aesthetic perception of social practice. Our studios’ seminal work in Philadelphia, Common Threads (1998), elevated the perception of murals as fine art and played a key role in sparking the contemporary mural movement. It was the largest mural of its time, and we’ve since created several of the nation’s largest murals, all while remaining community-centric. We are now applying our art to elevate the perception of public and low-income housing through a partnership with award-winning non-profit Project HOME.
As a member of the National Heritage Preservation, we are at the forefront of mural technique and technology. We work directly with conservation scientists specializing in exterior surface coatings to define best industry practices for mural longevity. Meg’s even lectured about it at the Smithsonian Institute. Watch here, art nerds <3