This month, Philadelphia Eagles are bringing together two of the city’s biggest loves — sports and art — to take action for autism.
From April 11 to 14, the Eagles and Old City gallery Arch Enemy Arts will showcase unique pieces from 35 artists from the Greater Philadelphia area that highlight the team’s relationship with Philly. The exhibition “Green is the Heart Inspired” will benefit the Eagles Autism Foundation.
“We are excited to celebrate the intersection of Eagles football and Philly’s vibrant art scene with this new exhibit,” said Eagles Autism Foundation Executive Director Ryan Hammond. “This will serve as a great opportunity to honor our team’s history, showcase the talented artists in our community, and raise important funds for autism research and care programs.”
The show was inspired by the gameday poster series that the Eagles have run for the past five seasons, Eagles senior graphic designer Matthew Schwenk told Billy Penn. The overwhelmingly positive response from fans and artists inspired Schwenk to lean further into the fine art world to “put their work towards the Eagles and how they would interpret how the Eagles matter to Philadelphia.”
Schwenk reached out to Arch Enemy Arts co-founders Noah Musher and Lawren Alice. After some second-guessing whether the email wasn’t some elaborate hoax, they in turn reached out to the artists they hoped would participate.
“It’s been a dream watching some of my favorite artists create pieces about my favorite sports team,” said Musher, an Eagles season ticket holder. “I never really thought that we would do an event that’s so centric on a specific sports team. We’ve never done anything like this before and to see it all come together, it’s really cool.”
Kristen Egan, a mixed media artist from Berks County who specializes in masks and sculptures, had told herself at the beginning of the year that she wouldn’t do any more group shows this year because her schedule was already packed. The pitch for the Eagles show was too “intriguing” to pass up though, since she was brought up in an Eagles household and credits Philly for launching her art career.
“I am glad I did too because I think the piece that I made for it was a little bit experimental for me and I’m really happy with the way it turned out,” Egan said.
The title of the show served as a helpful and wide prompt for Alice and Musher to reach out to artists who hadn’t necessarily covered sports themes before, inviting them to create work inspired by the team and its relationship with the Philadelphia community: the traditions, the history, the emotions and the fan experience.
“Philly’s two greatest loves are art and sports, and I think that the support is reciprocal on both ends,” said Alice. “I don’t think there’s any other city that has as much artistic support as ours, as for their teams.”
“We have a whole mixture of artists,” Schwenk said about the 35 artists selected for the gallery. “We have a couple that we have used for the posters, we have a couple that are already doing sports-themed pieces and I think those will be recognized by the fans … And then we have other artists that have never done sports work at all, and it’s been amazing to see the avenues that they went down when they started thinking about this.”
The artists responded with a wide variety of familiar Philly iconography. While familiar shades of green and the obvious bird of prey are present in most works, artists also chose to include elements like the Philly skyline, scenes and items at a tailgate, historic players and moments from past and present, and a fair amount of trashing the Dallas Cowboys.
“My personal favorite is probably the Paul Romano painting. It perfectly references both sports and the fine art world,” said Alice. “It’s based off of a [Peter Paul Rubens] painting that’s currently hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art … It’s an eagle attacking a figure, eating at its liver, but instead of Prometheus it’s a Cowboys player … It’s so great for the rivalry, like it’s such a good and clever take on a very classic painting.”
What was most important was that the artists’ signature styles and the themes they worked around were maintained in their work. Philly native O’Neil Scott, an Eagles fan who grew up obsessed with Brian Dawkins and went on to play as a safety for Syracuse, painted “Stay the Course,” which maintained the inspiring, uplifting themes his work is known for.
“It’s really set up to kind of remind us where we’ve been and how we’ve grown, and then to inspire us and uplift us,” Scott said. “I really try to get to those themes and put forth that type of message throughout the world.”
Maria Teicher, an artist and photographer currently based in West Chester, and assistant professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, chose to do a portrait of former Eagles center Jason Kelce, titled “Greatest,” lightly draping him in a background of ivy to represent the “devotion, fidelity, attachment and eternal friendship” that he and his wife Kylie have given to the team and the city.
Teicher was in the middle of painting Kelce’s face when she got a message from Alice that Kelce was giving his emotional retirement speech. She put on her phone while continuing to work, which she described as “surreal.”
“It actually really choked me up, I was really surprised,” Teicher said. “It was a really beautiful dedication to his career, the city and people that support him. I’m a mom of two boys. So anytime he’s talking about his mom in particular — and him and his brother — I get really attached to that.”
Kristen Egan’s piece “Aquila” kept to her usual themes of folklore, mythology and animals, using natural found materials and organic shapes. The project was her first attempt at making an Eagle mask though.
“I’ve never really done feathers before, so I experimented on this project with actually [cutting] feathers out of wood and [glueing] them into the gourd, which is the base of the mask,” she said. “Which it kind of gives it almost like an Aztecy kind of feel, which I think is cool. So I was kind of going for that warrior vibe.”
Of the 35 artists, four are on the autism spectrum, which Hammond said was an important part of the organization’s continued goal to encompass and include all abilities in Eagles events.
“Whether it’s fan experience on game day and making sure we have the sensory room open, or our recent all-abilities clinic that we offered for football and cheer and drumline, this was no different.” she said. “Making sure that we have representation from individuals on the spectrum who are self-advocates display the important role they play in everything that we do, it just really was about who we are and what we do.”
“Green is the Heart Inspired” kicks off with a charity gala on April 11. With the purchase of $250 VIP and $500 V-VIP tickets, guests can get the first look at the artwork and a meet-and-greet with the artists, Eagles legends and other special guests at Arch Enemy Arts. The event is from 6 to 9 p.m., with V-VIP ticket holders getting access 30 minutes earlier.
The exhibition will then be open to Birds and arts fans for special extended hours on Friday, April 12 from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m., and the following two days from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The admittance fee on these days is a $5-15 donation to the Eagles Autism Foundation.
All of the original artwork has been up for auction online since March 25, with the bidding closing on April 15. As of Monday, bids for the pieces have ranged from $400 to just over $5,500.
The foundation will also host the 2024 edition of the Eagles Autism Challenge on May 18, 2024, where participants can run, walk, cycle and sensory walk around Lincoln Financial Field or virtually, with the chance to meet members of the Eagles team. Hammond said that a record crowd of over 5,000 people is expected for this year’s event.
Overall, Schwenk and the other organizers said they were very impressed with the work that was created for the charity exhibition and excited to show it to the public.
“None of these artists phoned this in in any capacity,” Schwenk said, “They’re big pieces, they’re complex pieces, they’re just full of all this detail and it’s something that everyone in Philly should go see.”
