It took two years for Ernel Martinez to get Ed Bradley’s face up on a wall in Ed’s hometown neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Martinez, an adjunct faculty member at Moore, along with Jocelyn MacDonald ‘15 and Kimberly Torres ‘16, worked with community groups, students and other artists to paint and install the mural of the longtime 60 Minutes journalist on the wall at Belmont and Wyalusing avenues in West Philly. Martinez was the lead artist, commissioned by Mural Arts Philadelphia.
“The fact that he was African American and someone I admired tremendously growing up, being a person of color on television, how he conducted and carried himself, I always admired that,” Martinez said. “For me getting to work on a mural that celebrated a person of his stature was great.”
The mural is 71 feet long and 33 feet high, and features Bradley prominently in the center, with vignettes from his life as a reporter surrounding him.
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Torres wasn’t sure who Bradley was, but remembered she saw the drawing the mural was based on.
“I knew a bit about him, but I have seen his face before,” Torres said of Bradley. “He interviewed Toni Morrison and Michael Jackson.”
Torres worked on the background of the mural, along with many others.
“Parts of the mural traveled around a bit,” she said. “Kids from the school he went to, St. Ignatius, were able to go on a field trip to CBS (to help paint the mural).” Some of Bradley’s colleagues from 60 Minutes also helped to paint it. Students from the Blankenburg School and the Mastery Mann School, as well as members of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and people from the Fine Arts Department of Cheyney University also worked on the mural.
“It was very hands-on, moreso than anything art-related that I’ve done,” MacDonald said. “We were climbing up scaffolding with huge buckets. It was very physical and labor-intensive work for month, but it was the most rewarding piece you could ever do.”
