I grew up in Mt. Airy, a neighborhood in the northwestern part of Philadelphia. It’s close to center city yet feels very suburban. It’s a progressive area with one of the country’s oldest co-op markets, Weavers Way, and wonderfully integrated. Our block was quiet enough to ride my bike in the street; there was room to run and play behind the house; it’s very family friendly.

My latest project was born out of something I was doing for work. We’re co-sponsoring a photo contest of Mt. Airy to use the winning images in a 2010 desk calendar. Sales of this calendar will benefit (modestly) a local organization where “neighbors teach neighbors,” the Mt. Airy Learning Tree (MALT). MALT has just started a capital campaign to buy their building, trying to raise $230,000 by next September. I was out on the main street, visiting businesses to promote the contest. I had my own camera with me and started to photograph the business signs. I was thinking about a collage for the calendar cover.

A few days went by and I was continuing to promote the photo contest and photographing business signs. I hit upon a great idea – create a collage of these signs – business and otherwise and sell a poster to help MALT raise more money toward their goal. I’ve worked on the collage for the past several days, using 86 images of different signs from around Mt. Airy. Today I had a version to share with the director of MALT. We’ve been emailing back and forth about pricing, how much of that would go to MALT, and how best to promote the poster to sell a bunch.

Although not quite ready to make that announcement, we’re very close to making this all public. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s the poster as it stands right now.