We asked Michael L Miller about all the beautiful murals in West Reading. We learned that the collection of murals in West Reading were created in collaboration with the West Reading Community Revitalization Foundation.
At the time, Michael L. Miller was the Art teacher in the Wyomissing Area School District. He taught a course called Public Art Workshop, which introduced high school students to the importance of community service through their participation in collaborative Public Art projects in their own neighborhood.
This collaboration was supported by the late Mr. Dean Rohrbach, who raised funds for the projects and secured permission to paint on the various properties. Over 5 years they created about thirty murals on Cherry Street between 4th and 7th Avenues. This collection was created not just with the student artists, but also with local professional artists. The collection of murals has been renamed Dean’s Way in memory of Dean Rohrbach, who worked so passionately to create it.
A little side note, our founder Rosa Parra did an internship at NHS when she was nineteen years old and that is where she met Dean. He was the director at NHS. Rosa worked on a project with them called Operation Facelift. This project also focused on making the city beautiful and was very community-based. She was delighted to know that these murals were renamed Dean’s Way.
You can find more photos of all the murals on Mike’s website. There are currently a few projects going on in the city of Reading which Palo will highlight later when completed.
www.berkscommunitymurals.org/project-gallery
Palo Magazine
