BmoreArt

Seven of the nine murals are sited throughout Oriole Park, one is located on the Convention Center facade facing the stadium, and the other is on a historic building in Waverly, a stone’s throw from the original Memorial Stadium. This multi-year collaboration celebrates Baltimore’s vibrant art community and creates new opportunities for Orioles fans to engage with contemporary art at the ballpark, enriching their experience in unexpected ways.

Each Birdland Mural was created by a different artist or duo, with the majority hailing from Baltimore–so their connection to the Orioles is personal. This marks a significant change from past large public art projects in Baltimore where internationally-based artists have been selected for large commissions. Not only did these kinds of large public art projects of the past send hundreds of thousands of dollars outside the city, they resulted in artwork like the 2004 “Male/Female” stainless steel sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky that stands in front of Baltimore’s Penn Station. The city’s largest public art commission to date, the sculpture offers no authentic connection to Baltimore, no reflection of local culture.

In contrast, what’s so exciting about the Birdland Murals project is their proof that when given the opportunity and resources to do so, Baltimore-based artists have the ability to create iconic works of art that actually reflect a Baltimore experience.

It’s worth noting that, as the Orioles’ close downtown neighbor and ongoing sponsor, PNC could have chosen to support the ballclub’s mission in a variety of more traditional ways. However, over the past two decades, the bank and its charitable foundation have become significant supporters of the arts ecosystem across the region. PNC’s understanding that artists and the arts fuel important cultural dialogue as well as the local economy have become fundamental to their philanthropic investments and outreach. 

“The Birdland Murals series is a creative intersection of sports and the arts that functions in two powerful ways,” says Laura Gamble, Regional President for PNC in Greater Maryland. “The Orioles Birdland Murals Powered by PNC gives us the opportunity to invest in the community by bringing cultural riches and the arts to what’s already a very vibrant city. It’s also a platform for PNC to really shine within the stadium and within our partnership with the Orioles.” 

In addition to her leadership role at PNC, Gamble serves on the boards of a diverse group of business and charitable organizations. She’s also a regular presence at art exhibitions and events across the city, and her personal convictions put her in the unique position to advocate for public art. 

Gamble explains that the murals have become a vital platform that the Orioles amplify through stadium signage and through videos that appear on the stadium scoreboard, online, and in social media. More than mere decoration or enhancement of the physical environment at the ballpark, the murals function as a program for focused activities and conversations that follow the actual installations themselves.

According to Gamble, “The Orioles were looking for ways to enhance the visitor experience, and this was an unusual idea at the time. Now, this kind of collaborative project is becoming more standard throughout the major league baseball world. A number of teams are looking at our idea to see whether they can consider doing it themselves.” 

Gamble explains that she often finds herself in conversations where she can champion Baltimore’s homegrown talent sharing the best of Baltimore with people who have not had a chance to experience it firsthand. “We like to see folks with a Baltimore and a Maryland connection represented, because we want the murals to be reflective of the community,” she says. “This goes to the diversity of the artists, as well as being supportive of Gaia’s curatorial vision.”

It was PNC who tapped Gaia, the Baltimore-based, internationally-known muralist, also known as Andrew Pisacane, to organize the project, who selected a diverse variety of artists across the spectrum of the public art, mural, and street writing communities. He says it was important to recognize how Baltimore’s mural scene has changed dramatically over the past decade and reflects a new street art energy that is reinvigorating the city. 

“With the Birdland Murals project, we have had the pleasure of supporting the immense talent that has emerged from a group of emerging and well-established muralists,” says Gaia. “There’s a kind of redemptive quality for being able to have a very local and regional feeling without compromising quality.” 

Gaia explains that part of his curatorial vision for the project is to reflect Baltimore back to itself, as well as providing a variety of styles and approaches to art making. “We have style writing with Adam Stab, illustration with Red Swan, hyperrealism and stencil art with Logan Hicks, as well as community-driven work that’s very specific with Ernest Shaw and SHAN Wallace. With Jessie and Katey, we are entering geometry and abstraction, and getting beyond the notion that a bird or a baseball needs to be depicted to capture the spirit of the place.”

In addition, Gaia has selected a few artists who have local connections, though they no longer live here, like Logan Hicks, a New York-based MICA graduate whose family comes from Southern Maryland and Thomas Evans (aka Detour), a Colorado-based artist who collaborated with Baltimore-based Nether on the first mural based outside of Oriole’s Park, on the 400 block of East 33rd Street.

“It was really important to show how much creative talent is associated with the region, whether the artists are living here or not, they have a relationship with Baltimore,” says Gamble. 

“The artists have talked to us about their connection to the Orioles, with stories of watching the team while they were growing up, and that obviously just adds to the story they are able to tell,” Gaia says. “There are numerous limitations within which we have to operate, but I’m trying to slowly get all the stakeholders comfortable with being as adventurous as possible. And we’ve really proceeded accordingly.” 

He explains that the very first mural, Megan Lewis’s interactive “Selfie Wall” in the kid’s corridor, was installed on a semi-permanent surface in 2020, because stadium officials were concerned about potentially damaging the brick surface underneath. After this initial test and overwhelming success, subsequent murals have been applied directly to permanent and temporary walls throughout Oriole Park.

The most recent commission, a geometric color-filled mural completed in 2024 by Jessie and Katey, was painted directly onto the Camden Yards-facing facade of the Baltimore Convention Center on Howard Street. It’s a bold and cheerful greeting for every Oriole Park visitor who arrives by light rail or parks off-site. Gaia sees this piece as the fulfillment of a promise started with Lewis, where civic and business leadership have increasingly supported and encouraged the murals series to expand as they have witnessed its success. 

The second mural, created in 2020, is a giant composition by Red Swan Walls, featuring a pair of crisply rendered oriole birds surrounded by enthusiastic and colorful patterns, located on the back of the center field scoreboard on the Budweiser roof deck. “We love painting murals because it’s a democratic form of art. In the fine art world it’s exclusive so if you’re not going to galleries or museums, you’re not going to see it, but lots of people can enjoy a giant painting on the wall,” explains the duo of Baltimore-based artists Hanna Moran and Lindy Swan, known for bold murals located throughout the Baltimore and DC region that feature flora and fauna combined with abstract patterns. 

In 2021, the mural series featured painter Ernest Shaw and street writer Adam Stab, who both leaned into history and nostalgia for their compositions. “I wanted to go beyond statistics, and into cultural visual representation,” says Shaw, who depicted Negro League Hall of Famers Roy Campanella, Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, and Maryland native Ernest Burke, alongside a Sankofa bird in a baseball glove in the Legends Park area just beyond the bullpens in center field. The bird is a West African Adinkra symbol, which represents the value of honoring the past and using history as a basis for positive progress. Shaw included Baltimore-based artist Chris Batten, a painter and educator, on this project, and says he understands the role that sports teams can play in the collective ethos of a city and wanted to contribute in a similar way to the collective legacy of Baltimore City. “I believe in the power of positive imagery as a conduit,” Shaw says. “It’s an inspiration, not just for Black children, but for all children.”

Baltimore’s longest-active graffiti writer, Adam Stab, is a Baltimore School for the Arts graduate and largely credited with shaping the “Baltimore hand style,” used by a number of artists in the genre. Stab’s mural, located under the video board between the center field bleachers and Eutaw Street, includes artists Jeffrey Evers, Dave Diggian, Damian Disantis, Leonard Bateman, Andrew Funk, and Jennifer Weightman. Composed on two parallel walls in a concrete alley behind the center field bleachers, the Eutaw Street side reads, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and depicts concessions-based ballpark scenes, while its twin reads “Baltimore” and “Orioles Magic” and depicts baseball scenes with the Oriole Bird swinging a bat, playing catch, and cheering. 

In 2022, the series grew to include murals by Logan Hicks near Legends Park and the Bullpen Picnic area, and the first offsite mural by Thomas Eans (aka Detour) and Nether, located on the 400 block of East 33rd Street, near the original Memorial Stadium. Hicks’s composition is almost reflective of where you stand when viewing it. It depicts a bustling Eutaw Street scene complete with the Bromo Arts Tower in the background and thousands of photorealistically depicted, layered stencil-painted fans. For those who choose to spend time with the mural, they will discover several famous faces and past Orioles legends, celebrating the more than 72 million fans and visitors Oriole Park at Camden Yards has brought to downtown Baltimore since the ballpark opened in 1992.

The offsite mural by Detour and Nether celebrates Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood, site of the former Memorial Stadium, the team’s home from 1954-91. Painted directly into the upper story facade of a historic movie theater, the right side of the mural depicts a young baseball player wearing a City College hat and swinging a bat, with a bird’s nest in the center and four Oriole birds flying around it, tying together the origin of the team to Baltimore City youth.

In 2023, the series moved back to the ballpark, with a text-based mural by Landry Randriamandroso, a MICA graduate and community artist who specializes in text-based design that focuses on environmental and social subjects. His mural reads; “BM❤️RE” in giant block letters and colors, a simple love note to the city he loves. Nearby, artist and photographer SHAN Wallace has installed two giant collages, paying homage to Baltimore neighborhoods and the individuals who live and work here, celebrating resilience and creativity in a vibrant depiction of city life teeming with activity.

A second offsite mural was completed in 2024, a massive geometric design in vibrant color by Baltimore-based duo Jessie and Katey. Covering the west side of the Baltimore Convention Center, the two MICA-graduates have employed their globally recognized, often symmetrical, style to the Howard Street-facing facade, creating an abstract representation of the energy and pride generated by large collective events, prominently but not exclusively featuring orange and purple hues. 

As we head into 2025’s season at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Birdland Murals multi-year partnership remains popular with fans, the ballclub, and has become a symbol of local artistic pride for PNC Bank. The next crop of murals has not yet been announced, but one thing is for certain: the project will continue to evolve, and the partners involved show no sign of fatigue or wavering of commitment. 

According to PNC’s Gamble, “To our knowledge, before this project we had not done anything quite like this before, intersecting baseball and local artists. PNC does have a legacy of supporting other mural projects, but with the Orioles, we have created an iconic series that continues to expand and incorporate these two separate worlds into one conversation, both at Camden Yards and in the community.” Gamble cites a number of collaborative partners, including the Mayor’s Office, Gaia, and the Oriole’s management team as essential in making this project a success. 

“It took roughly one year to convince the Maryland Stadium Authority and the Orioles to let us paint directly on the walls,” says Gaia. “There was a lot of handholding involved to make sure that we cultivated trust and that what we were doing wouldn’t damage the substrate of the stadium. We also had to prove that the work would be complimentary. In the end, we have been able to all take a leap of faith together.”

“PNC has always been fond of working with our artists’ communities, and our relationship with Gaia came through the Open Walls Baltimore project,” says Gamble. “We love using street art to beautify communities. Bringing this strategy to the Orioles was a bit of a leap, but it works.”

Gamble acknowledges that most people do not go to the baseball stadium looking for art. Orioles fans may not be representative of museum-going audiences and gallery mavens, however, their beloved team is committed to the power and talent of local artists and their ability to speak directly to audiences, boldly and beautifully. PNC’s ability to bring local contemporary art and artists directly to the Orioles’ audience presents a great opportunity to showcase the artists, while cultivating a sense of community.

The Orioles Birdland Murals Powered by PNC project offers an elevated, unique experience for visitors to Camden Yards, where living local artists are able to share their love for the city visually, enhancing the experience for everyone, a space where artistic and athletic excellence cross-pollinates into a new, heightened sense of hometown pride.