PROFILE // Illustrating a Path
by Jared Michael Lowe
Excerpt //
This is what makes Livingston’s artistry so intriguing. Her public artwork holds up a mirror that casts society’s reflection back to us. She depicts all of its beauty and anguish, our complexities and questions. She invites us to have a deeper, more nuanced conversation about our differences and our similarities, and how we are connected and unified, but also divided. She does so by drawing everyday people in everyday situations that demand us to ask questions and seek honest truths. It is a form of civic dialogue between the artist and the viewer, one that Livingston feels grateful for.
“My world involves these different relations that pull at my attention,” she says. “When I am asked to display my work, I am thrust into dialogues whether I consent to them or not, and that excess, that inability to dictate the tenor of the work, is a beautiful triumph that art embodies.”
Livingston is prolific. At 32, she has created more than 30 murals across Philadelphia. Her graphic design agency, Creative Repute LLC, has worked with a laundry list of local and national names ranging from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to Zipcar and the NFL. Over the last few years, she’s become one of the most recognizable public artists in Philadelphia, while remaining mission- and community-driven in her projects. “She could very well become the next Meg Saligman,” says Conrad Benner, the founder of StreetsDept.com, a photo blogger and advocate for street art in Philadelphia. “I can see her work around the world.”
Benner has worked with Livingston on numerous projects, beginning with To the Polls, a mural exhibition in 2018 meant to rally the Philadelphia community around civic participation through the act of voting. Livingston created the central piece in the show, the same title of the exhibition.
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