Deep Water | Ross Lewis

Published: Jan. 14, 2022, noon

NYC artist Ross Lewis discusses his terrazzo floor painting, "Deep Water", located at the Holmesburg Recreation Center in Philadelphia.  Visitors to the Holmesburg Recreation Center trace the local topography and history in the abstract shapes of the terrazzo floor painting, Deep Water. The work represents for the artist the life which grew up around the Pennypack Creek and man's relationship to nature. A natural fall line, made Pennypack a tidal creek, giving early Holmesburg settlers a particular advantage for their water-power run saw mills and grist mills. The names of some of the early mills are included in the floor painting along with those of key streets such as Welsh Road, originally built by Welsh farmers to bring grain to the grist-mills back in the 1600's. Frankford Avenue, a north-south route retraces a route which is at least a thousand years old used by the Native American People. Other names in the painting of particular mention are the Crispin School, which stood on the current site of the Recreation Center, the Harrisburg Colored Settlement, one of the earliest black settlements in the area dating back to the 1720's and the King's Highway Bridge, the oldest stone bridge of its kind in the nation built in 1697.