Artwork / 2025 / First Continental Congress

This #1-shaped sculpture is part of 52 Weeks of Firsts, a public art project put together by Mural Arts Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center, and Historic Philadelphia. It’s on display throughout the city in 2026! First Continental Congress will be featured at a special event on September 12^th but it’s on display at Carpenters’ Hall all year.

In this piece, the firebrand orator Patrick Henry is speaking with John Adams and John Morton. Adams would later become our second president, and Morton was the representative from Pennsylvania who would go on to provide the swing vote allowing the state to support the Declaration of Independence. Morton was also of Finnish descent, which was unusual among the founding fathers, many of whom were recent immigrants or the sons of immigrants, but with origins mostly in Great Britain.

The back of the sculpture—bottom left in the composite image above—shows a map of the thirteen colonies along with a reworking of Ben Franklin’s “Join, or Die” snake that was published in The Pennsylvania Journal after the First Continental Congress met in 1774. The final figure is Charles Thomson, a Philadelphian who was secretary of the Continental Congress as well as being a defender of the rights of indigenous people and one of the designers of the Great Seal of the United States.

This is one of three artworks I created for 52 Weeks of Firsts: check out First Zoo and First Steamboat for Passengers and Freight.

You can see some of the making of First Continental Congress.