Blog / 2026 / Painting the First Continental Congress

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This artwork is called First Continental Congress, and I made it for 52 Weeks of Firsts, an art-and-history celebration that’s happening all over Philadelphia every Saturday in 2026. I’m one of 25 artists who painted 52 number one sculptures, covering them with imagery from different historical moments.

I painted three ONEs in all, depicting the first steamboat, first zoo, and First Continental Congress. And I painted them all over the course of five weeks last fall, working with the various institutions and partners to determine what I’d be depicting.

For this piece, I’d been asked by the people at Carpenters’ Hall to include the hall itself in the design. Carpenters’ Hall was built by the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, and it’s still owned by them—they’re the oldest extant craft guild in the country. In 1774, it became the meeting place of the First Continental Congress when delegates from the different colonies determined that meeting at the Pennsylvania State House would give PA’s founding fathers home court advantage, as it were. Carpenters’ Hall was deemed neutral enough to allow the conversation to flow.

When choosing which delegates to include in the piece, I had some leeway. There was a request for Patrick Henry, and I didn’t like the idea of not including John Adams, but I also wanted to be sure to paint a representative from Pennsylvania. I poured over the list of delegates, learning more about these historical figures than I ever did in school, and that’s how I came across John Morton.

He’s one of two founding fathers who traces his origins back to somewhere besides Great Britain. Morton was of Finnish descent, and I liked the idea of having a non-Anglo in my depiction of the First Continental Congress—as a representative of all the non-Anglo Americans today. Plus, Morton would go on to provide the swing vote allowing Pennsylvania to support the Declaration of Independence a couple years later.

Come celebrate the First Continental Congress with me at 11 AM on September 12^th at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia!