I wish I had the energy to go through and annotate all of these photos for you, but I just don’t. I’ll note that if you’re visiting Miami, Wynwood Walls is absolutely worth an hour of your time (thanks for the rec, Neelmini!) — we did a buggy tour, which was comfortable temperature-wise, came with water bottles for all of us, and was pretty much perfect.
Our guide was a young artist himself, and his passion for graffiti / street art / murals (three different things in this context, we learned) was clear and infectious. The kids enjoyed it and learned a lot; me too!
Perhaps the most interesting aspects for me were:
• the discussion around illegal / legal art
• the history of tagging
• the way time (speed of tagging, a few minutes, so you don’t get caught, versus a week or months to do a mural) and money ($10 for a spray can) and risk (hanging off a bridge to make art) play into
• local culture of artistic respect (why do some murals get graffiti’d over with tags, and some don’t?
• the important of memorial art (which doesn’t tend to get tagged)
• the influence of commercialism (artists perceived to have sold out, businessmen who either foster the artistic culture or cause problems for it)
• the tension between commercialism and artistic value.
We covered a lot in an hour, as well as seeing a lot of terrific art.
That first photo is pointillism! Which is very hard to do with spray paint, but he said if you hold the can upside down, it helps to control the flow, so you can do kazillion tiny dots…
The second photo, the design (including the face) is etched into the wall.
This is the tour we did ($45 per person, recommend bringing some cash to tip the artist): https://www.getyourguide.com/…/wynwood-art-district-1…/
