DRAFT Street Art Wandering by Joyce Wycoff

Street Art Wandering culture

and stories behind Mexico’s colorful, ever-changing murals

Joyce Wycoff

“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything ies and goes away.”

~ Frida Kahlo

“I had two big accidents in my life: the trolley and Diego; Diego is by far the worse.”

Frida Kahlo

Street Art Wandering culture and stories behind Mexico’s colorful, ever-changing murals

Joyce Wycoff Publisher

Cover: Snake, Jesús López Vega

In addition to normal Copyright stuﬀ:

Mural painters are artists!

Their murals are their creative projects requiring wall owner approval … equipment … paint … time … labor … and most of all creativity and the desire to create beauty and a message.

Mural creations are copyright protected by law.

We have made every eﬀort to recognize the artists by name and get their permission to be included in this work.

Above all, none of the images in this book will be used to promote any product or service beyond fair use as examples of murals in Mexico.

Dedicated to: Efrén González and his “The Wall of Skulls”

In the artsy, expat-magnet town of Ajijic on Lake Chapala, on two-walls of a school near the central plaza is a unique, sculpted mural. On the 1,000+ skulls of that wall are names of Ajijic residents who have died, each one containing a candle to be lit each year during the Day of the Dead celebration.

Artist: Efrén González

The panel anchoring the “Wall of Skulls” … this installation honors the history of Mexico and also inspires and engages the community. It also includes poetry from the artist.

A world of murals opens …

On my ﬁrst visit to San Miguel de Allende in 2014, I found murals everywhere. However, It was this psychedelic bull that made me fall in love with art on walls and made me a “collector.”

Murals fall outside-the-commercial zone of art. Their colorful, free-ﬂowing creativity, dodging around or incorporating windows, doors, lamps, and other structural elements constantly delights me. Plus, the fact that you really can’t “collect” murals because they are ﬂeeting means you have to pay attention today because they may not be there tomorrow.

Mural artists are sometimes commissioned or participate in festivals, but many are just painters who need to paint and have learned how to transfer their creativity onto a wall for everyone to see and enjoy.

The following murals are organized by place, however, remember that, while you may never see these speciﬁc murals, the places mentioned tend to be public art hotspots and you are likely see new and wonderful murals and other forms of public art there.

If you happen to visit San Miguel, look up Colleen Sorenson on Facebook - she has been instrumental in making SMA a mural haven.

You will never see this mural on the streets … it is gone.

Joyce

Why are Murals Important?

The colonial city of San Miguel de Allende has won almost every accolade possible … most enchanting destination, world’s best city, and, perhaps, the highest art gallery-to-resident ratio in the world. It was in SMA that my interest in murals and public art ﬁrst blossomed into a passion and focus of all my travels.

For me, the best art galleries are the ones in the streets, the ones everyone can see whenever they want … and for free. The ones that bring neighbors and visitors together to talk and wonder about, the ones that energize the very cells of our bodies with their audacious use of space and color.

The impulse to create, to capture thoughts and feelings in images may be as old as the human species … or even older. The ancient caves with their cavorting animals may have been some of the ﬁrst murals, and, along with pictograms, petroglyphs, mosaics, and archeological stelae, represent our endless urge to communicate beyond the limitations of language.

While few people appreciate graffiti, if we considered it a seed of the creative urge, we might find redirecting that basic human drive into public art more effective than trying to prevent it. Murals nourish the inner artist in all of us.

Murals: Good or Bad?

Through happenstance, I’m involved with helping a friend sell her art collection representing a life-time of buying what she loved. Turns out that some of the artists developed a lasting reputation and have “value.” So, I’ve spent days and weeks researching auction houses, galleries, and artist biographies. It has been a fun project, but leaves me with a feeling that, along the way, we have corrupted the fundamental urge to make art.

I love art galleries, however, their primary intent is not to be a pleasure palace, but rather more like a grocery store … I have milk; if you want it, give me money and you can have it.

You can’t buy a mural; you can’t invest in it for future gain; you can’t show oﬀ the way it matches your couch, or brag about the artist … you can only observe it, think about it, feel it, be inspired by it … or not. You can like it or not like it, think it is well-executed or not, but you can’t really “judge” it. That’s part of the beauty of murals … especially murals like these, most likely painted by artists who would not show up in a carefully curated, commercial art gallery.

Street murals are a democratic form of creative expression, where you don’t have to worry about the deﬁnition of “art” or how much it will be worth in ten or ﬁve hundred years.

Ajijic, Lake Chapala, Jalisco

Ajijic, known as a town of murals sits on the shore of Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico and attracts ex-pats from around the world with its art, beauty and almost perfect, Mediterranean climate.

Ajijic’s art background began in the 1940s when Neill James, an American woman with a mysterious background was severely injured in a volcanic eruption and decided to recuperate in the small village. During her time there, she mentored several young art students and sent them oﬀ to art school in San Miguel de Allende.

They later returned and became well known artists who now mentor a whole new generation of artists an muralists.

Artist Efrén Gonzáles, one of the students Neill James mentored, and his students transformed the blank wall of the pier into this colorful attraction.

Link to Blog

by Jesus Lopez Vega on his studio

From the home of muralist

Jesús López Vega

Mural in progress

Laguna Bacalar

Sor Juana on a school wall

Puerto Escondido

Escondido

2018, 2019 Oaxaca is a colorful, indigenous craft and artﬁlled city; it is also a political city, ﬁlled with parades and protests. Its murals and wall art tend to be radical.