Unauthorized Public Art Archives

Small Art on Calle Cerra

August 1, 2018 by James Trumm 1 Comment

Not all the artwork on Calle Cerra is of mammoth proportions. There are numerous smaller works too, ranging from signs and door decorations up to murals painted on single story houses and walls.

This little guy is standing right next to the gate that led me to Calle Cerra in the first place.

He shows up again here.

I liked this sign. Psycho Deli, qu’est-ce que c’est?

My mother taught me that unless your last name is Windsor, you have no business having big stone lions out in front of your house. But I think a small metal lion on a security gate would be OK with her.

The twisted street signs of Calle Cerra have become a much-photographed icon of Santurce. I’ve seen pictures of this in various publications. Which way is up and what the hell does it matter?

These portraits are by Boomone787, also known as Xavier Muñoz. He also painted some of the portraits on Calle Loíza, which I blogged about when I first moved to Puerto Rico.

I thought this was interesting: it seems to be a mural depicting a house that the owners would like to live in painted on the front wall of the house they actually live in.

I applaud the sentiment here: “Fight for an education that teaches us to think and not for an education that teaches us to obey.”

This one is just the right size: modestly proportioned so it doesn’t overwhelm the house it’s in front of.

Someone’s a big Spike Lee fan.

The painting below is by Shetrock, who has done a number of murals in the area. I think the piece below that is as well, though I don’t see his tag on it.

These next two are photos of Watusi, a small bar whose patrons sit in plastic chairs out on the sidewalk, chat with each other, and watch the world go by. The art here is once again by Boomone787.

While this isn’t artwork in the usual sense of it, the patio of this Mexican restaurant seemed so well designed and inviting that I had to photograph it.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Santurce, Street Art, Unauthorized Public Art

Big Art on Calle Cerra

July 31, 2018 by James Trumm 2 Comments

On March 29 of this year, a friend messaged me at 8:00 in the evening to say she was locked in at the Santurce Air BnB she’d rented. Literally locked in. She’d misunderstood her host’s key instructions and now found herself unable to open the gate that would allow her to leave. She needed rescuing and gave me the address: 809 Calle Cerra, Santurce.

Using Google Maps, I navigated through the Maria-darkened streets of San Juan. I thought I knew Santurce, but I’d never been to this part before. The apartment was at the top of a flight of outdoor stairs that was accessed from the sidewalk via a red gate to the right of the building. I retrieved the key from a lockbox and released Ang from her Air BnB incarceration. We had a good laugh about it.

I caught only a glimpse of the neighborhood that night. What I could make out looked to be one-third slum, one-third hip, one third light industrial/commercial. I mentally bookmarked it as a place to return to someday. And so four months to the day after I rescued Ang, I returned to check out the neighborhood by daylight. I was delighted to find the largest repository of street art I’ve seen in San Juan.

Some of the murals covered entire sides of buildings. They were clearly not the work of casual taggers.

The one below was done by NM Salgar.

This painting was the most intricate of any I saw. And it’s big; the photo here only shows half of it. I can’t imagine the amount of time it must have taken to work in all those little color dots. It was done by Shetrock, one of the most prolific and talented of the Calle Cerra artists.

I’m not wild about this particular piece, but I admire the ambition behind it.

This tree-shaded mural shows Puerto Rican baseball legend Roberto Clemente wearing his Santurce Cangrejeros uniform. Clemente was the first Latin American/Caribbean player to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The size of this mural is a reflection of how big baseball is here.

Below is surely one of the most beautiful hardware stores to be found anywhere.

I’m not certain, but I think the sign in the photo below is part of the artwork. San Expedito (Saint Expeditus) is one of the sketchier Roman Catholic saints. According to the entry on him in Wikipedia,

Expeditus was a Roman centurion in Armenia who became a Christian and was beheaded during the Diocletian Persecution in AD 303. The day he decided to become a Christian, the Devil took the form of a crow … and told him to defer his conversion until the next day. Expeditus stamped on the bird and killed it, declaring, ‘I’ll be a Christian today!’

Many stories circulated about the origin of the cultus of Expeditus. … A case containing the relics of a saint, who was formerly buried in the Denfert-Rochereau catacombs of Paris, was delivered at a convent in the city. The senders had written expédit on the case, to ensure fast delivery of the remains. The nuns assumed that “Expédit” was the name of a martyr, and prayed for his intercession. When their prayers were answered, veneration spread rapidly through France and on to other Roman Catholic countries.

Perhaps the sign is a commentary of some sort about the artwork? Who knows? Well, Shetrock probably does.

The magic of the big bunny is that the artist has imagined a three-dimensional chrome rabbit and painted it showing a contorted reflection of a street scene. It’s a painting of a sculpture that both shows the subject and mirrors the environs.

This Lichtensteinesque comic strip enlargement was four stories tall and hard to photograph. The industrial fan at the woman’s lips will give an idea of its scale.

Three Spanish ships sailing away and leaving a trail of broken, anguished bodies it their wake? I detect allegory in this one.

But if there’s allegory in this mural, it’s lost on me. It’s whimsical and fantastical, but I keep trying without success to divine some larger meaning.

This must be the coolest bus stop in Santurce. I didn’t even notice the old man sitting there until I’d taken a couple photos of him.

This last one was one of my favorites. It’s the only mural I saw that was part of an industrial plant. The artist used the idea that this is a tank of some sort to maximum advantage. Don’t lose hope: the water angel boy is coming.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Santurce, Street Art, Unauthorized Public Art

Barranco Street Art 2

July 19, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

There’s so much street art in Barranco that I couldn’t fit all of it into my first post on the subject. The neighborhood is situated by the ocean and is divided by a gorge that cuts into the shoreline. A wooden footbridge over the gorge is so popular a hangout for loving couples that it’s called La Puente de Los Suspiros (the bridge of sighs). Many of the best murals in the neighborhood are located around the steps that lead down into the valley. Some artists’ studios are accessible only from the steps.

I was here:

Filed Under: Lima, Peru, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Lima, Peru, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art

Barranco Street Art 1

July 18, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

While the murals and street art of Miraflores are tasteful and elegant, those of Barranco are unruly and unrestrained. I’ve photographed graffiti and public art all over the world and from what I’ve seen, Barranco’s murals are in the very top tier.

Filed Under: Lima, Peru, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Lima, Peru, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art

Signs of Santo Domingo

September 11, 2017 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

I’m a sucker for the written word. At age ten, I went to summer sleep-away camp and quickly became noted (mocked) for reading books, newspapers, magazines and cereal boxes while other kids were out playing. The reading habit has stuck with me throughout my travels. I’ve posted photo essays about signs in Chefchaouen (Morocco), Hong Kong, Nicaragua, and Fes (Morocco). I’ve also documented graffiti around the world.

So on my recent trip to Santo Domingo, I took pictures in the Zona Colonial of the written word.

Christianity is abundantly represented in Santo Domingo, from the city’s very name to the names of the streets to the abundance of 500 year old churches that dot the Zona Colonial. There are religious references in many of the city’s signs. But I was more interested in the informal religious signs, like this one that says, simply, “Believe in God.” And I was amused that next to this profound message was a sticker from the Geto Boys’ album “We Can’t Be Stopped.”

A more complex message is delivered by this one that says “If God does not assume it, the people will assume it.” The “it” in this case is presumably responsibility — or power.

Surprisingly, not all the religious signs I saw were Christian, such as this building with a Buddhist symbol (and a translation conveniently scrawled above it) .

Other messages were more political. This one articulates one of my own deepest convictions: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

And this one, which is a quote from Juan Pablo Duarte (1813 – 1876), of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic: “It has never been more necessary than today to have health, heart, and judgment. Today men without judgment and without heart conspire against the health of the country.” Appropriately enough, it was painted on a wall outside a health clinic. It sounds remarkably like some of the rhetoric that we hear in America today over healthcare policy.

I was pleased to see this sign on a second-floor balcony near where I was staying. The rainbow flag needs no translation; the caption on it reads “Normalizacion LGBTI Dominicana.”

This plaque above an old building on the Conde, Santo Domingo’s walking street, commemorates “intellectuals and artists” who were exiled from Spain. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plaque anywhere in America honoring “intellectuals” as a class. It’s nice to see that in some parts of the world, the term is not a dirty word.

I was also glad to see that honest-to-goodness real newspapers and newspaper vendors still exist in the Dominican Republic. Their headlines are just as dramatic as those of US tabloids. The middle paper’s headline blares, “Shocking Murder of Three Teenagers.” The tabloid on the left is (naturally) a communist paper, whose headline says, “Corruption and Impunity Are Inherent in Capitalism.” And the right-hand paper luridly announces, “Cruelty! Emily Perguero Was Beaten on the Head Until Her Skull Caved In and her Uterus Was Pierced to Induce an Abortion.”

In a residential area, I saw this sign marking the headquarters of the Board of Neighbors of St. Nicholas de Bari.

Nearby was a nice-looking little restaurant that, unfortunately, was closed each time I passed it.

Back at the pool at Island Life Backpackers Hostel, these signs conveyed perfectly the very British sensibilities of its proprietor.

Filed Under: Dominican Republic, Religion, Santo Domingo, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Dominican Republic, Religion, Santo Domingo, Street Art, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, Zona Colonial

The Murals of Toledo’s Old South End

July 28, 2015 by James Trumm 4 Comments

Toledo’s Central Union Station, where my sons and I have caught the Lake Shore Limited east many times, is situated in the city’s Old South End. I had gone down to the tracks there to photograph an antique steam locomotive as it chuffed through Toledo on its way to Youngstown for a special whoop-de-doo. Like many such events, there was about an hour of waiting and about a minute of what I’d really come to see. Since I was already in the neighborhood, I decided to explore.

This part of town now has a significant Hispanic population, a fact that’s reflected in the public artwork there. Many of the murals had been designed by Mario Acevedo Torero, a Peruvan artist who has an ongoing relationship with students of Bowling Green State University, a large state school about a half hour south of Toledo. The murals were in good condition, with very little overtagging or other defacing.

The murals were painted on the concrete supports for a large overhead highway. They made what might otherwise have been a grim (or even forbidding) environment feel loved, tended to, and peopled.

The murals below adorned the exterior walls of Adelante, a Latino community organization.

I liked the idea behind the two pieces below. The use of the blank faces encourages viewers to see themselves — or maybe their friends and family members — as the artist’s subjects. Fill in the blank: you, too, can be famous.

The one institution that I remember from years back that’s still in operation is the Green Lantern, a classic burger café that’s been continuously operated at the same spot since 1927. I’ve never eaten there myself (I think I popped in for coffee once several years ago), but it gets rave reviews from the diner aficionados on Yelp.

Outsized portraits of American heroes such as Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King graced the sides of several old buildings on Broadway. These, too, were painted by a BGSU group.

It was encouraging to see that even on obviously decrepit and decaying buildings, someone had made an effort to make them look cheerier.

Less lawful artwork could be found under the highway and atop a nearby water tower.

Oh, and the steam train I came out to see? Here it is: The Nickel Plate Road No. 765. Quite a machine to behold.

Filed Under: Toledo, Unauthorized Public Art, Uncategorized, USA Tagged With: Toledo, Unauthorized Public Art, USA

Detroit: Chaos at The Eastern Market

July 14, 2015 by James Trumm 2 Comments

The art in the gallery-like ruins at Brush and Baltimore is controlled. Mannered. Almost formal. So when I went directly from there to Detroit’s Eastern Market, I wasn’t prepared for visual chaos. My initial reaction was confusion bordering on distaste. It took me a good fifteen minutes to adjust my expectations and to appreciate a different but fine example of unauthorized public art.

The streets around the market were almost deserted on a Friday mid-afternoon, like so many others in Detroit. Since the wholesale food market there is still functioning, there were some pretty putrid smells in these back alleys, to be sure, but nothing worse.

On one street, there was a sad reminder of how some people live in America today. Much as I like prowling the mean streets in search of the beautiful, it’s important to be reminded that real, vulnerable people sleep in places like this. This bower was someone’s home; I didn’t disturb it.

Works like the one below definitely show the Juxtapoz aesthetic, which I grow weary of in large quantities but appreciate in isolation.

Some of the other murals picked up on the historic function of the Eastern Market.

The mural below has stood on this wall for over three years now and is, amazingly, almost untouched by other taggers. Maybe it’s the proposal and the “She said yes x1000” that makes people refrain from defacing it. People like to see people in love get together.

Filed Under: Detroit, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, USA Tagged With: Detroit, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, USA

Detroit: The Museum at Brush & Baltimore

July 13, 2015 by James Trumm 5 Comments

I was thinking about why people make art when I came across a desolate intersection in Detroit. In the post-apocalyptic environs of Brush and Baltimore Streets, there are dozens of vacant lots where houses and stores once stood. Most of the remaining buildings have been stripped of everything burnable and salable; they stand like monuments to some undefinable slow-moving catastrophe. I shot a few photos of the ruins’ exteriors.

Then a Chrysler drove up. The driver’s window slid down. I tensed a little, in spite of myself. Usually when something like that happens to me in neighborhoods like this, there’s someone who wants something from me that I don’t particularly want to give.

“Hey!” the driver said. “You should go in there.” He pointed to a burned-out shell of a building across the street. “All kinds of art in there. Wild stuff. Beautiful stuff.”

I was still a little on guard. “Just walk in?” I asked.

“Yeah,” replied the driver. “We go in there sometimes, party, look at art. Some of it’s done by the people from the gallery there.” He pointed to a windowless building across the street that was painted completely black.

I must have looked a little doubtful, because the driver smiled and said, “It’s cool.”

What the hell. If I’ve learned anything from two years of traveling, it’s that some of the best things happen when you say yes to things you don’t understand. So I walked up to the building the driver had indicated. Plastic bags stuffed with moldy, smelly bread were strewn around the porch. Flies buzzed around them. A cinder block was propped against the front door. I toed it aside, pulled the door open, and beheld an amazing art collection.

The building I had entered had no roof, no windows, and no finished walls. It did have something much better: stunning portraits of ballerinas painted by Everett Dyson. Some of the them seemed to be dancing their way out of the shackles that once bound them.

Elsewhere were palimpsests of tags, notes, and images, reflecting unintentional collaborations that are still in progress.

As I photographed the artwork, a freight train rumbled by twenty yards away. Nearly every car on the train had been tagged extensively. Watching them pass was like watching a filmstrip on the tagging aesthetic. I wandered through the back door and found several other small buildings in the same bombed-out condition. The whole complex was a museum with different galleries. I continued to explore.

Some of the works were text-heavy, illuminated manuscripts inscribed on cinder block.

As I made my way back to the street, I again wondered what motivates people to make art. The question seemed especially poignant in this environment. Everything in the “museum” I had visited spoke of the transitory and the ephemeral. The murals that artists spent hours and hours meticulously painting will not long survive the elements or human depredation. In that respect, they are more like performances than fine art, dances that, once completed, live on only in memory. Unlike a “real” museum, the complex at Brush and Baltimore is subject to time, decay, and dissolution. Heraclitus, who famously said you can’t put your foot into the same river twice, would have understood. Perhaps the artists who worked here needed to lay down an I-was-here marker in the river of time more than they needed to occupy a static space.

Filed Under: Detroit, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, USA Tagged With: Detroit, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, USA

Detroit: The Hipsters Move to Corktown

July 12, 2015 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

There are signs of an artist/hipster presence in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Near Michigan Central Station, some abandoned buildings have been painted up and turned into giant urban canvases.

Other buildings show signs of being brought back to life, albeit slowly.

There’s a cool bicycle shop and several new bars and cafes near the station, as well as a redeveloped commercial district designed to appeal to the lovers of vintage watering holes.

And then there are some businesses that look like they’ve been there for decades.

It’s easy — chic, even — to deride the hipsters who have settled in Detroit in the last six years. But it’s almost always a cheap shot and seems more aimed at their sartorial and tonsorial choices than at their values. Their critics also tend toward stereotype; not every dude in a pork-pie hat, horn-rims, and a goatee drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon is a pretentious jerk. Yes, hipster disposable income and insistence on certain amenities drive local rents up and may displace longtime residents. But if the alternative is keeping rents low while the neighborhood crumbles and dies, then I’ll give at least two cheers for a hipster influx.

Filed Under: Detroit, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, USA Tagged With: Detroit, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art, USA

Nicaragua 2008: Granada Signs

June 9, 2015 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

Looking back at my photos from this 2008 trip, I can see the beginnings of the same fascinations that still characterize my travel photography. Signs and graffiti, to name two.

Some of the signs for professional offices had a beautiful, simple elegance about them.

Others were cheerfully cluttered with text and gave me the impression that you could obtain any kind of service within.

And then there was this sign for a fried chicken joint, which amused me every time I passed by.

I’m not sure, but I think this was a little love poem, a declaration of affection for one lucky Dario. But maybe some of my more fluent Spanish-speaking readers can set me straight.