Hesitating Painting My Next Mural in San Juan? The other day me and my newly found artist friend originally from Tennessee and that has been here for the last 10 years and his three kids were out and about on the island taking care of business as usual, actually my friend has been helping me out in looking for an apartment in a community call Santa Rita, next to the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras which is considered a part of the Metropolitan area of San Juan. As we were driving on one of the main avenues we noticed that one of the newly created murals has been vandalized, as we kept on driving and saw to our dismays and horror that the other murals have also been vandalize by a vandal who has used what looks like a paint roller to paint a giant white cross on the face of these works of art, man we were shocked and dumbfounded that these murals have been attacked but not a hundred % surprised. Since the beginning of the creation of these murals we, me and my friends some times have been very critical of these giant paintings we found some of them very difficult to understand, personally I feel these projects are once step forward in the development of a much needed mural movement but I could imagine what a person with little knowledge about art would feel like while viewing one of these post surrealistic murals. Although I have enjoyed those discussions and arguments created by these murals, I feel now it is time for me to confess, like everybody else I myself have a rebel inside of me and there has been many times that I have said to myself “I wish I could paint a mural about what I’m feeling deep down inside my head”. I grew up in Chicago and I have participated in the Chicago’s mural movement since the early ‘70s, I have painted murals throughout the city of Chicago and I have had the opportunities to have traveled across the country from coast to coast checking out the murals, I have also visited Mexico at least six times examining the murals of the Mexican Masters. In Chicago most of the murals of the past have reflected community concerns, cultural identity, the politics of the times and its aspirations for the future, but all that is now changing and some of the murals being produced in Chicago and elsewhere are from a different school of thinking, now murals are not always reflecting the concerns and issues of a given community, they have become more of a platform for individual artistic expression, reflecting their concerns and their reality as they see it, their political issues and their aspirations of the future, like the murals that have been defaced here on the island they are different but still relative in the scheme of things, they are taking individual art in to the streets. Like it or not our streets are becoming art galleries or museums with its critics and all. I believe what has happened here on the island is a cultural shock and the island was not ready for these murals, somehow they missed the mural movement that has been happening in the urban areas in the US like Chicago, San Francisco, L A, Philadelphia and New York to name a few, this movement that for the last 40 years has been influencing all of the world. So now we must learn and catch up and learn how to respect and to be tolerant, of this phenomenon that’s happening on our streets. The fact that these are autistic expressions, statements created by a group of international renowned artists some who were invited and a few who lived here by Puerto Rico’s Museum of Contemporary Art and sponsored by a local and US beer companies. Although murals have been around Puerto Rico with our first muralists being Rafaet Rios-Rey 1911-1980, the first murals like the murals of Mexico were painted for the most part in established institutions like government buildings, schools, churches and universities. Here on the island a mural painted on a wall on the corner like in Chicago, visible and accessible for all to see is not your typical scenario, in the most recent years graffiti style murals have flourished and can be found throughout the island especially in the urban centers, To be fair there has been some interesting mosaics and paintings going up in Caguas, Camuy and in San Sebastian, I have heard of some work going on in Dorado but I have not seen yet, to be perfectly honestly there is a lot for me to learn about what is going on here on the island in turns of public art and there is no book of who, what and where to go to for help me learn more, but now these new murals that have been painted in the last six months or so are of a horse of a different color, these muralne in the above to me represent the beginning of a new mural movement here on the island and throughout the world, these murals represent something other than a typical community projects, its a new generation of public art, an evolution if you will, from what we have gotten comfortable with. These recent murals have inspired and have motivated me to look at things in a different way and to become a part of this new movement. So my plans our to paint a mural from an individual point of view taken the lead from no one else but myself and these young artists who have started this new movement, for me this is a different approach because there is no committee to dictate or decide what to paint only my influence and intuition, I will be taken the lead from what I have been seeing and hearing for the last several years here on the island, this environmental mural will be my second one here, but my first mural in San Juan. Unfortunately because of the defacing of the new murals I have become somewhat suspicious and I’m undecided about my plans of my next mural that will be dedicated to the environmental issues of the island, this does not mean that I am not going to paint the mural, it means that until they figure out who and why these murals were vandalized, I honestly cannot move forward with my plans. Painting a mural is and expensive proposal many resources and sacrifices are necessary to create a mural, for this reason one must make choices to guarantee the viewers accessibility and the life longevity of the mural. In Chicago where I had painted most of my murals I had to worry about gang’s guns, and bullets, but I never had worried much about anybody defacing a mural. Is this an attack on freedom of speech or just a religious fanatic or is it just a madman with a paint roller? All of these questions run through my mind as it probably runs through everybody else’s mind here on the island and around the world, Michelangelo, Diego Rivera, Rafaet Rios, Bill Walker and Calvin Jones, to name a few pass muralists, must all be rolling over in there graves. I did some researched through Google and found these images of some of the murals recently painted here on the island just in case you haven’t seen them, I myself have not seen them all, but I’m planning to take photographs of these vandalized murals so that I can make the argument for the education of the community in general, maybe a course on the history of mural painting can be offered in the university’s or an city or an island-wide conference in support of public art. Some serious steps are necessary for the benefit of all to resolve this situation so that in the future all artists like me can feel free and safe to paint their expressions, regardless of their political and religious affiliations. “Freedom of speech is a necessary tool for the evolution and the liberation of all of the people here on the island and of the world”. Sincerely, Muralist Gamaliel Ramirez
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 19:26:37 +0000
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