Wapsi Square Forum

Gwen and I came back about a week ago, from a two-week vacation South Of The Border... Chile, specifically. We spent six nights on Easter Island, and then flew back to the mainland for a few days.

Gwen had wanted to see the coastal/port city of Valparaiso, having heard that it's a pretty and rather unique place (most of it's built on a bunch of hills rising up from the coast).

I had no idea what we'd encounter there. Neither of us knew that Valparaiso has developed a very, very active "street art" tradition over the past few years.

There's more street art there that I've ever seen before... maybe more than I thought existed! There's everything from simple "tagging" (as you'd find in a lot of American cities), through cartoons, realistic portraiture, surrealism, and fully-representational art. There seems to be a fairly consistent "don't paint on top of other peoples' paintings" ethic in much of the city (although there's more casual over-tagging down by the port).

We spent one full day there wandering around just two of the hilltops... Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepción. In six hours we managed to take about 1400 photographs.

Here are some of them.

I love that! I'd like to encourage more of that, esp in 'Urban' environments.

Maybe there could be a certain expiration date on the majority of the walls, say a one foot square box w/ a title, the Artist(s), & an expiry.

That way the young fresh blood could be invested in participating.

Major and Primacy of Place walls/murals might instead be designated as Heritage or something to keep the major works by supery-dupery muralists in place, anchoring the tradition so to speak.

Anyway, Thx for sharing...