Mid March 2018

As you may have noted from recent posts, I very much enjoy the street art here in San Juan. I’m writing today to share some recent sightings, and to share how I use some of the images I obtain of the art.

The image above is from a non-descript building in Pinones, a beach area just east of San Juan. There are many small bars and seafood restaurants there and it is a nice place to stroll along the beach before a lunch of ensalada de pulpo – octupus salad, a favorite of mine. Note the image is as taken from my camera and before any editing.  Still, it brings questions to my mind. The art, to me, evokes the Indian sub-continent, Now, to my knowledge, there are not very many people here from the that part of the world here. So why the Indian theme?

To be sure, there are people from the Indian sub-continent in the Caribbean. The British abolished slavery in the 1820s and sugar cane plantation owners needed cheap labor. Plantation owners on the British-held islands imported indentured servants from India, among other places. There is a substantial Indian population on, for example, Trinidad and Tobago because of that. But that did not happen in Puerto Rico, where slavery was not abolished until the 1870s. So I’m not sure why the Indian theme exists.

I have noted one other example of Indian-inspired wall art. That was on a wall in an alleyway in Vieques, an island just to the east of Puerto Rico, Note the image below is also as taken from the camera and not edited in any way.

Wall art in an alley way in Isabella Sequnda, the capital of Vieques.

Here is one more, again unedited, image from Santurce, near the Plazita del Mercado.

Art from a bridge abutment in Santurce, San Juan.

One more example. This is in Condado, and it is on a shutter that has been closed since Hurricane Maria. I don’t know if the painting was there prior to the storm or was created afterwards. The shutter is on the former Pinky’s, a popular breakfast place.

Wall art on shutter along sidewalk in Condado, San Juan.

The images become a record of sorts of the wall art I see. The two examples below no longer exist. The large bird (note the ice cooler to give an idea of its size) has been painted over. The hat-bearing skull was on a building that has been demolished, part of the on-going gentrification of Santurce.

Two examples of wall art that have since disappeared.

I’ve mentioned the images are unedited.  I do edit some of them. Below are two images, one as taken from the camera and the other after some judicious edits. The original was on a wall just off Calle Loiza, in Santurce. The images show the results of some modest edits – basically cropping, retouching and color enhancements.

Edited image as compared to image as taken from camera. Wall art was just off of Calle Loiza, Santurce.

Sometimes the editing is more involved. The image below shows five images taken of a large mural, and the final version after stitching edited images together. I use two Adobe products for this – Photoshop and InDesign.

Unedited and edited version of large example of wall art along Avenida Ferdinand Juncos in Santurce, San Juan.

So what do I do with the edited images? I use InDesign and create montages. Here are two examples.

I had one of these printed and framed and we use it in our San Juan apartment. I don’t know if I could sell them. I would have to research copyright laws. I have thought about using some of my images as post and note cards and hawking them to cruise ship passengers. Want to invest? Let me know.