Street art is constantly evolving. Old works get defaced, painted over. New works appear, get discovered. Here are some of my recent finds. I’ve arranged them by location. Then I’ll share some arranged by theme.
La Perla
La Perla is in Old San Juan, just outside the wall to the north, snuggled between the walled city and the Atlantic. The street art there seems to symbolize the neighborhood’s attempt to overcome a reputation for drugs and crime. I walked through there one recent Sunday afternoon. I found it lively, friendly, colorful.
Upbeat La Perla mural in La Perla. I looked on Instagram for @12.mks with no success.A fanciful coqui on a wall in La Perla. Check out Senkoe on Instagram – the artist has works all over the planet.Another colorful coqui. I’m not sure who the artist is. Coquis are small tree frogs with a distinctive call – coKEY coKEY coKEY – hence their name.A woman with flowers.
The title says A Virgin for La Perla, Thank you. Alicia Enoz [?] 2021.
Woman with rooster. I did not see an artist’s name or identifier.
I found images of people along the walkway by the ocean. They are probably well known Puerto Rican musicians but I have not further identified them. Here are a three of them.
Three images of Puerto Rican musicians.
The next four are details of a mural on a long wall. I could see parts of it – others sections were blocked by parked cars.
Four sections of a mural on a block long retaining wall.
Calle Cerra
Calle Cerra runs south from Avenida Juan Ponce de Leon. It crosses Avenida Fernando Juncos and goes south for three more blocks. It is a small area rich in public art. And not all of it is wall murals. Here are some examples of yarn art I found on a fence.
Two examples of yarn art found on a fence along Calle Cerra, in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan.
The yarn artist Stino created the two works above. Check out some more of her work in Instagram.I could not find any information for Javier Cortion. Can anyone help with identifying the artist?
A rooster is a clever way to adorn a night deposit box. I presume the artist is LOMIO but I could find no information for that name.
Parked cars and street signs are a challenge. There have been a few times when drivers moved their cars for me. I looked up ABAST.ART but I did not see an immediate connection to this work.
Unknown woman, unknown artist, Calle Cerra.
A mural just off Calle Cerra. It continues to the right but a parked truck blocked my view. I’ll check back and see if I can capture the whole mural.A mural just off Calle Cerra, in Santurce. The message is as powerful as it is simple – three European ships sail off leaving people in agony. I could not find an artist’s signature or other identifier.
Theme: Puerto Rican Flag
Artists often use the Puerto Rican flag as a starting point for their work. Here are some examples. I’ll identify the location in the captions.
An exotic car passing under the Puerto Rican flag. I found this near Calle Cerra just off Avenida Fernando Juncos.A three story building on Calle Cerra. I looked up ABEY but could not find an artist with that identifier.A three story building in La Perla. It is located just outside the wall near one of the gates to the city.Part of the block long wall mural in La Perla.
Conclusion
I’ve been capturing images of street art here for six or seven years now. I am surprised, when I go through my images, to see how few of the works I’ve captured remain. So enjoy the images above while you can – the originals won’t be there for long.
Sources
These are all my images. In most cases, I’ve done minimal editing – I’ve cropped them to remove extraneous background and adjusted the levels. I did more extensive edits to the second to last Calle Cerra image. I made the background a uniform color and brightened the other colors. I use Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and sometimes InDesign for my work.
You could turn this into a magazine article, or a book
Hmmm. There’s an idea. I’ll give it some thought.
thank you and I do think a book aimed at tourists and locals would be great but Also mere historical details would be interesting on a larger scale!
Thank you for this
Charles