No free walls — Puerto Rico

elegel elegel
Aug 27, 2017 · 5 min read

There’s an excellent (YouTube) documentary with this name about the transition of Bushwick, Brooklyn from a warehouse/factory type of neighborhood to a thriving community due to it becoming an outdoor urban art destination.

Run down properties with expansive walls attracted artists. Low rent brought them to live and work. Hipsters moved to join the artist enclave. Tourists came to admire and take selfies. Restaurants and bars came to support and create business. Advertisers came to get eyeballs of the locals and tourists.

The politics of “the wall” are enormous. If you don’t follow street art in more than a cursory manner you wouldn’t have a clue the stories that go on with urban surfaces. I have this concept for a series of short documentaries, “Wall Stories” about walls in my neighborhood in the Calle Loiza neighborhood of Santurce in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I have ten amazing stories without even trying.

But the concept of the free wall is a topic on its own. Especially if expanded to the “cheap” wall.

In Puerto Rico there is a law written into the constitution, I think, that states that the creativity of Puerto Rico is a product, like pharmaceuticals, that is to be nurtured, developed and sold. But selling creativity is often very tricky, especially when it doesn’t have a specific commercial value. It’s easier when there are comparables, like those in the film, advertising and music industries but it gets a whole lot trickier with art.

Like many things in Puerto Rico there is a wild west mentality that accentuates the human, every-man-for-themselves condition. There’s wonderful collaboration but when it comes to getting paid it get’s rough. That has created a nickel and dime mentality as well as a kill or eat dynamic in our genre of the art industry.

So back to the free walls concept. It’s hard as fuck to get people to pay for mural commissions when there is no standard price range in effect. There is definitely a standard price range and professional and sought after muralist use it. Top muralists might get $60 or more per square foot of wall. Excellent muralists might get $20 — $30 per square foot. Up and coming but professional muralist might make $10 per square foot. Sometimes materials are included, sometimes not. Food and drink is always welcome.

Like many things in Puerto Rico, things are more disorganized and unravel quicker…in my experience. I have made many professional proposals to produce murals for businesses and corporations only to lose them to artists that will take anything in order to help feed their family, artists that just want the promotional value of a wall or job and business owners that are willing to get a wall for free or far under market value.

This is self defeating but unavoidable for the artists as we can’t maintain a value for mural art, shameful for the businesses that don’t promote the arts but want to benefit from the perception that they do and detrimental to the art itself as it doesn’t promote the desire or competitiveness to create great art.

As a long time, local and seemingly frustrated artist, Abey Charron commented last week on Facebook, “ La calle Loiza el popurrí de Arte mierda” which loosely translated means “Loiza Street is a smelly collection of shit art” If it is true, there are two main reasons: 1) it’s impossible to “curate” an entire street of unpaid art and 2) it’s 99% or close unpaid art.

It’s both the nature of random street art and a major limiting factor. However, there is one thing for sure and that is there are a lot of people that think its awesome and want to take pictures against walls. Abey for sure knows that. It’s definitely a commercialization of art and not a pretty one but it could be argued that the art is in the process, good or bad, and not in the individual pieces or overall aesthetic.

To add to the chaos of the art on the street, and compound the problem with (Puerto Rico’s) Creative Economy, ironically, a very conservative and visually boring bank, Banco Santander recently held an art competition to paint a very prominent wall on a very nondescript corner of the Calle Loiza. They celebrated they were embracing the neighborhood, supporting the arts by inviting artists to compete for the honor to paint what is an extremely desirable wall. Not to minimize the magnitude of the opportunity they offered three chances to win by allowing the runners up to paint some secondary walls and columns of the nondescript bank.

The grand prize for painting the enormous wall worked out to $2000, or $2.03 per square foot. Or about 20% of what I stated above was the “up and coming and professional” wage of $10 per square foot. Santander got some fancy judges, did some social media promotion, put in at least $2000 of new landscaping, plastered the Calle Loiza in large red Santander signs and timed the conclusion with today’s Culinary and Arte Urbano Festival on Calle Loiza. Basically, they hired pretty established artists at far below market rate and called them winners. Not unique in today’s art climate.

When I found out about the contest I contacted them to try and explain that they should expand their prize to respect the artists. I also tried to find a way to work with them on the not-for-profit community program I lead. They were so responsive to my concerns that they responded immediately and offered to take me to lunch. They seemed a combination of nervous and slimy but I genuinely tried to help and expand on their program.

Over tacos, I suggested some broad concepts and a desire to work with them on doing the right thing. I was offered a judge roll in the contest which I immediately turned down and the suggestion that we look into more ways to develop the program and ideas in the next days. I never heard from them again.

They held the competition, named the artists and completed the works. The formerly nondescript grey bank is now covered in cool and trendy street art by good artists and somehow comes together as a potpourri of poo. Art is pretty subjective so make your own decision. Maybe it’s the hate factor of not being able to contribute to the project, maybe it’s the process, maybe it’s the combination of three artists/styles on one property, maybe it’s the particular pieces and maybe I just need a little time but I’m definitely not feeling it at the moment.

And the problem is perpetuated. Artist does work for promotional or feed-the-baby value. Business markets it as a win-win and gets press. The Puerto Rican Creative Economy is further weakened. Artists complain they don’t get paid.

It’s 2:25 on Sunday afternoon and before I finished writing this note from start to finish I was informed we just lost a paid commission on the Calle Loiza to an artist wanting to paint for free and for self promotion during the event. An excellent artist who’s work I have in my collection and I don’t object to his actions. But nonetheless an artist that wants to be paid for his work and would be upset if he lost a job to an artist that wanted to paint for free.

And the cycle go on.

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elegel elegel

Musings from a participant in the urban contemporary art field.

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