STREET ART RIO

After spending a good bit of time in Brasil, Ive noticed that in most cities, namely Rio de Janeiro, street art, whether it be graffiti, wheat pasting, stenciling or another form is thought of and subsequently dealt with a lot differently than it is here in Houston. Of course this differential may be a lot less apparent if you live in a more concentrated and older metropolitan area such as New York or Baltimore, but Ive lived in Baltimore and visited New York several times and the difference is apparent.

Around every corner, whether it is in the expensive suburbs of Barra or in the doldrums of Centro, you are bound to stumble across something interesting, but for every colorful, detailed piece there are hundreds of base tags thrown up randomly. The walls covered with the inane scribblings of the juvenile underbelly of Rio only deter for seconds as they are usually replaced by huge murals that make traffic somewhat bearable and sometimes pleasing.

As I walked around Rio most recently, I made it a point to try and make a photo of most of the instances of street art that I came across. There are pastings, traditional graffiti (in several styles), murals, and just plain old interesting walls. The overall diversity of styles in street art that you see on a casual walk around Rio is incredible. Regardless if you see some forms of street art as vandalism or criminal in nature, it’s all art, and for that I give it my respect.

I wish, when I walked (or drove) around certain parts of Houston, that Id be greeted with a nice, big, mural of something as colorful and whimsical as what I saw in Brasil.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 11:25 PM. It is filed under Personal Work and tagged with adventure, art, Brasil, Brazil, fine art, graff, graffiti, Graphic Design, Personal Work, Rio de Janeiro, stencil, street art, tagging, Travel, wheat paste. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.