Graffiti — At the edges

Tijuana Alley Art at VISUAL in San Diego’s Normal Heights

March 9, 2013 SATURDAY NIGHT 6-10 PM VISUAL Shop 3524 Adams Ave San Diego, CA 92116 With wheatpaste art & paintings by Tijuana artists: 1102, Panca, and Spel Teodora Craft beer by Francisco J. Garcia of Studio 2287, Tijuana The concept of my exhibition is to explore—through my photos— “that which remains” in the alleys [...]

Tijuana Urban Art February 17, 2013 3:19 pm 2 comments

This graffiti must be permitted

Last winter, Jay Porter of the Linkery was issued a citation by the City of San Diego’s neighborhood code compliance office for maintaining graffiti on a public wall on their property. The only problem–the offending piece was a commissioned, large-scale work. Not illegal. In fact, Jay Porter commissions artists to contribute work on the east [...]

San Diego Art July 11, 2012 3:01 pm 4 comments

Arte urbano y rehabilitación: activating Tijuana’s forgotten spaces

In Tijuana, urban art is everywhere, and artists find their most important contributions lie in the way their work can reactivate spaces that lie far beyond the official “front stage” of tidy commerce in the city. As the urban theorist Michel de Certeau argued in The Practice of Everyday Life, the itinerant movements of the [...]

Tijuana Style, Urbanism March 3, 2012 2:52 pm 0 comments

Local urban artist El Norteño wins state award

This past week, on Monday, Dec 12, local Tijuana urban artist Alonso Delgadillo, who paints under the name of El Norteño, was awarded the Premio Estatal de la Juventud de Baja California 2011, giving an official stamp of approval to the life’s work and trajectory of this local artist whose most important work appears in the [...]

Tijuana Urban Art December 17, 2011 4:38 pm 3 comments

C’est la Saison du Vin by urban artist Alfredo Gutierrez

In August, I was privileged to join Alfredo Libre Gutierrez in Ensenada to document a mural project at CEARTE, Ensenada Center for the Arts. Gutierrez was commissioned by the ICBC (Instituto Cultural de Baja California, Ensenada) to paint a mural. It was refreshing, he told me, to get an open commission and have control over the content and style of [...]

Tijuana Urban Art September 19, 2011 5:18 pm 0 comments