I believe in finding inspiration, wherever you’re at – whether it’s where you are or where you’re going or visiting, in this case. And more importantly, if you have a nudge to do something or explore somewhere, you should do it and you’ll likely find yourself growing in ways you hadn’t expected to because of listening to that instinct…
When I was visiting Miami, there was a number of things I wanted to do but most were pretty standard (read a good book by the pool and eat some good seafood.) But I knew I couldn’t live myself if I didn’t at least try to do something I couldn’t do at a beach town anywhere. So, when I was browsing on the options for activities, I found myself drawn to Wynwood and the various street art tours that were advertised. I’d heard about Wynwood from Art Basel, the international art fair but I didn’t know much about it beyond that. There was something about street art that had always fascinated me. It seemed to be this genre of art that managed to be completely uninhibited and reckless and at the same time was now commercialized and common and people just accepted that duality. I didn’t know much about the history behind graffiti or any top artists names besides Banksy when I signed up for this tour. I had no idea I’d be getting a unique look into the hierarchy of the art world, an up close look at incredible pieces of elaborate, detailed art and learning a bit about what it means to have art develop naturally only then to be monetized years later.
The Miami Grafitti Tour started off by meeting up with our tour guide, Ivory, on a golf cart in the middle of Wynwood. Wynwood is known for its history of graffiti and also has Wynwood Walls, an international outdoor street art museum. A location I could’ve done instead of hopping on a golf cart with a stranger but I always like to opt for seeing a locals viewpoint of the city I’m in. Which is why I was thrilled we had such a passionate tour guide who clearly loved Miami, street art and had respect for every single artist on the tour. The tour guides excitement is why we ended up stopping every few seconds – sometimes literally in the middle of the street – to look at these incredible murals of art that maybe if I was walking by I wouldn’t have given a second glance to.
I think that’s what I like most about street art/graffiti, there’s this idea of art needing to be in a gallery or museum to be appreciated or even for you to know an artist to appreciate what this piece was really about. That’s fine and all but I also love this idea of art being something you discover. Street art allows for these discoveries that if you blink you might miss them. Crazy colorful murals blending into the background of mundane gray buildings and people going about their daily lives as if theres nothing extraordinary just right around the corner. It’s a reminder to me that magic is everywhere.
My viewpoint is likely more optimistic about graffiti than most would have. After all, it is vandalism, it’s illegal, it’s dangerous and it’s not always pretty. I don’t want to discount any of that or its origins. Which of course, our tour guide took care to point out, when we saw a piece of graffiti that was the more traditional tagging – he would point at it with just as much respect as the rest of the pieces we saw on the tour, reminding us, “remember that – is how you get started to then do this” and then as we rounded the corner, he pointed up to piece that encompasses almost an entire city block building with so much detail in everything from barque gold detailing to scales on a reptile back. The same artist Saturno, we were also told just did cover art for a Chris Brown album.
I will say some of these things I learned did take some of the magic away. I liked this idea of artists wearing all black scaling a building in the dead of night just because they wanted to make art and this was their preferred canvas. I wanted to believe all graffiti came from a place of fuck you to rules and the bullshit elitism of the art world. And sure, that’s part of it but not as often – though now I guess it makes the moments when it does happen even more magical.
Maybe I’m naive but I think I had my hopes were still that street artists were relatively anonymous rebels, not answering to anyone and certainly not taking commissions to make celebrity album covers. Yet the more I learned, many artists are paid to do street art in Miami and are even flown out of their countries to do it. There’s also a hierarchy involved, certain graffiti artists with a lot of street cred will even put their tag on a newer artists work in order to protect them from getting “bombed” – as is the case with Alec Monopoly and Tesla. Getting bombed is when an artists has another artist aggressively graffiti all over their freshly done piece of artwork. The less bombed a piece of graffiti is, the more respect others have for that artist or the subject matter, which is seen in the case with tributes I saw of the late fashion designer, Virgil Abloh. There’s a lot of mutual respect and secret conversations that goes on before and after each piece goes up, all happening behind the scenes and just looking at a piece, you’d never know everything behind it without insider info.
Donate to Local Communities
I can’t close this without acknowledging that many of the streets we visited on were full of unhoused people and I didn’t like to hear about how this million dollar graffiti mural was just put up and later in the photo you can clearly see someone sleeping on the sidewalk next to it so I’ll encourage you to donate to either Miami’s local homeless shelter or one in your own neighborhood. I understand that that’s not much all things considered but I couldn’t post anything without acknowledging this since it’s all part of the conversation.
Artists Pages (that I could find)
