Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
Above: “I Wonder if Iolanda (a Portuguese singer) Ever Notices Me…”
Oh dear, my posts truly lag behind our trips. The first installment of this appeared here more than a year ago. Trying to play catch up, and street art is meant to be viewed without explanatory words anyway.
Continue reading “Postcard from Palermo, Sicily: Street art stands on its own”
Securing affordable housing leads artists to seek out urban neighborhoods sometimes reputed to be gritty. As noted in an earlier post featuring street art in Marseille, the creative vitality they bring is transformative. Quirky shops pop up. Inventive chefs open outlier cafes and restaurants with tables spilling out onto the sidewalks.
Walls once covered with threatening-looking, unauthorized tagging get reupholstered with a layer of more artistic grafitti. As a result, two of the most fun neighborhoods to explore in Marseille are Le Panier and Cours Julien, both uphill from the harbor.
Surrendering to urban artists, Marseille embraced them in 2018. The government launched an ambitious partnership with a group of artists, Massilia Graffiti, organizers of a successful street art festival in the Cours Julien area. Forty-thousand euros of public funds were invested in an innovative program to combat les tags sauvages, or wild tagging.
Continue reading “Postcard from Marseille, France: Taming ‘les tags sauvages’”
Above: Street art by Poasson on Rue de Mauvestis, or Bad Guys Street
Bad Guys Street? What were we doing there in a city with as tough a hangover reputation as Marseille?
Reason Number 1: Marseille has evolved. Yes, it still has plenty of gritty urban neighborhoods, but what major urban area does not?
Reason Number 2: We followed the street art. Artists tend to lead the way in transforming dodgy neighborhoods into trendy ones nurturing funky shops and welcoming creative chefs seeking fresh starts distant from tourist zones.
Continue reading “Postcard from Marseille, France: ‘Bad Guys’ transform the streets”
Postcards from Barton Springs 