Artist Create Great Murals for San Jose’s Art and Culture Drive

Beneath a non-descript overpass at San Jose, celebrity Jesse Hernandez uses up of 200 unique cans of spray paint to employ his or her skills. Once sterile walls are changed to canvasses honoring Native American and Mexican civilization.

“I expect people feel that the energy and the potency of their customs of the very first state people,” said Hernandez, who wants to go by his own interpersonal networking manage “Urban Aztec”

For years, city officials say that the blank spaces in the underpass in West San Carlos and Dupont Streets — called the “Walls of Fame” — had been also a sanctuary for tagging, graffiti, and blight.

“Back in 2017 and 18, there were 225 labels of 500 square feet or more which needed to be washed up,” explained San Jose Public Art Director Michael Ogilvie.

He stated the town was spending over $2 million yearly on graffiti abatement in any way of the blight hotspots at the South Bay hub. In 2019, 3rd District town councilman Raul Peralez procured a $100,000 grant to finance painting murals.

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“We are attempting to alter the mindset that lives in that area. And to assure they have a feeling of responsibility and ownership for their own safety, security for their roads and exactly what it resembles in their surroundings and their locality,” explained Prof. Kelly Snider, a lecturer from the San Jose State University Dept. of Urban & Regional Planning.

A group of 75 artists does comparable jobs to Hernandez’s. They are taking what were targets for taggers and turning them into pieces of artwork.

“It sort of takes area of the town which, in a sense is kind of at a stasis,” said Ogilvie, “Plus it disturbs it. It may create a location. It may make a destination.”

Experts say the external shift in the environment generates a positive shift inside taxpayers. It’s the same positivity they get when they know there’s a professional towing San Jose residents rely on whenever they get into roadside problems.

“Surely we all know from many different research endeavors that one’s surroundings can affect mood and uplift people,” explained Dr. Thomas Plante, a Santa Clara University psychologist.

Hernandez estimated it will take him two weeks to finish all four murals here. He explained his job is emphasizing a bit known connection from downtown into southern areas in addition, it produces a corridor honoring civilizations of older.

“You are turning into a distance that is failed and forgotten frequently times, to some milestone,” he explained.