[If you wanna skip all the verbiage and just watch the video, scroll down to the bottom of the page]
I’m a big fan of street art. Over the years, I’ve produced videos for international artists such as Dasic Fernandez and Icy and Sot. One of my latest short documentary films, GRAFSTRACT: The Bronx Street Art Renaissance, which features a host of old-school NYC graffiti artists, is currently making a film festival run. “Passion Projects”, these.
Last summer, I started shooting another one of my “passion projects” – this one featured some of the brightest female street artists in all of Miami working on a four day mural project at the Bird Road Art District in Miami. The project was called “WALL 2 WALL Women” and it was the brainchild of one of South Florida’s rising street artists, Diana Contreras.
I met Diana several years ago as she was live painting at some event I was attending in Miami (don’t even remember who it was for). I was drawn to her stark and vivid images of women and as time passed, we spoke about the possibility of a video that showcased women street artists. So when she told me that she was gathering some of the most talented female street artists in Miami for a mural project called “Wall 2 Wall Women”, I was all ears.
“Wall 2 Wall Women” took place over four steamy South Florida days in June of 2014. 12 artists painting one really long wall (about 300 feet) and an exhibition featuring artwork from all the artists on the final day at the HARRISART Gallery. My plan was to film for parts of the four days, grab a few interviews with the artists, film the exhibition and get to editing. Alas, Mother Nature had other plans.
Miss Lushy
Besides the usual South Florida summer heat and humidity, it rained (poured!) at some point in the day on all four days. My shooting schedule was pretty much washed out. I filmed bits and pieces when the rain stopped and then tried to schedule post interviews with the artists but my little four-day “passion project” eventually lost its momentum and the realities of running a fast-growing video production business took over.
I had been sitting on the footage for over a year now before I decided to give it a look. I was fortunate to have at least interviewed the main players in project’s realization, Diana Contreras and Jane Harris of the HARRISART Gallery. I also realized I had just enough footage from the four days to illustrate not only the talent but the great determination of these artists in unfavorable weather conditions. So I decided to give an edit a try and to my surprise, I had just enough to produce what I think is a pretty darn good video.
Amanda Valdes
It might not have been what I had originally set out to do but to have wasted several hours of shooting over the course of four really steamy days in Miami (oh, and I live about an hour away) without at least trying to bring this really great story about what these really great artists were able to accomplish over four really hot and stormy days in the summer of 2014 – that would have been a damn shame. Really.
The Wall 2 Wall Women artists included Diana Contreras, Aquarela Sabol, Delvs, Kazilla, Lulu107, Miss Lushy, Mars, Miss Marvel, Jenny Perez, Jas9, Amanda Valdes, and Michelle Vazquez – if you’re interested in checking out their work (and why wouldn’t you be?).
Here’s the video – enjoy…
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