I met Mario Chacon when he was up on scaffolding early last month in Chicano Park in Barrio Logan. He’s an artist and muralist helping to revitalize the park’s famous murals. Since last summer, artists have been coming back to this park to revisit murals they made decades ago. Eighteen murals will be revitalized by next summer.
Chacon highlighted the revitalization and showed some before-and-after looks at the murals during our second arts illumination event, A Meeting of the Minds, last week. Six speakers highlighted arts and culture topics in a visual, rapid-fire presentation style. Each presenter had 20 slides, displayed for 20 seconds each. The standing-room-only event was at the Luce Loft in East Village. Here’s Chacon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niDBjdaVS-E
Read what our event-goers had to say after all six presentations, and follow the thread that unfolded on Twitter. And add your thoughts: Have you been to the park recently? What do you think of the changes you’re seeing? Leave us a comment.
Here’s a photo of Chacon helping to revitalize one of the original murals:
And you can actually watch Chacon paint one of the images from his presentation above in this raw video captured by a camera he strapped to his head while he painted in December:
Muralist Mario Chacon – 12.15.11 Chicano Park from FlavoredLayers on Vimeo.
Thanks to the Media Arts Center San Diego for shooting and editing the video of Chacon’s presentation.
I’m Kelly Bennett, the arts editor for VOSD. You can reach me directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531.
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