Precita Eyes
Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center | |
 Precita Eyes mural on Balmy Alley, San Francisco, California | |
| Location | San Francisco, California (Mission District) |
|---|---|
| Area | 2981 24th Street, San Francisco, CA |
The Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center,[1] founded October 20 1977 by Susan and Luis Cervantes,[2] is a workshop by the group Precita Eyes Muralists in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, and is headed by the muralist Susan Cervantes. The name Precita Eyes has its origins in the fact that the Cervanteses, a married couple, settled in the Marina neighborhood of the Marina District and eyes represents what their murals capture.
Murals
In 2000, they painted the only McDonald's restaurant mural in a San Francisco hamburger restaurant. The group provides walking tours of the Mission District's many murals, including the mural-covered garages of Balmy Alley. They accept volunteers, especially children, youth, and college students to join and assist in the artwork. Many local residents offer space on their business walls, garage doors, windows, fences and the like for Precita Eyes to beautify.[2] And has also painted the "Song of the Spirit" mural on the façade of the Student Union at City College of San Francisco. The muralists have painted over 450 murals in San Francisco anywhere they can, such as garage doors, utility boxes, walls, brutalist concrete features, homes, parks, and schools.[2]
Precita Eyes muralists travel to teach and spread "community art".[2][3] They even travel internationally and their trip to China was rather challenging due to cultural differences regarding the individuality of art.[2][3] Projects and collaborations have also taken Precita Eyes to Russia, Spain, Brazil, and Germany.[4]
One of the troupe's most noteworthy artworks is that of a garage door painted in the 1980s that was subsequently destroyed in a car accident. The muralists then worked the old mural into a new mural on the new garage door creating what is considered their most beautiful mural in San Francisco.[2]
The street "Balmy Alley" in San Francisco is covered almost entirely in Precita Eyes artwork.[5]
The center offers classes for people in the communities they serve from infants 18 months old through teenagers aged 19.[4]
Notes
- ^ Museums Embrace Works From All Over the World, by Ken Hausman, Psychiatric News, February 21, 2003, Volume 38 Number 4, © 2003 American Psychiatric Association, p. 25, access date July 18, 2008
- ^ a b c d e f Precita Eyes celebrates two decades of making walls, and community, bloom, by Will Cain, San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2007, access date July 18, 2008
- ^ a b What's happening in China, by Nicolas C. Hope, Stanford Center for International Development, May 11, 2007, access date July 18, 2008
- ^ a b About Precita Eeyes, Precita Eyes website, access date July 20, 2008
- ^ Precita Eyes celebrates three decades of making walls, and community, bloom, "dd_precita034.jpg" caption, San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2007, access date July 18, 2008
Bibliography
- Community Murals as Democratic Art and Education by David Conrad, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 98-102, University of Illinois Press
- Precita Eyes celebrates three decades of making walls, and community, bloom, by Will Cain, San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2007
- Coming Up Taller: Arts And Humanities Programs For Children And Youth At, by Judith Humphreys Weitz, 1996, Diane Publishing
External links
| External images | |
|---|---|
 Susana Cervantes in Balmy Alley | |
| 24th & York mural of two faces in a tunnel | |
| Cervantes in front of a child-themed mural at York & 24th | |
| Mural covering entire building |
