Dear Sir,
Your photo of little girls painting the post along the streets of Ajijic, (Grupo Axixic Michicihualli) got me to reminiscing about 2009 when the Garden Guild was looking for an important community project to benefit the area. We came upon the idea of ridding our village of graffiti.
At that time the walls of many buildings had been vandalized with the mighty spray paint can. Beautiful natural brick walls and natural rock walls were covered block after block with multi colors of paint. The ladies of the Guild were taught how to mix acrylic house paint in many shades of terra-cotta so we could duplicate the colors of the old brick. Getting the color for the mortar is critical too. The process was the same for rock walls using a lot of shades of grays and tans. It was time consuming but it was incredibly successful. Teams of people worked on one area of town and cleaned the messes block by block. Note that we are not talking about the style of art called graffiti. Our volunteers made room for skilled artists to do full murals on some of the walls, both public and private. Citizens have the courage to paint their homes now; before, they thought walls would never stay clean.
Local realtors have been very generous in their commitment to finance paint and supplies. They give 20,000 pesos a year and the result is a cleaned up Chapala. (We take donated paint from the public. And, we can use an extra volunteer for painting – call 766-1391.)
Back to the little girls: After an eight-year investment of thousands of hours put in by volunteers and the money that is given, I was underwhelmed the first time I saw the poles going down Colon in Ajijic.
Ajijic has a reputation as an artist colony. There have been children’s art lessons at LCS on Saturday mornings for decades. Age is not the issue but rather the skill level. For a good example of a great pole, look at the one close to Ritchie 88 Restaurant.
All of the work outside gets tired and worn and needs to be redone every few months.
As for the little hearts and flowers in primary colors, this too shall pass. My point in writing is to let people know who haven’t been around for eight years what the history has been. Those clean surfaces you gleefully paint on were hard won by many, many people and many, many pesos, and we who did it are all now eight years older! Ugh
Let’s see our well-known artists each do a pole in the central area. We could turn it into a contest. All of us involved with the painting out of tags and paint vandalism thank all the many home owners who are keeping their own property clean. Ditto for the businesses.
L. Carson
Dear Sir,
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