Sego painted a coqui. That makes sense because the soft-spoken Mexican mural artist dabbles luminously in the animal kingdom, improbably creating detailed scenes of magical realism with little more than aerosol cans.

The coqui is Puerto Rico's mascot, the tranquil frog that defines the nighttime soundscape, and plagues tourists unused to the noise with its chirps. Sego's wall, part of the first street art festival in San Juan history Los Muros Hablan, was an "aww" moment for the passing cars (and there are a lot of them. Sweltering San Juan lives and dies by the air-conditioned automobile.) Read more »

There was no wine and cheese at the opening of "Leave the Beef on the BBQ." There were massive slabs of meat though, onto which Guerrero Gallery owner Andres Guerrero slathered sauce and tried to look inconspicuous.

The crowd, which spilled out onto the sunny Saturday streets of San Francisco on August 25, was mainly there to see art anyhow. The exhibit was the most diverse graffiti-themed assemblage Guerrero had shown to date, and the graff heads in attendance had a lot to look at -- not to mention reflect on. Graffiti, if the works inside were anything to judge by, is at the junction of, about 70 different artistic directions.  Read more »

New York-New Jersey street artist LNY recently attended the world's first all-female street art festival. He reports on the highs and lows of Living Walls for the Guardian

Atlanta's Living Walls street art conference celebrated its third year of mural-making August 15-19, changing the landscape of a city where most movement is done by car at 60 miles per hour. Having established itself as one of the best gatherings of street arts out there, the festival celebrated its third year by hosting a historic first: an all-female cast of artists.

I, a dude, was invited to the conference as a guess speaker, so consider the following account slightly influenced by me being super-stoked about all the work going up around me. Read more »

As colorful and diverse as the global street art scene is these days, it's still overwhelmingly a boy's game. That's why we're so stoked to hear about the first days of Living Walls Atlanta, a street art conference in its third year that decides to step out and feature all-female artists in 2012 Wed/15-Sun/19. Its lead organizer Monica Campana and her team have attracted an ace crew for what by all accounts will be the first all-women global street art festival.

New York-New Jersey wheatpaste artist LNY is on the ATL scene now and will have a Guardian exclusive for us next week. Read on for a preview of some of the baddie artists featured at this year's Living Walls.

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I'm sitting in on a meeting between two generations of muralists. In name, our encounter was designed as an interview about La Peña Cultural Center's plans to redo its decades-old facade, a historic piece that right now is a 3-D tableau named "Song of Unity" and meant to represent the people of North and South America coming together in art.

But it has become clear to me the interviewer that's it's way more momentous to let these groups talk largely unimpeded by my questions. Two people who created the mural in 1978 are speaking with two people who will design its rebirth in 2012 about changes in the world of street art over the last 34 years. It's the first time the four have met together. Assasinated Chilean artist-activist Victor Jara's detached hands strum a guitar in silent soundtrack over us as we sit on folding chairs in front of the mural in question. 

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Most of you will know the neighborhood I was walking that early evening in from The Wire. In fact, the school where season four was shot was a few blocks away. That TV show is an eternal point of reference for Baltimore's Greenmount West neighborhood, which Open Walls, the town's first street art festival which I was in the hood to cover, was hoping to combat. The festival, going since March, will conclude with a closing party on May 25. Read more »