[Music] Images, they're very powerful because sometimes for a kid you don't know how to read, but you can see an image and read it in a way.

Art comes before that knowledge of reading or understanding something.

It's about how color makes you feel.

You're more like feeling it.

I'm a city kid from downtown Santiago.

I was raised there during the eighties.

We were under a dictator, so there was a lot of protests.

People that were going through the process, at the same time they were painting murals.

So that was my first impression of what art could be.

Junior high school, I started drawing more graffiti style images.

That was my school in a way.

I never had a dream of becoming an artist or becoming a great whatever.

I just was painting and I knew I was going to lead me to another opportunity.

I'm an immigrant.

I came by myself and I went through being somebody from another place to become somebody new.

Coming to New York was a big shock, you know, a big change.

I was reborn in a way.

Meeting new people, working with other artists, I started expanding my view on art and what I wanted to become.

I had to rediscover what I was and what I wanted to be.

The mural program here in Jersey City, we started it in 2013.

We have been able to put up over 200 murals The way this program has redefined the street experience has been astounding.

Jersey City has been very good for me.

They believe in my visions.

When I started working with them in 2016, not too many places see the importance of public art.

We have traditionally been a city that hasn't had any permanent arts institutions, and in the last 12 years we've seen that change quite a bit.

Before we had this stigma that we were like criminals because we were coming from graffiti, and graffiti was illegal, so it was super hard to get permission to do a mural.

I think now it's changing.

I hope the city recognizes it more.

Because the people already are doing it.

People here grew up with graffiti, grew up with art.

Our art scene in Jersey City is fairly young and growing very quickly, and has the challenge of being located directly across the Hudson from New York City.

Our actors and painters and dancers want to be proud of the city that they live in, and so there's been a real movement to make art here in Jersey City.

The cities are so like saturated with information, with advertising, with people, cars, everything.

So art is a way of making the area or the space more livable.

In so many dead areas that begging for art.

Talking to the kids themselves, they have an immediate reaction to having a mural on their building.

They know that it's a source of pride and that they have a joyful reaction to seeing this piece of art on their school.

I like the bright colors.

The colors make a building happy and bright.

It's so cute and it's so colorful.

My first murals I ever painted was in Chile, Santiago at my school.

I saw the high school kids doing these amazing murals and that influenced me to do it.

Which grade are you?

Second grade.

You paint so good.

I love your painting.

I love the jaguar the most and the flowers.

Where I grew up I want to be like you.

I grew up in this neighborhood, came here in the 70s just to see how this is a reflection of where we're going as a community in terms of just inclusivity and diversity.

It reflects what our children have done, it reflects the diversity of our school.

I created an image using the flora, using the landscape of that part of Jersey that is really close to the city.

Within the days that I started building this painting and the colors started coming, people started getting very excited.

It was a good experience for me.

You realize you're doing something positive.

I remember when you were here.

Yeah.

Thank you.

My way of painting, this was mainly done with spray paint.

The spray paint can be a little scary when you're starting because it's hard to control it.

You've got to be very close to the wall and very fast at the same time.

And for shapes that are more organic or curves, you can do it freehand.

But for this I used a painter's tape to create straight lines.

It was very tedious and slow work for that.

It took me a lot of time.

I think that putting murals in educational spaces helps to build a sense of pride and joy in the day-to-day experience of going to that building.

[music] They asked me to create something about identity.

I wanted to mix my own style with this concept, so I came up with the idea of a school as a garden for the community.

My idea was to compare the importance of education with the pollination process.

Both are important to survive.

I made an image where pollinators doing their job and I'm comparing it to what the teachers are doing for the community.

The bees go to each flower.

They get something out of each child, like, oh, this child has this potential or that child has that.

That's what it means to me.

The street signs is what makes them more local.

I think that was the last part I did in the mural.

I don't like the street signs to keep it local.

When I paint a mural, it's not to transform the whole thing, but it's to bring up some new energy, some positive message through color, mainly through color.

Sometimes color is more important than just the image because it's just energy.

The colors were amazing.

It makes it look lively.

This brings a lot to our school for that we think.

Appreciate it.

Nice meeting you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

It's diamond in the rough.

You know, this isn't necessarily the greatest area, but still make something beautiful, still make it look nice.

In this neighborhood, it's not really colorful.

It's kind of gray, but the painting brings out our school.

I think colors and imagery has that power to take you somewhere else.

It can be a place to take a break of what is happening around.

What he's brought to the schools has been a beautiful gift that's going to keep on giving for the whole neighborhood.

These investments, like the investments in our mural program, really do help with the health of our city as a growing city.

It becomes more than a building.

It's a living work of art.

It's colorful, it's vibrant, it draws you in, it makes you want to enter the doors.

Thank you artist!

Thank you!

You're welcome.

Being here in the area of New Jersey is not only one type of people.

It makes no difference if you're like black or Asian or Latino.

We're all in the same trip in a way.

I think mural art is open for anybody.

I think art should be like that.

Public art does so much for social isolation, to bring communities together.

I like to see my work as an addition to the city, like as a part of the city.

It's there for everybody.

Public art is there with us.

It is a critical part of who we are as a city.

The conversations around the murals being created, the ideas behind them, have really come from the community itself.

Whatever they see from the mural create a change in the area.

The mural has that ability to transform space and people are affected.

[Music]