Recently, I was in Miami, and I got a hankering to go do art stuff. There is a Museum of Graffiti in the Wynwood neighborhood, and a Taschen book store.

I’ve been to Miami just once before, and we didn’t stay long enough to really do much. This time, we had a couple of days, and so I was relaxed in figuring out how I wanted to move and what. wanted to see.

First off, I was amazed by the vibe in Wynwood. The vibe was great, and the amount of street art everywhere was unlike anywhere else I’d been. The colors, the variety, the sheer volume of it all! I was snapping pictures out the car consistently.

The Museum of Graffiti is small but mighty. A relatively small space, given it’s expansive subject matter, but it is a must for fans of the art. Graffit has expanded past the aerosol on the walls; now we’re doing corporate disruption, billboard “adjustment”, and spotlighting writers from oppressive regimes around the world. We suffer from a sense of the art world (among other things) revolving around us as Americans, and graffiti is truly a worldwide expression. I dropped some good money in the gift shop.

In the same block is the Art of Hip Hop museum, and it is also small, but the exhibit on view was one that opened my eyes. Cey Adams was the art director for Def Jam Records in their Golden Age, when they were making serious cultural inroads from Run DMC and the Beastie Boys to the ascendancy of Jay-Z and 50 Cent. I had no idea who he was, but I knew his work, and they had a collection of work he’d done, along with videos, shirts, and other designs he was responsible for. Illuminating, and a great use of time.

I was asked, as I was walking out, if I’d been to the art gallery which handles the works by both museums. The two spaces have a cooperative set up, and I was very interested in the work at that intersection of graffiti and hip-hop. The gallery was situated between the two; I had walked by and missed it. So I stopped in.

I spect the next two hours in that gallery.

Thing is, I don’t get to talk art a lot. My friend group and I look at art, and I talk about particular pieces with others, but I got to sit and talk about art, specifically modern art. Where is it going, who are the main players, what we really thought of their work and their reach.

While having these talks, I was able to look at works from a Graf artist I’ve been knowing about since my beginnings. To be in the room with works that were selling for six figures were….not humbling, but definitely an eye-opener. There is room to talk about art as a vehicle for money laundering, and room to talk about art as a function of a soiety beset by AI and work demands and growing poverty, but right then? I was immersed in what I saw and what I felt and dusting off the vocabulary to describe it all.

Afer I left without buying anything, I made my way back to the hotel, snapping pictures as I went. Murals, bright colored characters, wall burners – I was amazed at the work it took not only to make them, but the efforts the city put into maintaining it.

It was a great trip, and I came back energized and ready to make things. Which is the point, right?