Narrative: Martin Moreno and William Calvo

On Friday, February 14, 2006 I and the rest of the urban studies class met at the South Mountain Community Center in South Phoenix. When we got there we were introduced to muralist and artist, Martin Moreno. We had a second guest speaker William Calvo who is a PhD candidate in industrial design who has an abundance of knowledge in low-riders in South Phoenix. Both William and Martin both spoke well about each of their topics; however there was one thing that I pulled from the two. That is that Martin was more so-called “Old School” and seems to be more traditional where as William was more modernized and adapting to society. Martin had much more a wider reference in life itself and much of his hardships he discussed through out his presentation.

            Martin to me was more inspirational on the levels of determining who we are and not to forget. To me he sounded much like how I see things and that although we are all American or even if we are not, we should never forget our heritage. In many of Martin’s murals they had a lot of hidden messages and personal thoughts from Martin himself. I found out that he has done over 200 murals and several over 100ft in length. Martin has done many murals for elementary schools in South Phoenix and several high schools in the valley of the sun. Overall I liked his presentation the best simply because of a lot of what he has done for the community and beyond. By far that was my favorite part of the day and I am grateful to him for giving us his time.