Big, bright and beautiful, on walls, storefronts and in schoolyards, the murals of the Lower East Side represent the spirit of Manhattan's most eclectic neighborhood. The East Village -- as well as the old Lower East Side proper and the northern edge of Chinatown -- is host to an entertaining variety of public artworks in this bohemian enclave, renamed "Loisaida" by its Latino residents. The murals serve to brighten the often harsh reality of life in the East Village's "Alphabet City," Avenues A, B, C -- officially renamed "Loisaida Avenue" -- and D.

Although the neighborhood has become somewhat gentrified over the past 15 years, with small French restaurants popping up away from the city's beaten track, Loisaida still retains a seedy character. Vacant lots strewn with garbage hide junkies and crackheads, and are home to urban pioneers who have built shacks among the debris. Many abandoned buildings house the city's largest squatter population, which risks summary eviction, drug invasion or arson. Drug-related violence is common.

Untimely deaths in the community are commemorated by numerous "R.I.P." portrait murals bearing moving inscriptions from friends and family. While the photographer was shooting the mural In Memory of Millie, a young man was shot directly across Loisaida Avenue. Not long before, Chico, the artist who painted it, was shot and nearly died while trying to prevent the robbery of a neighborhood restaurant in which he was executing a mural.

Chico is by far the most prolific and well-known of the artists. His output is astonishing, as he is responsible for some 90% of Loisaida's murals, and his fame has extended far and wide. Chico now has more work than he can handle -- he now farms work out to his buddies -- and often travels to his native Puerto Rico as well as Europe and even Japan to create artworks in his simple yet compelling style. Working with Krylon brand spray paint, long the medium of choice for NYC's graffiti artists, Chico continues the subway graffiti illustration tradition of the late 1970s and early 1980s created by such famous "bombers" as Lee, Futura 2000, Dondi and Blade, and continued later by the cryptic practitioners of the nearly unreadable "wild style." The movies Stations of The Elevated, Wild Style and Style Wars helped legitimize the graffiti of that time as an art form, and brought the work to a worldwide audience.

Recently, Chico painted dozens of bold murals for Coca-Cola, who sought him out to give the hardened community an advertising style it can appreciate. Giant scaffolds are now in Chico's arsenal, and he paints walls up to to six stories high. On September 11, 2001 Chico executed a mural of the destruction of the World Trade Center, which has remained a shrine to the neighborhood's victims.

The diversity and vitality of the neighborhood, in the face of political neglect, poverty and violence, continue to shine in the lush community gardens, the cooperative integration of people of many cultures, and through the work of Chico and other muralists who contribute greatly to the quality of life in "Loisaida."

For more information please contact the photographer.