She “stalked” him on Instagram. That’s the short version of how gallery owner Ann Connelly found and brought Argentine artist and architect Francisco Diaz to Baton Rouge.
Diaz goes by the nickname Pastel, and his towering floral murals adorn the sides of multi-story buildings in South America, Spain, Portugal, Miami and most recently, the Philippines. They are almost instantly recognizable: flowers and plants colored in maroons, plums, golden yellows and powder blues and often popping out against a deep, dark background.
Connelly invited Diaz to spend a week in Baton Rouge in June, working on large pieces inside the Ann Connelly Fine Art studio in Southdowns and painting an exterior wall at the gallery’s future location at Studio Park off Jefferson Highway.
“This has been more like an artist in residence for us, because it’s been great to spend time together and see how he works,” Connelly says.
When he wasn’t painting, Diaz took in a performance at the Manship Theatre, experienced plenty of Southern food between here and New Orleans and even went on a swamp tour. He also checked out the street art murals in Old South Baton Rouge, which are similar in purpose to his own mural work.
For Diaz, each piece he makes represents a little of the urban setting he’s working in, so the flora on a wall might include the national flower of a country or even the plants growing right around the building.
The work Diaz painted on the side of Studio Park, pictured while it was still in progress.
“If you start to pay attention, every connection between the walls and the sidewalks is full of little plants that no one has put there. It just started to grow,” Diaz says. “So it’s kind of a social actor, because it’s part of the environment of the city just as graffiti, as people, as everything.”
As a student of architecture, Diaz studied how modern cities can often become generic, concrete swathes that don’t reflect the local identity. He saw how street graffiti, for better or worse, could have an impact on a place. He became a street artist himself, participating in street art festivals around the world, but he was determined to maintain some reverence for the local residents and their skyline.
“You have to be super-respectful of the place,” he says, “because the public space is not yours. When you’ve finished a work, the work is not yours anymore. It’s for the people, and there are people that live there with the work. They are going to see it every day.”
Connelly is hoping more people in Baton Rouge will have a chance to see Diaz’s work. Along with his mural at Studio Park, she wants to invite him back to the city to work with local leaders on a bigger commission—something in a public space like the area surrounding the Water Campus or on a building downtown.
“He said he wanted to make an introduction to the city, and it’s great that he can work with us,” Connelly says. “But hopefully we can expand this to do something that benefits more people.”
