85254 South Waco

Behind a chain-link fence on Speight Avenue, one long wall is having a conversation with itself in two completely different languages. On one stretch: portraits — women painted among sunflowers and roses, and a man with a magnificent mustache, rendered with real care in soft grays and greens. On the next: a full-blown wildstyle graffiti piece in ice blues and silvers, letters folded into letters until reading them is a puzzle for insiders.

Portrait and letterform are usually kept on opposite sides of the tracks — one gets called a mural, the other gets called a problem. Here they share a fence line, and the wall itself takes a side: painted into the composition you can find 254 SOUTH WACO — the area code and the neighborhood, which is to say, a signature. This isn't a wall somebody decorated. It's South Waco writing its own name.