Maybe a mural, part 68

From time to time, we come across a flat piece of art that isn't actually painted on the wall. Or maybe it's on a wall, but it has a three-dimensional part. What's a mural purist to do? I don't know about you, but I throw up my hands, say “whatever”… and let you decide what you think. (To me, this question smacks of the typical academic discussion “That isn't art!” “Yes, that is art! Consider [some art expert]’s definition.” I say: If you look it it, and you like it or don't, at least you'll have seen something you haven't before… fairly flat and probably on a wall. ;-) In the meantime…

This was on the outside east wall of the building housing George Strasburger's studio, March 5. It was hung on a wooden frame, so who knows when it will go? (I saw it again a few weeks ago.)

When we update murals...

… we usually add a note at the end of the old blog entry, titled “Updated:”, with the date we added the update and a sentence or two about it.

Blogger seems to have changed that. It used to be that an updating a post would simply change the page. Now Blogger has started emailing a copy of the entire updated article, as if it were new. (If you don't recognize the post, look at the bottom of it for the update (which I add by hand) and the original posting date (which Blogger adds), such as:

Update (January 7, 2014) Mark Fleming came back to shoot photos of some new murals here in WintaFresh 2013 revisited.

--
Posted By Jerry Peek to The Tucson Murals Project at 2/16/2013 10:46:00 PM

So long, WintaFresh

When muralist Rock Martinez lived in Tucson, he hosted a yearly weekend of mural painting — with artists from around the country — on the vacant lot south of Und1sputed Fitness on Stone (a bit north of Speedway). The walls have been filled with great urban art every year. But Rock moved to Minnesota a year ago or so. Some of the murals from WintaFresh 2013, including some later murals that Mark Fleming found in January 2014, stayed (mostly?) up for a while. When I stopped by on February 4th, 2016, some of the murals had changed and some were the same.

The north side of the lot (the south side of Und1sputed Fitness) looked about the same:

But the south side of the lot was completely different. Here it is, from left (east) to right (west):

When I drove by a couple of weeks ago, I noticed (out of the side of my eye… I remember landmarks by their murals) that (at least) the south wall has changed. I'll go back, when the friendly people at Und1sputed let me into their lot (they always do), then I'll show you what I find.

Rain Crow Gallery

The gallery also has Web listings as Rain Crow Coffee. When I was there on February 4th, I didn't smell any coffee…

Edge High School, part 10 of 10

We've been trying for more than two months — since our first entry on March 11th — to show all of the murals around this place that's basically an art overload (in a good way, of course :). I'll bet there are more murals inside, but I didn't try looking for those. (I've been hoping for a few years now to get permission from TUSD and other schools to photograph murals inside their buildings. But we keep finding so many murals outside other buildings that there never seems to be time.)

This last part of the series shows the far right-hand side of the long wall mural(s) along the alley behind the eegee's on that south side of Speedway. The first of these four shows pretty clearly that eegee's and Dunn Edwards sponsored the mural. (Dunn Edwards contributes to a lot of murals around Tucson. As a result, I try to buy all of my home paint from them. Good people.)

I think that some of those graffiti-like letters aren't artists' initials, but rather taggers trashing these students' exuberant work. Sigh.

P.S. This blog's tenth anniversary is coming in July. Watch for a special series of murals then!

Shoe tree

Here's a fun play on words… or art… or both. In case you don't recognize a shoe tree, this fun mural has another take on it.

It's on the east side of Alan's Shoe House. I hoofed it over here (after spotting it from my car and slamming on the brakes) November 28, 2015.

Monterey Court

Monterey Court was a motel. It now consists of studio galleries, specialty shops and a cafe.

Click on the photo for a larger view.
Photographed on 1/21/2016.

Edge High School, part 9 of ??

In Part 8, we were showing a series of murals along the alley wall between the school and the eegee's location on the south side of Speedway. Here are another few murals farther along (to the right of the previous murals):

As you can see, that last panel shows artists' names.

We'll wrap up this series (photographed November 6, 2015) next time. See you then!

Prince tributes from Tucson artists (and stencil-ists)

The musician (sometimes known as) Prince, who lived in Minnesota's Twin Cities, passed away last month. His death brought an outpouring of love. Muralists commemorated him. One was Tucsonan Joe Pagac who tweeted (from ‏@JoePagac) April 29th:

Just finished my #prince mural downtown. #princemural #princeart

The photo he tweeted looked like the side of the Rialto Theatre, where Joe has painted murals (on the northeast corner) for years. I rode over on May 1st and found it next to his always-changing event murals:

A close-up of the Prince mural:

The first story I heard about murals dedicated to Prince was a story about muralist Rock Martinez. I searched more today. Rock moved to Bloomington, Minnesota — in the Twin Cities area — a year or so ago. As Rock told me last week, his Prince mural in Minneapolis went viral online after the singer's death. Two news articles:

• Creative ways to mourn Prince blossom Saturday in Twin Cities
  
• Uptown Prince mural expanding this summer
  

I also found a couple of stenciled tributes to Prince on the walls of the building at the northern corner of Toole and 6th Avenues. South first, then north:

The second stencil is near the bottom-left corner.

Murals map updated!!

This blog has been online for almost ten years (since July 12, 2006). For most of those years, we've tried to help you find murals with both a map of the whole city and a table with details about individual murals. (You can find these, and more, on the TucsonArt.info murals page.) Eventually, though, the volunteer trying to hold together this whole project — me, Jerry — ran out of time to take photos, upload and edit them, update the table, update the map, and more. So I concentrated on keeping the blog going.

(The map and table of murals are also useful for those of you who want to contribute mural photos but don't know whether a particular mural is already on the blog. So I've been sad that I couldn't keep them up to date.)

When David Aber joined the Tucson Murals Project, his energy and enthusiasm for murals has been a big boost for me just as I got even more busy with other things. He took on the job of updating the murals map. Last week he finished. The map is up to date; I, and he, aim to keep it that way as we add new blog entries.

There's a small view of the map above, but it's only a snapshot of the map today. To see the real map anytime, go to this address:

    map.tucsonmurals.org

The map shows both current murals and historical ones (murals that don't exist anymore). When you zoom in and click on a pin, you'll get a popup box with the address of the mural and a link to click to see the blog entry (with a photo and more information). There's also a list by address in the left-hand column… though it's in no particular order, so it may not be much help.… on the desktop view, shown above, you can click the three dots at the top-right corner of that area and choose “Collapse map legend” to get rid of it.

David spent many hours going through years of this blog and updating the map. I hope you'll congratulate him for his hard work! (Post a comment below, if you'd like, or contact him through his Google+ page.)

The table of murals is still out of date. It's also confusing to use. I'll try to replace it with a long list, ordered by street name, searchable and easy to update, “real soon now.” :-/ If you have time to spare, I'd be glad for some help!

And now back to our previously scheduled murals…

McKenna Park

The complete name is the Alfonsa McKenna-Luis Redondo Park. It is a very nice pocket park with a 1/2 basketball court, a playground, a covered picnic area with charcoal grills......and 14 tile murals. Four of the murals are on the exterior wall along an alley and the rest are inside the park.  Six of the murals have already been posted on April 09, 2014.

There are photos of the park itself in today's entry Alfonsa McKenna-Luis Redondo Park on the Tucson's Pocket Parks blog. Here are the murals that haven't been posted yet:

Photographed on 12/28/2015.
Click on any photo for a slide show of larger views.