Friday, January 28, 2022

Desert Scene

I found this mural as I was driving on E. Sierra St.  It's on the north wall of a residence at 972 N. Gadsden Pl.

By Katherine Joyce

Click on the photo for a larger image.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Welcome to Douglas, Arizona

From time to time we show murals outside Tucson. I walked from Agua Prieta, Sonora, into the US on November 13, 2021. Just after leaving the US Customs pedestrian crossing and entering Douglas are a series of person-shaped tile murals like the ones in these two photos:
(The woman in the second photo isn't paying attention to the "Do Not Enter" warning. :)

Here they are, one by one, from south to north. The photos are a bit rough because I haven't edited them:
By the way, although the people murals are facing both directions, everyone here walks from right (south) to left (north) as they enter the US.

Friday, January 21, 2022

A bit of color can't replace La Placita

Until 2018, the southwest corner of Broadway & Church had the colorful La Placita retail and office buildings:
Copyright © 2012, 2021 Jerry Peek, JerryPeek.com
Now The Flin apartments are on that corner. (There's more history and photos in the Arizona Daily Star Tucson Time Machine email newsletter… I'm a subscriber; I hope you'll also be able to see the newsletter by clicking there.) At least there's some color in this mural along Broadway, which I found on November 11th:
Here it is, starting at the left (east) end:
Luckily, the plaza that gave La Placita its name is an historic site. I'm guessing that's why the builder didn't tear it down too:
A December 18 Arizona Daily Star article (readable by subscribers only), With rents up to $3K per month, new luxury Tucson apartments are leasing up, says that the apartments are “named after the Flin family, the original operators of El Charro CafĂ© that operated there from 1935 to 1968.” The article also says that one building from La Placita wasn't torn down. It has been split between a resident clubhouse and an upcoming location of Savaya Coffee Marketr. And the article quoted Omar Mireles, the president of developer HSL Properties, that they placed metal luminaries next to la Plaza de la Mesilla with cutout names of hundreds of residents and businesses who had to move when La Placita Village [and, I believe, the nearby convention center and more] was built in the early 1970s.

Have an art-ful 2022!

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Two Boots BBQ Shop

This location has appeared in this Blog when it was Mr K's BBQ.  Click on this link: Mr. K's

It is now Two Boots BBQ Shop and there have been several notable additions.










 Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger images.

Friday, January 14, 2022

Hello Mural

Around the start of December, 2021, @sashaaliza (she doesn't give her name) posted on her Instagram a photo of this mural with "not done yet but gettin closer!!!". At the end of December, BG Boyd flew by (he does drone photography :) and found the mural on Hello Bicycle:
The store is at the corner of Dodge and Hardy. Thanks to BG for the photo!

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Stone Curves mural: before & after close-up photos

(If you'd only like to see the photos, please scroll down. But there's lots of information about the mural between here and there.)
I took the photo above in June, 2016. (I haven't posted it to this blog until now.) The background is a tiny piece of the amazing 200-yard-long mural along Stone Avenue between Roger Road and Limberlost Drive that started planning in 1999 and was finished in 2001. There are lots of photos and a video of that original mural in our July 12, 2016 post. You can read more of the story in the article This Tucson mural was restored by its original artists 20 years after its creation from the Arizona Daily Star section #ThisIsTucson. The Tucson Sentinel covered the story, including 21 photos, in the December 29 article 20-year-old Stone & Limberlost mural has new look after restoration. The Sentinel's article sums up the mural, named “The River Returns, Regenerates, Restores”:
The nearby Rillito River is the focus of the public art, and it courses up and down the wall to create arches, which hold scenes of life in Tucson along its banks. Most of the mural has shades of blue around its scenes, which start with an egg evolving from a bird to fish on one end and the fish evolving back into an egg on the other. The mural's river teems with fish amid its waters, and runs length of the wall between scenes of the city, wildlife and young and old Tucson residents. Colored tiles make up trees and member of families, and metal sculptures of flowers taller than the wall stand in front of it.
The mural was repainted last month — December, 2021 — by a number of the original artists, several of whom hadn't painted together in the 20 intervening years. This blog's posts Huge community mural repainting: help needed! and Community mural dedication today! show parts of the story.

On December 31, 2021, I posted before-and-after photos of each section of the mural in New Year, New Mural. If you haven't scrolled through those photos, I suggest it. Each pair of photos is marked its section number — 1, 2, 3, …, up to 16 — from left (#1, north end) to right (#16, south end). If you'd like, you can use those numbers to find where I took each of the close-up photos below.

Taking close-up photos in 2021 that exactly match the same place in 2016 was a big job. I eventually ran out of time to edit the photos as well as I wanted to. So the colors in the photos may not match the mural… it was a cloudy, gray day and editing to make the colors perfect took more time than I had. To see the exact colors, please visit the mural yourself! (There's a business at the south end with a small parking lot. I suggest driving just past the north end onto Calle Arizona and parking along the street.)

Here are the 22 close-ups, from left (north) to right (end) — numbered as I explained above. Below these are photos that the lead artist, Pasqualina Azzarello, posted on Instagram.


To left of mural:

To left of mural:

Section 1:

To left of mural:

Section 2:

Sections 2-3:

Section 3:

Section 3:

Section 3:

Section 5:

Section 5:

Section 6:

Section 7 (“after” photo is missing right edge):

Section 8:

Section 9 (steel flowers are gone):

Section 10:

Section 10:

Section 12:

Section 12:

Section 13:

Section 13:
Finally, here are “after & before” photos that lead artist Pasqualina Azzarello posted to Instagram on December 24, 2021, just after painting was complete. To move through the photos, in a computer click on the white arrow in a circle; on a phone, swipe left: