Across the street from the east side of the Tucson Museum of Art is Old Town Artisans, a collection of restaurants and stores around an inside patio between them. In the past year or two, LuxxArte Artists' Collective Members have painted doors and added a different desert plant at the top of each door. There are also murals showing desert scenes. From
luxxarte.com, use the menus or go straight to a
list of the artists and an
overview of the Old Town Artisans Mural Project.
We'll start on the north side, walk along the west side, then around the south side (which is now a pedestrian street, closed to traffic):
Here's an example of what you'll see in the rest of the post — the east end of the north side of the building and its label. There's more information after:
Saguaro (and explanation)
Almost every mural and door has a label to its right side. (As always, you can click on the lahel photo for a larger view.) I'll include the label after every mural photo. From top to bottom, the labels have:
- The name of the plant or the title
- The person who speaks in the corresponding video
- The artist(s) who painted it
- Who made the video
The QR code opens a page on the luxxarte.com website with a YouTube video embedded. So you don't have to point your cell phone camera at the QR code on this blog page, I follow the label photo with two shortened links:
- A link to the luxxarte.com page
- A link directly to the video
(Clicking on the link opens the web page or video.)
OK? Let's start our walk around the building. The first doorway is to the right of the saguaro mural…
Olive
Mesquite
Prickly Pear / Nopal
Here's a close-up of the (very fun) window:
Corn / Maize
Chile / Chiletepin
Cholla
There's no label. Johanna Martinez painted the mural. She told me: “Somehow they never got an interview on the cholla.”
Tepary Beans
Agave
The south half of the west wall has three murals (Chile / Chiletepin, Cholla, and Tepary Beans), then a mural with one agave. The agave is partly hidden behind utility poles. Let's start with a photo of those, then look at the mural head-on and the agave from the right side:
Black Mission Fig
Tucson Rose
This door wasn't labeled, but Johanna Martinez painted the mural. She told me that the “mural was just for fun…not part of the Foodways project.” I didn't find a video on www.humanity360.org.
Dryland Farming
The mural's title on the label is “Ha:l Squash.” The QR code opens a video titled “Dryland Farming.”
Amaranth
Sonoran White Wheat
Pomegranate
Wrapping up...
I took almost all of the photos on November 18 and 27, 2022. I went back during May and June, 2023, for a few that I'd missed.
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