Axis Food Mart

This wildcat mural is along Cherry Avenue, on the east wall of Axis Food Mart, at the southwest corner with Broadway. There's a photo of the mural on the artist's Instagram @muckrock. Also see the Jules Muck graffiti artist website, http://julesmuck.com. I took the photo on September 2, 2023.

Valentina

Valentina is a wildcat.

Found on the west end of the Twice As Nice clothing store.  The mural is followed by a close-up.

By Pato Aguilar

 Click for larger images.

Lohse Family YMCA

 Each mural "...highlights different aspects of YMCA offerings."

                                   Swimming and Basketball

By Joe Pagac

                                                Gardening

By Joe Pagac

                                           Horseback Riding

By Joe Pagac

 Click on any photo for larger images.

Murals being made, part 78: Raspados y Mas (y mas)

Here's a building next to the corner of 6th Avenue & 36th Street that advertises raspados (shaved ice topped with fruit and syrup) and more. I've actually never seen this small building open, but it's worth a visit because it's covered with murals. Although the building doesn't have an address number on it, Google Maps says the name is Raspados y Mas and its address is 2616 S. 6th Avenue. Across the parking lot, at 2618 S. 6th Avenue, is Taqueria Pico de Gallo (which we saw in the previous post, Tacos and more (and more)). To make things simple, let's say the buildings are both near the southwest corner of 6th Avenue and 36th Street.

The previous post showed the south side of the parking lot: the side of the taqueria and the fence just behind it. In this post, we'll see the Raspados y Mas building as well as another mural on the fence at the back (northwest corner) of the parking lot.

Enough directions! Let's go.

March, 2023

BG Boyd took the next three photos of a mural in progress along the back (northwest corner) of the parking lot:

The murals above are by Alejandra Trujillo, from TucsonAZMurals.com/murals/taqueria_pico_de_gallo. (Thanks, BG.)

June 6, 2023

Driving down 6th Avenue before Pico de Gallo opened, I noticed it was under construction (as I showed in the previous post). The parking lot only had three or four cars, so I snapped an overall photo of the back wall and Raspados y Mas:

Walking closer to the mural in the back, I saw that it wasn't quite finished. For instance, some faces were blank:

At the northeast corner of the parking lot, the raspados building was being painted top-to-bottom. Below are the south side, a couple of closeups of the south side, and the east side. Watch for the white outlines of things to be painted:

David Aber's photos, October 2023

David Aber took the two photos below on October 14, 2023. They show the previous building at the northeast side of the parking lot:

By Wagon Burner Arts

By Wagon Burner Arts

December 16, 2023

The back wall had all of the faces. I decided that Alejandra had finished it:

Here are closeups from left (south) to right (north). Look for some dates — including Feb. 1990 with a picture of a cafe at the bottom middle, which I'm guessing is when Pico de Gallo opened:

I took more photos of the Raspados y Mas building's south side. From left (west) to right (east):

The murals on the south and east walls were signed “Wagon Burner Arts”.

Many more murals nearby…

While I was there on December 16, 2023, I spotted lots of murals just west of this area. For instance, one long wall has 26 murals: one for each letter of the alphabet. They should go online during the week of April 1, 2024.

Tacos and more (and more)

Although this restaurant on 6th Avenue is called Taqueria Pico de Gallo, it has more than tacos. It also has murals lining its parking lot — which it shares with Raspados y Mas. We've seen murals on September 23, 2011, in the post Come on in to Pico de Gallo and November 13, 2012, in Pico de Gallo reinvented.

Twelve years later — June 6, 2023 — I drove by and noticed that the part of their building next to 6th Avenue was under construction. Whatever they were doing meant the wall needed re-doing:

Google Maps Street View showed that the gray wall had been repainted yellow by September 2023. But the sign still hadn't been fixed when I stopped by on December 16, 2023 (see the left edge):

I also walked past the building and noticed a sweet mural toward the back, on the west end of the fence. It was signed “Wagon Burner Arts”:

Next time, we'll look at the murals across the parking lot.

Murals being made, part 77: TUCSON is back

There's been a mural on the south side of the building on Stone, just north of Speedway, for at least 18 years… maybe longer. The wall in the photo above was painted in 2023; there's lots more about it farther along in this post. Thanks to Kevin Blow — from England, UK — for the photo.

The years 2006-2022

The wall first appeared on this blog in Randy Garsee's August 8, 2006 post How to Ruin a Mural:

Randy wanted to promote Tucson murals to visitors as well as Tucsonans. He wrote that a dirty, vacant lot in front of a mural was a bad idea.

By 2010, Rock “Cyfi” Martinez had painted a mural on the wall… still with a vacant lot in front. See New mural, same lot. (Cyfi was also leading an urban art festival called WintaFresh just north on Stone. Our first post about it was Winter Fresh in July (?!) on July 6, 2011.)

On January 1, 2015, the blog showed a new mural that spelled T-U-C-S-O-N in big letters:

The post with that photo, TUCSON, has close-ups of the original letters and the artist who painted each one.

By May, 2019 — more than ten years after Randy's complaint — there was a Popeye's restaurant directly in front of the mural that blocked the view from Speedway! (Google Maps Street View shows the restaurant went up between June 2018 and May 2019.)

By February 15, 2022, the mural had faded. The post TUCSON is fading… shows the sad scene.

Ready to restart: April 2023

A bit more than a year later, a new mural was coming. This Google Maps Street View shows the empty wall in April 2023, ready to be painted:

Jerry's photos on May 23, 2024

From the west end (near Stone)

From the east end (away from Stone)

T by Kati Astraeir

U by Donovan White

C by Coda One

S by Ruben Urrea Moreno

O by Salvador Duran

N by Johanna Martinez

After May 23, artists kept painting. As you can see above, some artists had farther to go than others.

Artists' progress photos

Thanks to artist Ruben Urrea Moreno and Johanna Martinez for the 140 (!) photos and videos they shared with me. I picked 22 of them. There are three videos; the rest are photos. They aren't exactly chronological; I put them in an order that felt good to me. Thanks, both of you!

Finished: December 16, 2023

The next time I stopped by was mid-December. The mural was done. (At the top of this post is a photo of the whole mural by Kevin Blow. I'm not sure when he took it.) My photos are below: first from the right (east) end, then letter-by-letter from the left end. I've also included some close-ups; they're always underneath the photo they're taken from. Again, the artists were: T=Kati Astraeir, U=Donovan White, C=Coda One, S=Ruben Urrea Moreno, O=Salvador Duran, and N=Johanna Martinez.