Speedway Corridor Mural Project

The boulevard that was once deemed “the ugliest street in America” by LIFE magazine in 1970 now has six new murals. They're on the walls that protect pedestrians from falling onto the Speedway underpasses near the University of Arizona. They were finished by the end of March, 2024. Allison Miller of Alley Cat murals had the idea for years, but it took lots of preparation and fundraising. (For example: It turned out that the walls themselves are owned by the City of Tucson, but the “wings” extending back from the ends of the walls are owned by the UA!) Here's a map, with thanks to Melissa Goodrich at the UArizona Poetry Center. Click to enlarge:

In coordination with the UA's Poetry Center, the murals are all based on poems — one a hip-hop song. There's lots more information at the end of the post, but let's see the murals! As always, you can click on a mural for a slideshow of larger views.

Each artist's section below finishes with a personal interview from the UA Poetry Center's blog. At the end of this post are links to more information.

Allison Miller (Southeast)

Allison Miller (including photos of her previous stingray mural): We marked up walls: Interviewing the Speedway Muralists (April 8, 2024). Stingray mural info, and a closeup photo, from this blog: Stingray on Speedway (August 04, 2016).

Monique Laraway (Northeast)

Monique Laraway: Bring Art to the Masses: Interviewing the Speedway Muralists (April 1, 2024)

Alex Fass (South central)

Alex Fass: it's raw, it's real, it's what I feel: Interviewing the Speedway Muralists (May 13, 2024)

Sasha Lewis (North central)

Sasha Lewis: Bright blocks of colors and bold lines: Interviewing the Speedway Muralists (April 15, 2024)

Jodie Lewers Chertudi (Northwest)

Jodie Lewers Chertudi: A world without art is so boring: Interviewing the Speedway Muralists (April 29, 2024)

Jodie's painting partner was Miguel Flores.

Jenna Tomasello (Southwest)

The people are cold. The people are hungry.
The rich have stolen the land.
The rich have stolen freedom.
The people scream.

Jenna Tomasello: Art Without an Access Barrier: Interviewing the Speedway Muralists (May 6, 2024)

More about the project

The project has gotten lots of attention, including:

• Arizona Illustrated TV program from AZPM: Beautifying the Ugliest Street in America - Tucson’s murals on Speedway Corridor
• Map and links to the poems, from UA Poetry Center: Speedway Corridor Mural Walking/Rolling Tour and Ice Cream Social!
• Locations, poems, and the Poetry Center: Press release, January 2024
• Speedway Corridor Murals on BG Boyd's TucsonAZMurals.com
• BG Boyd's video: "Reckon" Jodie Lewers Chertudi Mural based on Logan Phillip's Poem (YouTube)

The “Location” address below is close to the North central mural by Sasha Lewis, which is where Highland Avenue crosses under Speedway. (As always, you can click there for a Google Map.) This mural is close to the UA Poetry Center, which helped coordinate the project; its address is 1508 E. Helen Street.

Roskruge repainted

Roskruge Bilingual Magnet K-8 School is bordered by two streets: 6th Street and 2nd Avenue. A mural used to stretch along 2nd Avenue just north of 6th, but the 6th Avenue side had only plain brown mountains and a blue sky. In 2022, the 2nd Avenue side got an updated mural and the 6th Avenue side a new mural. In a minute, we'll take a detailed look along both streets. First, an overview…

Second Avenue overview

Here's the west side of 2nd Avenue just north of 6th Street, taken on November 27, 2022. It shows an updated mural painted recently by Alley Cat Murals:

Just a bit north of that corner on January 11, 2010, there was an earlier version of the same mural shown in our post Scholars on Second Avenue:

Back in 2010, we often didn't show complete murals on the blog — only parts of them. I found a photo of the entire mural, from the same corner, on Google Maps Street View in April 2015:



(A link to open that view in a new window is: https://goo.gl/maps/DZbEeCF4ed8qPASR8.)

We'll see close-up photos of both the new mural and the original one in a minute.

Sixth Street overview

As I mentioned, the 6th Street side used to have only simple sky and mountains — a continuation of the left side of the previous Street View photo. When I was there on November 27, 2022, the 6th Street side had been repainted:

Sixth Street close-ups

The mural starts at the west end, along 6th Street, and continues until the north end along 2nd Avenue. Let's see close-ups, starting at the west end, on November 27, 2022:

The first section

The second section

Detail of second section

The third section

Detail of the third section

Detail of the third section

The fourth section

Detail of the fourth section

The fifth section

Detail of the fifth section

…Continuing along Second Avenue…

Let's start at the corner of 6th Street (to the left) and 2nd Avenue (at the right):

From the fifth section into the sixth

The sixth section

Detail of the sixth section

Sixth-seventh sections, May 2013

The seventh section

Detail of the seventh section

The eighth section

Detail of the eighth section

Around the eighth section, May 2013

The ninth section
(as always, you can click for a larger view)

Around the ninth section, May 2013

Right (north) end of the ninth section, May 2013

The other side of the wall

We've been looking at the wall from the streets outside the campus. Inside the east wall around campus (on the west side of that wall), there's another mural. We showed it in our November 3, 2011 post What the scholars see.

Here are a complete photo from then and the middle of the mural from November 27, 2022. As far as I can tell, the mural hadn't been repainted (yet?):

Murals being made, even more (part 39, continued)

On October 3, 2016, I posted photos of a new mural on walls around a Tucson Electric Power substation. Here's one:

At the time I wrote that, the mural didn't seem finished. But I never went back to check (or to see another mural that another artist had painted at Valley of the Moon). Last week, a friend sent me photos of part of the TEP mural. Hers show the mural looking finished. I've mixed them into the original blog entry. Now the revised blog entry shows the progress:

Murals being made, part 39: TEP south of Cushing

Murals being made, part 39: TEP south of Cushing

Artist Sabrina Vincent (also known as Slov) sent email to tell me about a new mural of hers at Valley of the Moon. (I haven't had a chance to see it yet. Closer to Halloween, I hope?)

Slov also mentioned that Allison Miller, from the Desert Museum, was painting a mural that Allison had mentioned to me in July. (Back then, she sent me a photo of their new Stingray mural on Speedway. Allison wrote “The next mural will be on a TEP substation in the Menlo Park neighborhood (on Simpson, off of the I-10 Frontage Rd.); it’s theme is all about Pollinators!”) Then I saw a story from Tucson News Now: TEP, Desert Museum create giant 'paint-by-numbers' mural. Slov said Allison and crew would start Saturday and finiah Sunday: quick work! (Click on the photo in that story to see a view of the volunteers at work on Saturday.)

It was dumping rain by the time I got there yesterday. I decided to come back today. It's a big mural! Small parts look like they might not be quite finished (maybe because of that rainstorm?), but overall it's spectacularly big, wrapping around two walls of a TEP substation. Let's look, starting at the southwest corner (the end along Simpson), to the corner of the frontage road, to the north end farther up the frontage road.

Update (February 9, 2018): My guess that the mural wasn't quite finished when I took the 2016 photos was right. An artist friend walked by this week and snapped some photos that she sent me. I've added her 2018 photos between my original 2016 photos below. (I'm also guessing that the mural was finished shortly after I took my 2016 photos.) Let's start with the first five original photos from 2016:

(The white flower above, and a few other white spots along the mural, are what make me think that it's not… quite… finished.)

The first photo below, from 2016, is completely missing a pomegranate, a lot of the flower (toward the left-hand side) isn't finished, and the left tip of the butterfly's wing is blank. The second through fourth photos below, from 2018, show the same spot and then more detail:

Back to 2016:

Next, 2016 followed by 2018:

Back to 2016:

To find the mural, turn south from either Congress or Cushing Streets onto “Freeway”, the frontage road along the west side of I-10. The substation is just past the Riverpark Inn at the corner with Simpson Street.

Thanks, Slov, Allison, and crew!