Roller Rink

Photo taken at Skate Country on Aug. 20, 2018.  The artist is not known.

 Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

There's an earlier version of this wall in the March 20, 2013 entry Skate Country.

Update: BG Boyd Photo took this aerial photo:

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 35: Ignacio Garcia

You may have seen Ignacio Garcia's work at the Park Place Chalk Art Festival. (In each of these blog entries, scroll down and look for the drawings by Jose Ignacio Garcia: 2012, 2015 [look for the incredibly realistic 3-D scorpion], and 2016. I missed the 2014 Festival. And I don't think he was there in 2013.) He's also painted other murals inside and outside Tucson. But the new one on the west side of the Rialto Theatre — which you can see from 5th Avenue a bit north of Broadway — is his most prominent in Tucson, I think.

As some other artists’ did, Ignacio's design evolved after he introduced it in the April 26th meeting at the main library:

Ignacio's original design showed a two-story section of theater. But I wasn't sure which side of the “tower” would have the design, so on May 5th I walked around… and found nothing: no white walls, no scaffolding or hydraulic lifts, etc.

My next trip downtown, May 8th, where I drove and parked (a good place to park — with spaces usually available — is within a few blocks of the three-way intersection of 6th, Toole, and Alameda. There are usually spaces up Toole or along Alameda. From there, all the new murals, except Rock Martinez’, are an easy walk.) Ignacio's mural still didn't seem to be on any of the sides of the Rialto's tower.

May 19th, I caught Ignacio on his hydraulic lift stating to paint the jackalope (which, by the way, is a mythical beast: half jackrabbit, half antelope):

The muralists aimed to finish by May 30th, so I walked to 5th & Broadway to see:

Still a bit more touchup on June 4th:

June 10th, the mural had been signed:

Ignacio replaced the girl riding the jackalope with broadcaster Bill Walton, as you can see in the photo from the original presentation on April 26th:

Sorry for the poor quality. I've emailed Ignacio to ask if he has a better version.

Three more murals to go!

Update: BG Boyd Photo shared this aerial view:

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 34: Rock Martinez

Rock “Cyfi” Martinez’ 55-foot-high mural along 7th Avenue just south of busy 6th Street has made him even more of a celebrity than he already was. (He's been painting murals in Tucson for years — after he was caught, and fined $11,000, for illegal tagging.) There's more in the 2008 Tucson Citizen article Denogean: From tagging to legitimate artwork and a 2010 Arizona Public Media report on graffiti.

So let's jump in and see the mural taking shape. May 1st showed no sign of the mural… just a Benjamin Supply banner:

Fast-forward a week to May 8th near sunset. Unlike most other murals, it looks as if Rock applied his own primer coat. (That's because the finished mural wouldn't cover the entire front of the building.) Also, unlike other artists, Rock has sketched some, painted some — instead of sketching the whole thing ahead, possibly at night with a projector.

On May 10th, I was riding by with a friend, saw Rock walking along the front of his mural, asked her to slow down, grabbed a photo (sorry, Rock, not a very good one) and then we kept going. I'm showing the photo here because some sketched-in areas from the photo above now have some color:

(By the way, I saw a photo in last week's Arizona Daily Star article showing that the woman in the center of the mural is Rock's girlfriend Brandi Watkins.)

Four days later, May 14th,there's a dark blue ring and a painted agave:

Here's a closeup of the bottom left corner on May 15th. The main change was more detail in the prickly pear cactus pads:

May 19th (in higher contrast, to show more detail) the prickly pear pads and the dark ring have texture, and orange saguaro grace both sides of the mural:

A week and a half later, May 30th, the mural is looking basically finished to me. But the hydraulic lift is still there, and the mural hasn't been signed. Anyway, here are a photo of the mural and a photo of Rock with someone — maybe Cristina Perez, who worked with him:

When I stopped by during the day on June 4th, the mural had been signed at the top right corner (with more near the bottom right):

(Note for photographers: The mural was in shadow, but I used the free GIMP editor Intelligent Scissors tool to select the front of the building and the Curves tool to brighten it.)

Just for comparison, here's a photo from Rock's introductory proposal at the open house on April 26th:

Those designs weren't meant to be final, but I thought you might want to check the differences!

I came back on the evening of June 4th, in twilight, and found the mural lit spectacularly:

Next week, we're on to the other half of the murals — the second four murals of the eight.

Update (September 17, 2016): In the middle of Rock's Pinterest page right now is a photo of the mural from above (while he was painting from the big hydraulic lift).

Update: The aerial photo below from BG Boyd Photo gives an overall view:

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 32: Issac Caruso

Tucked in a niche along the west side of this niche-like block of Scott Avenue — just north of Congress — is Issac Caruso's new mural, part of the Downtown Murals Project. Isaac's mural is the second we'll cover, start to finish, on this blog. (The story of the first mural we covered — (Downtown) Murals being made, part 31: Niki Glen — went online here earlier this week.)

Isaac worked so quickly that I barely had time to grab photos before he was done! Here's the scene on May 1, after Graffiti Protective Coatings had applied a white primer coat:

As it turned out, he wouldn't use all of the white area. Here's what I saw on May 8th:

Depending on your computer/phone screen, you may not be able to see the design outline. Here's the same photo in high-contrast black-and-white:

I think that Isaac was the first artist to finish his mural. Here it is on May 14th:

Without a super-wide-angle lens and a ladder, it's basically impossible to photograph this mural straight-on. So I did the next best thing: manipulated the heck out of the photo with the free GIMP editor to make it look as if I had. Here's the result:

Let's jump back a month to the mural introduction April 26th. Here's a photo I snapped from the small copy of Isaac's proposed design:

(The color differences may be due to my camera and the editing I did.)

Let's jump ahead again to May 30th. The wall underneath the mural had been white with some exposed brick at the bottom. When I stopped by again on the 30th, that part of the wall was painted blue:

Next Monday, we're on to the story of the next mural!

Update: The aerial view below, from BG Boyd Photo, gives a much better perspective than trying to see this mural from the narrow space below!

Way out west (or east?)

We don't have many murals from the far east side of town — partly because I almost never go that way on my bicycle. Thanks to David Aber, though, here's a mural on the side of Tucson Pool & Spa:

He wrote: “The mural is old and faded. I had to enhance the photo to bring out as many details as possible.” And there are lots of details! An army of critters, from a spider and a scorpion on up, are looking on jealously — or climbing in! — to join the cowboy in the tank (or is it a spa?):

Great catch, Dave.

Update (March 26, 2021): I found an aerial view from BG Boyd Photography, who sent me a larger version:

Thank you, BG!