Salvador Duran and El Tour de Tucson

At the end of October, 2023, Joe Pagac was replacing a well-known mural which had been in that spot for about six years. Below is a story of the new mural, photos of the old mural, and something surprising Joe did after he finished the new mural.

The original mural

First, the mural painted in 2017 by Diego Roa. It shows Tucson artist Salvador Duran:

Thanks to BG Boyd Photography and his mural database TucsonAZMurals.com for that photo (taken from https://tucsonazmurals.com/murals/salvador_duran.) It looks like someone may have painted something between Salvador's hands since the mural was created… an older closeup below doesn't have the blob.

You can see the mural in 2017, a photo of Salvador and a bit of his story, and more info, in the original post on this blog: Parking lot morphs into cracked earth.

The new mural is coming…

On October 31, 2023, Joe posted a photo to Facebook with his car in front of part of the new mural:



(If you can't see that, here's a link to the Facebook post.)

The new mural

I took these photos near sunrise on December 16, 2023:

Murals are usually replaced after some period of time. This one had been here six years. Still, I was a bit sad that the portrait of Salvador Duran was gone. So I was surprised and happy when I read on the Facebook group Tucson Murals and Street Art that Joe had painted the same portrait on the Toole Avenue side of Hotel Congress:

In case you'd like to see the original and Joe's re-creation side by side, here they are. As always, you can click on the (single) image below to see it and others much larger:

(The exposure on Joe's version — to the right — might not be correct. The bottom looks pretty dark to me.)

Parking lot morphs into cracked earth

This mural, on the south side of a parking lot next to the fading mural on the former Access Tucson building, was painted sometime earlier this year. It doesn't seem to be signed. I like the way that the paved parking lot (at the bottom of the photo above) becomes cracked earth. (You can click on the photo for a larger view.) Kikie Wilkins (click there to visit his website) sent the photo above on November 5th. He wrote:

[This photo,] at the Wavelab Studios, I don’t know what the actual title of this mural is, nor do I know who painted it. I figured it looked like Salvador Duran, so that’s what I went with. A friend of mine, Jake Sullivan (who owns Wooden Tooth Records on 4th, and who has played with Salvador) told me it was kind of funny and it would be a Sal thing to do to paint a mural of himself. I don’t know how much of a tongue-in-cheek thing this would be; I’ve only met Salvador a couple of times. I would think one of the guys at that Wavelab Studio building would know a lot more.

I'll try to catch up with someone at Wavelab Studios. If you know any part of the story, please leave a comment below. (You can remain anonymous.)

The mural is so wide that it's hard to photograph all at once. Here are a couple of close-ups from Mark Fleming. The first looks to me like the left end of the mural:

Mark Fleming took these photos on May 27th or so. He suggests that maybe the mural was commissioned by the people in the building behind who share a wall with the mural, Wavelab Recording Studios.

This is the first of three sets of Mark's photos. You can see the others in the next two blog entries.

Update (July 30, 2019): Cactus Catz posted a comment saying that the artist is Diego Roa. Today's blog entry includes a photo of the man in this mural, Salvador Duran. Here he is — in front of his mural in the Lost Barrio: