Stone Curves mural: before & after close-up photos

(If you'd only like to see the photos, please scroll down. But there's lots of information about the mural between here and there.)

I took the photo above in June, 2016. (I haven't posted it to this blog until now.) The background is a tiny piece of the amazing 200-yard-long mural along Stone Avenue between Roger Road and Limberlost Drive that started planning in 1999 and was finished in 2001. There are lots of photos and a video of that original mural in our July 12, 2016 post. You can read more of the story in the article This Tucson mural was restored by its original artists 20 years after its creation from the Arizona Daily Star section #ThisIsTucson. The Tucson Sentinel covered the story, including 21 photos, in the December 29 article 20-year-old Stone & Limberlost mural has new look after restoration. The Sentinel's article sums up the mural, named “The River Returns, Regenerates, Restores”:

The nearby Rillito River is the focus of the public art, and it courses up and down the wall to create arches, which hold scenes of life in Tucson along its banks. Most of the mural has shades of blue around its scenes, which start with an egg evolving from a bird to fish on one end and the fish evolving back into an egg on the other. The mural's river teems with fish amid its waters, and runs length of the wall between scenes of the city, wildlife and young and old Tucson residents. Colored tiles make up trees and member of families, and metal sculptures of flowers taller than the wall stand in front of it.

The mural was repainted last month — December, 2021 — by a number of the original artists, several of whom hadn't painted together in the 20 intervening years. This blog's posts Huge community mural repainting: help needed! and Community mural dedication today! show parts of the story.

On December 31, 2021, I posted before-and-after photos of each section of the mural in New Year, New Mural. If you haven't scrolled through those photos, I suggest it. Each pair of photos is marked its section number — 1, 2, 3, …, up to 16 — from left (#1, north end) to right (#16, south end). If you'd like, you can use those numbers to find where I took each of the close-up photos below.

Taking close-up photos in 2021 that exactly match the same place in 2016 was a big job. I eventually ran out of time to edit the photos as well as I wanted to. So the colors in the photos may not match the mural… it was a cloudy, gray day and editing to make the colors perfect took more time than I had. To see the exact colors, please visit the mural yourself! (There's a business at the south end with a small parking lot. I suggest driving just past the north end onto Calle Arizona and parking along the street.)

Here are the 22 close-ups, from left (north) to right (end) — numbered as I explained above. Below these are photos that the lead artist, Pasqualina Azzarello, posted on Instagram.

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To left of mural:

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To left of mural:

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Section 1:

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To left of mural:

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Section 2:

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Sections 2-3:

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Section 3:

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Section 3:

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Section 5:

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Section 6:

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Section 7 (“after” photo is missing right edge):

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Section 8:

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Section 9 (steel flowers are gone):

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Section 10:

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Section 12:

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Section 13:

Finally, here are “after & before” photos that lead artist Pasqualina Azzarello posted to Instagram on December 24, 2021, just after painting was complete. To move through the photos, in a computer click on the white arrow in a circle; on a phone, swipe left:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by pasqualina azzarello (@pasqualinaazzarello)

New Year, New Mural

The 20-year-young community mural along Stone Avenue, between Roger Road and Limberlost Drive, was repainted this month — just in time for New Year 2022.

It was the first mural covered on this blog — Looonnnggg on Limberlost, posted July 12, 2006.

The repainting got a lot of attention in the press from Tucsonans, and especially the neighborhood around this 200-yard-long mural. A number of the artists who first painted it 20 years ago came back: Pasqualina Azzarello, Adam Cooper-Terán, Matt Cotten, Paloma Jacqueline, yu yu shiratori, Serena Tang, and Gavin Troy. Pasqualina was the lead artist; she flew in from Massachusetts. The Arizona Daily Star section #ThisIsTucson tells some of the story in their December 21 article This Tucson mural was restored by its original artists 20 years after its creation. Pasqualina tells the story of the mural and more in a 34-minute-long podcast on KXCI community radio on December 22: Pasqualina Azzarello – Painter, Public Artist, Educator, and Community Advocate.

Painting wrapped up on Thursday, December 23. Donations from Tucsonans, and especially from the neighborhood around the mural, paid for high-quality paint that should last even longer than the amazing 20-year life of the previous paint. (West-facing murals tend to fade quickly in Tucson's strong summer sun.) The first plan was to recognize major donors with personalized stars on the mural; now donors will be thanked on placards that will be attached to the mural in the coming weeks.

Ten years after this blog started, we posted photos of the entire mural, from north to south, in Ten years of Tucson murals. (That post also includes a video of the whole thing.) The mural is painted on 16 sections of the long wall. Below are our 2016 photos followed by photos of the same sections — from the north end to the south — taken on Christmas, December 25. Our next post — January 4, 2022 — will show highlights of the mural before and after repainting. Parts of the mural have been simplified… I'm guessing that makes sense because there's no way just a few artists could re-paint every detail of the mural in two weeks!

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As I mentioned, our next post — January 4, 2022 — will show before-and-after closeups of parts of the mural. The section numbers above each group of photos will be used to locate each close-up. See you then, and Happy 2022!