Jessica Gonzales paints bright, sharp and very colorful murals. You've seen her work all over the Tucson area. If you're downtown fairly often, a great place to see her murals is on the east wall of the Rialto Theatre, just off Congress Street as you enter downtown. Here's an aerial example, taken by BG Boyd, from his Tucson murals database tucsonazmurals.com, as Jessica and her husband paint, assisted by Dakin Martin, on November 16, 2022:
Below are links to pages in BG's database. The photos were taken from Jessica's Instagram account. Each link will open the mural in a new window or tab. After you close that, this page will still be here.
Thanks to BG Boyd Photography's mural database at tucsonazmurals.com. The photo came from the Love Block Partners page. (This is the third in a series of posts from his murals database.) Jessica Gonzales painted the mural on the side of the Rialto Theatre.
From February through April, 2023, Jessica Gonzales and Rock "CYFI" Martinez spent more than two months painting a mural along the north bank of the Rillito River. Here it is — from the west, across the river — on April 21, just after it was finished:
As always, you can click on any photo for a slideshow of larger views. But there are close-ups below.
At the right end of the photo above, you can see the pedestrian bridge at the east end of the mural. If you visit from the north bank — along River Road between Country Club and Camino de Boscaje Escondido — cross the bridge, then walk west to get a view of the whole mural. Along the south bank, you might think of parking at the Racquet Club, but I'll bet they won't like that… Instead, park at Rio Vista Natural Resource Park, at the north end of Tucson Blvd. — 3974 N. Tucson Blvd. — and walk about ten minutes east (or ride your bike) along The Loop pedestrian/bicycle path.
This distance sign is at the east side:
At 4,000 square feet, this mural is the largest so far in Pima County's public art collection… for more on public art, see The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona Public Art page. (Maybe we should start a list of mural sizes in this blog?) Another large mural — which, at the time (July, 2022) was called the biggest — is in our post Another big Joe Pagac mural: Zion City (Murals being made, part 70).
The mural is in two sections, above The Loop path and on the concrete riverbank below the path.
The mural extends along the Rillito River to the west of Country Club. The Google Map below shows the length as 0.1 miles. Using the 50 ft. scale at the lower right, I estimated 650 feet long:
Although we give the address Google Maps assigned to it, it's easier to find with the written directions near the start of this post.
February 14, 2023: Top half being painted
I stopped by on February 14, 2023 (Valentine's Day!), with snow on the Catalinas, while Jessica and CYFI were painting. The bottom half, along the riverbank below The Chuck Huckleberry Loop path, was blank. The top half, along (above) the path, was in progress:
I made two videos of the mural, from left (west) to right (east), while I was walking… so they're jumpy!
Here's a closeup (taken from the south bank with a cell phone camera, so it's a bit fuzzy if you click to see a larger view):
They were working next to the wall, in the north (westbound) lane of the path. Notice the flashing safety markers between the lanes. That didn't slow down some bicyclists! I heard that, at this point, there had already been one accident.
April 21, 2023: Both halves finished
As soon as I read that the mural was finished — more than two months after my previous visit — I stopped by with my DSLR camera and a zoom lens. The safety markers had been packed into a corner near the path to River Road, and the path was clear:
Next, 16 photos of the mural from left (west) to right (east):
The view looking west from the pedestrian/bicycle bridge:
Ride (or walk) by!
A note about photos: If you're taking photos, don't stand in the riverbed — unless you don't care if the top and bottom halves of the mural line up. There's a photo below that I took from the riverbed. I ended up coming back with a camera that has a true zoom lens — not the “digital zoom” in phone cameras that can make fuzzy photos — to take the photos above from the south side of the Rillito.
I found these two murals at the Tuxon Hotel. They are located on interior walls in tight quarters. Even though I was using a wide angle lens, I was unable to photograph the complete mural in either case.
The artist is Jessica Gonzales assisted by Dakin Martin.
Lady In Glasses
Lady In Moonlight
Note the bloodthirsty Bat.
The following photo was copied from Jessica's Facebook page. It shows the conditions that make it difficult to obtain complete photos.
If you've driven along Congress Street into downtown from the east, you've seen two murals on the east side of the Rialto Theatre. (That was especially true years ago before there was a building blocking the view.) Joe Pagac used to paint most of them.
Now Jessica Gonzales paints here. BG Boyd Photography sent a photo from his drone of Jessica and her husband painting on November 16th:
To give you an idea of the murals that Jessica is creating, I picked a few from her Instagram page @jessicagonzalesart.
The man and monkey in the photo above came from Joe Pagac, who painted the murals before Jessica. Here's a post with examples — from July 16, 2019 — A history of Joe Pagac's little man on the Rialto.
(1) To get an email message each time there's a new post, click on the link just above, "Follow this blog by email." Or:
(2) You can follow by being a Blogger member. Click the "Follow" button in the "Followers" box below. Or:
(3) If you use an RSS feed reader, follow https://feeds.feedburner.com/TheTucsonMuralsProject or use the "Subscribe to" drop-downs just below this box.
Jerry Peek's images are public-domain. For non-profit use, he'd appreciate a mention of his name and JerryPeek.com. For profit, please ask first from the contact form above; give the title of the blog entry, which image, and what you'd like to do.
For full-size versions of these shrunken photos — for instance, to print in a magazine — Jerry has them.
(Jerry is a volunteer who loves to show you murals, and your kindness will help him go on.) Thanks for reading!
Posts
