Hotel McCoy IX

More portraits by Jessica Gonzales from Oct. 15, 2018.

Portrait of Quiahuitl Villegas
Quiahuitl is an Aztec word meaning rain

Tarantula

 Portrait of Kari Beth

Palo Verde Beetle

 Portrait of Randy

Praying Mantis

 Portrait of Jewell Finder

Caterpillar

Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.

Hotel McCoy VIII

More portraits by Jessica Gonzales from Oct. 15, 2018.

Portrait of Dakin Martin

Centipede

 Portrait of Denise Bermudez

Grasshopper

 Portrait of Dante Celeiro

Sphinx Moth

 Portrait of Monet Simone

Butterfly

Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.

Hotel McCoy VII

A series of portraits by Jessica Gonzales.  Each portrait contains an insect paired with a person based on that person's affinity for a specific insect or one that fits his or her personality.  Photos from Oct. 15, 2018.

Portrait in Progress

Finished portrait of Kendra Maria Olivas Sudano and daughter Ofelia.

The Dragonfly also represents Jessica's own mother.

Dragonfly

 Portrait of Lauren Zampier-Enwright

Scorpion

 Portrait of Lydian Osman Ali

Bee

Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.

Hotel McCoy - Front Entrance

The new owner has refurbished a mid-century building and rebranded it as a modern art hotel where contemporary meets retro.  "From the fully restored pool & cedar-lined sauna to the A-shaped entrance & exposed posts & beams, it’s the best of both worlds."  As you will see now and in future installments, the hotel is full of art.  And it's all by local artists.  Let's begin:

 View to the north from W. Silverlake Rd.

That's a vintage(1966?) T-Bird in front.

A-Shaped Entrance Below "A" Mountain

Mural on the west side of the entrance.

"The Life In Tucson" by Daniela Umaña Vélez

Portrait of Serenity Wetherbee, also on the west side of the entrance.

"Serenity" by Jessica Gonzales

On the east side of the entrance is a circle of geometric shapes that symbolize unity and harmony.   It's called a Mándala.

"Mándala" by Daniela Umaña Vélez

Entrance to the lobby within the A-shaped main entrance.

"Tucson Toonland" by Alex Jimenez

Across from the lobby, also within the main entrance.

"Tucson Toonland" by Alex Jimenez

Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 33: Jessica Gonzales

On the Scott Avenue side of Wig-O-Rama, halfway between Congress and Broadway, Jessica Gonzales’ mural started like most of the seven others in the Downtown Murals Project: a blank white wall. It looked like this on May 1st:

Of course, Jessica is an accomplished artist. (She needed to be to make it through the juried process, cutting the list of possible murals down to 16… then the owners of eight walls choosing their favorites.) But this was her first public artwork! She got right to it. By May 8th, the design was sketched out and around ten colors were filled in:

May 14th, the mural looks more than half complete (to me, at least). She seemed to be tweaking the design in a few places… for instance, the yellow color in the tops of the three circles have changed to orange, and the white spaces between the orange are now yellow:

(When I talked with Niki Glen a while ago, she mentioned changing her design a bit as she worked. An artist shouldn't change the design a lot, she pointed out, without asking the owner of the wall. But I can imagine a design changing as the artist sees it close-up, full-sized — instead of the tiny rendering of their original designs.)

When I caught the mural near sunset on May 19th, Jessica had finished more of the detail in the bottom half:

(Note for photographers: I evened out the bright and dark areas with the HDR mode in my camera, then did more darkening and brightening by selecting those areas with the free GIMP editor and applying color Curves to each. I tried balancing the brightness even more than this, but the photo looked a bit unreal.)

On May 30th, Jessica had signed the mural (at the bottom right). The bottom had black outlines that I wasn't sure she was planning to fill in:

I guess the mural is done! The June 16th article in the Star has a photo that looks the same as my June 4th photo:

(The barriers and hydraulic lift are gone, too.) A happy family is posing in front. (I've blurred their faces for privacy.)

Here's the tentative design shown at the Downtown Mural Project design open house April 26th. I snapped a photo from a small piece of paper on a table, so the color differences may be due to my camera, not to a change in Jessica's design:

There are five more new downtown murals to cover. See you on Thursday!

Arizona Daily Star: “9 new murals in downtown scream TUCSON”

Kathleen Allen's article about the Downtown Murals Project was in yesterday's Star, in the Caliente section. If you haven't seen the article, you can click there to read it.

The article includes a mural that wasn't part of the eight Downtown Murals Project artworks: Kati Astreir's mural on 7th at Toole. It also didn't include the new mural on 191 E. Toole or tributes to Prince. But, as I checked the Tucson.com website yesterday evening, it was one of the paper's most popular articles. That's great news for public art in Tucson!

Update (June 19, 2016): If you're walking between Kati Astreir’s mural and Rock Martinez’, don't miss Joe Pagac's spectacular mural next to the tracks where they cross 7th Avenue.

Downtown Mural Project design open house

Tuesday night the 26th, (most of) the artists who'll be painting murals downtown next month showed their work to a crowd at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library…

Some of the works were finished designs; others were still being developed. Here's a video of the artists introducing their work:



(You can also see the video by clicking on its address, here: https://youtu.be/kLSYTiEuZng.)

I snapped some quick photos of some of the designs before the presentation started. Unfortunately, I didn't get them all... but you can see more in the video above... and all in the TAB page mentioned at the bottom of this article.

Jose Ignacio Garcia, Rialto Theatre

Rock Martinez, 440 N. 7th Ave.

Pete Goldlust, 213 E. Broadway

Issac Caruso, at 9 North Scott Ave.

Jessica Gonzales, along Scott between Congress & Broadway, on Wig-O-Rama

Niki Glen, at the west corner of 5th Ave. & Toole.

Luis Gustavo Mena on CenturyLink, 142 E. Pennington St.

The Arizona Daily Star article Design selections of city mural project to be shown publicly has an artist list (though, on Tuesday evening, the online version had formatting errors and maybe a missing name).

Graffiti Protective Coatings is preparing the artists’ “canvases” with a coat of primer paint. The artists start work May 2nd. Stop by! Bring them cold drinks! (Some will be working at night to avoid the heat.)

There are more details and photos of all the mural designs on the Tucson Arts Brigade Mural Arts Program blog in the article City of Tucson Mural Program Announce winning designs for Downtown Murals Open House Tues. April 26. The next meeting, where artists will discuss their progress, is at the Joel Valdez Main Library, in the downstairs meeting room, May 24th from 6-7 pm.

Update (April 28, 2016): Tucson News Now posted a short update after the meeting in Tucson artists to revamp downtown buildings with mural project. (The “For more information” link link at the bottom of the story seems to be outdated, though.)

Update (June 4, 2016): The space for the mural at 213 E. Broadway stayed empty most of May. When I walked by today, I saw the outlines of a different design than the one shown above. I checked and found that a different artist, To-Ree-Nee Wolf Keiser, is filling the space.