Goodbye, Sonoran Brunch Company: inside

As I wrote in the previous post Goodbye, Sonoran Brunch Company: outside, Sonoran Brunch Company has closed and its murals are gone. I found Ken Kroeger, who took the photos below, on the Facebook group Tucson Murals and Street Art. The restaurant was tiny, so this mural by Jessica Gonzales must have been overwhelming(ly beautiful)!

(As always, you can click on a photo for a larger view.)

Next, three “close-ups” I made by cropping areas of the photo above:

Thanks so much for preserving this mural, Ken.

Jessica Gonzales was back at Arizona Picture & Frame

Around the start of 2021, Jessica repainted the south and west sides of the store. Like most of us, the store owners probably couldn't get enough of her great murals, so they hired her again to paint the southeast corner — to the right of the mural she painted before:

She wrote on Instagram that the mural is meant to be seen from the corner, like this:

As you see if you compare the photos of the south wall carefully to the ones from last year, the store has replaced their sign near the ground and added one along the top of her previous mural.

Let's finish with details from near the corner. First, I'm always interested in how muralists work around fixtures and other things that stick out the sides of buildings… like this gas meter:

Jessica worked with Dakin Martin:

I was there on January 8, 2022.

Quetzalcoatl

Facing the Memorial mural for Samantha Silverman in our previous post is a mural on the south wall of Amazing Discoveries. Quetzalcoatl is the feathered serpent god of the Aztec and Toltec cultures.

By Jessica Gonzales assisted by Dakin Martin

Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

Murals being made, part 61: Arizona Picture & Frame, west side

Last time, we saw the south wall of the former McGoldrick's Picture & Frame along Speedway. This time, here's the entrance from the parking lot on the west side. The entrance used to look as plain as the Speedway side did two years ago. When I got there on February 9th, Jessica Gonzales had painted the area around the doors and half of the portal in front. The portal was under construction, too; the "ENTRANCE" letters above had been removed:

Later, Jessica wrote on Instagram that she'd finished. I stopped by on March 3rd as construction around the murals was wrapping up:

She dated her work 2020 although it was finished in 2021:

Arizona Picture & Frame, south side

In June, 2019, the south (Speedway) side of the former McGoldrick's Picture & Frame looked like this (in Google Street View):



Boorrrrr-ing!

Jessica Gonzales has transformed the look of the store — now called McGoldrick's Arizona Picture & Frame:

Next, from left (west) to right:

I took these on February 9, 2021. I like the way she worked frames into the design. We'll see the west wall next time.

Update (March 22, 2022): Jessica also painted the right side of this wall — the southwest corner of the building. There are photos in today's post.

Creative Machines

Tucson has more and more large murals. Which one is biggest? Someday I could get one of the gadgets that lets you measure lengths from a distance. In the meantime, here are two of the largest — at Creative Machines on Irvington. It's probably closed today, New Year's Day, but you should be able to look at the murals from outside the fence. Or stop by during business hours — when you can be right next to them.

There are two murals. The one at the left (farther north) is by Jessica Gonzales and friends; the other is by Nadia Hagen and friends:

The west side and then the south side of Jessica's mural, followed by the signature at the bottom right corner:

Nadia's mural — which is quite a bit wider than Jessica's, so next are a few close-ups:

I took the first photo on November 8, 2020, from outside the fence and the rest from inside the fence on November 9.

Loft Cinema (Murals being made, part 57)

Thanks to the Loft Cinema — and board member Tim Fuller, the photographer — for that amazing photo! It's muralist Jessica Gonzales on a hydraulic lift painting a new mural, here:

Those photos are from September 10th. Jessica needed to return the rented lift by Sunday the 13th. I came back that day and found the mural almost done. She'd added more detail in the hands, but the bottom wasn't finished:

I'm not sure if she had the lift long enough to finish the bottom; when I got there, she had driven it to a storage area on the other side of the Loft:

I came back on September 22nd to find the mural signed:

Books coming alive

Jessica Gonzales, who's painting a lot of murals, has finished another along the parking lot of Antigone Books on 4th Avenue.

As always, you can click a photo for a larger view. Here's a closeup of the left end of the mural:

Dakin Martin worked with her. Here's a photo of the mural being made, thanks to & Gallery:

The mural's name and credits are at the far right of the first photo above, in the shade:

The photos (except the one from & Gallery) are from April 3rd.

Update (October 19, 2021): There's a new mural at the left edge of this one: "Living" TUCSON AZ mural.

Playing, and living, together

On the 5th Avenue side of the Playground Bar & Lounge is that new mural by Jessica Gonzales. In case you're seeing this blog entry years from now: The mural is for Tucsonans who are pulling together to get through the huge disruptions at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Can you guess what each letter symbolizes? David Aber, who told me about the mural, wrote:

A local property group is using art to remind the community we are in this together during the coronavirus crisis. “LoveBlock Partners” commissioned a mural in downtown Tucson by local artist Jessica Gonzales. … The mural includes typography from different iconic businesses to highlight a united community. “So the T is from the ‘Old Tucson’ sign, the O from the ‘Fox Theater’, the G is from ‘Hotel Congress’, the [first] E is from ‘Eegees’,” said Gonzales.

I'll add some guesses: The H has an ice cream cone from ‘The Hub Ice Creamery’, the T is the saguaro neon sculpture on Oracle Road, the second E is from Ben's Bells ‘Be Kind’ (like the mural at City High School) and the R is from the ‘Rialto Theatre’.

Here are closeups of the top right and bottom right corners:

I took the photos on April 24th.

Tucson heart on Oracle: Banner mural #4 of 5

Jessica Gonzales created this mural on the east wall of the No-Tel Motel. It's part of a series of five commissioned by Banner-University Medicine during 2019:

According to the This is Tucson article Tucson is getting 5 new murals this summer painted by notable Arizona artists, the heart the woman is holding in the mural conveys compassion and the feathers represent worries floating away.

There's much more of Jessica's work on her Facebook page.

I took the photo on November 24, 2019.

2019 Downtown Murals Project, 3 of 4: Not a Little One

The scene on this block used to be boring… until last spring:

Jessica Gonzales painted this long mural on two businesses: The Little One restaurant, at the left side (its storefront is at 151 N. Stone) and Suntran Special Services. Here are those two halves:

(As always, you can click for bigger views.) The credits are on a sign in the middle of the right side:

I took the photos on November 24, 2019.

We'll wrap up this series next time with another of Joe Pagac's bicycle-themed murals.