Murals being made, part 77: TUCSON is back

There's been a mural on the south side of the building on Stone, just north of Speedway, for at least 18 years… maybe longer. The wall in the photo above was painted in 2023; there's lots more about it farther along in this post. Thanks to Kevin Blow — from England, UK — for the photo.

The years 2006-2022

The wall first appeared on this blog in Randy Garsee's August 8, 2006 post How to Ruin a Mural:

Randy wanted to promote Tucson murals to visitors as well as Tucsonans. He wrote that a dirty, vacant lot in front of a mural was a bad idea.

By 2010, Rock “Cyfi” Martinez had painted a mural on the wall… still with a vacant lot in front. See New mural, same lot. (Cyfi was also leading an urban art festival called WintaFresh just north on Stone. Our first post about it was Winter Fresh in July (?!) on July 6, 2011.)

On January 1, 2015, the blog showed a new mural that spelled T-U-C-S-O-N in big letters:

The post with that photo, TUCSON, has close-ups of the original letters and the artist who painted each one.

By May, 2019 — more than ten years after Randy's complaint — there was a Popeye's restaurant directly in front of the mural that blocked the view from Speedway! (Google Maps Street View shows the restaurant went up between June 2018 and May 2019.)

By February 15, 2022, the mural had faded. The post TUCSON is fading… shows the sad scene.

Ready to restart: April 2023

A bit more than a year later, a new mural was coming. This Google Maps Street View shows the empty wall in April 2023, ready to be painted:

Jerry's photos on May 23, 2024

From the west end (near Stone)

From the east end (away from Stone)

T by Kati Astraeir

U by Donovan White

C by Coda One

S by Ruben Urrea Moreno

O by Salvador Duran

N by Johanna Martinez

After May 23, artists kept painting. As you can see above, some artists had farther to go than others.

Artists' progress photos

Thanks to artist Ruben Urrea Moreno and Johanna Martinez for the 140 (!) photos and videos they shared with me. I picked 22 of them. There are three videos; the rest are photos. They aren't exactly chronological; I put them in an order that felt good to me. Thanks, both of you!

Finished: December 16, 2023

The next time I stopped by was mid-December. The mural was done. (At the top of this post is a photo of the whole mural by Kevin Blow. I'm not sure when he took it.) My photos are below: first from the right (east) end, then letter-by-letter from the left end. I've also included some close-ups; they're always underneath the photo they're taken from. Again, the artists were: T=Kati Astraeir, U=Donovan White, C=Coda One, S=Ruben Urrea Moreno, O=Salvador Duran, and N=Johanna Martinez.

Morphing MSA murals

We covered some of the first murals at MSA Annex in our September 9, 2020 post BLM murals on MSA Annex (Murals being made, part 55). (BLM = Black Lives Matter.) That was too early to show the following mural by Randy L. Barton and Johanna Martinez:

Above is the fifth in a series of photos from BG Boyd's Tucson Murals database, tucsonazmurals.com. (A direct link to that photo's page is https://tucsonazmurals.com/murals/reimagine_az.)

Seeing BG's photo made me curious what else had changed on that wall since the summer of 2020. I checked my best historical resources, Google Maps Street View and Microsoft Bing Maps Streetside. Here's what I found.

May 2019

May 2019 on Street View, the whole area was under construction:

March 2022

January 27, 2021 on Streetside can't be embedded here. But the March 2022 Street View shows that the murals hadn't changed since the January 27, 2021 Streetside. The mural BJ photographed is at the left end. The wall is lined with half a dozen murals. All of them were shown in our September 2020 post except BG's at the left (which must have been painted between 9/9/2020 and 1/27/2021). Here's the March 2022 Street View. (To zoom in on any Street View photo, click the plus (+) sign.)

February 2023

February 2023 on Street View, the murals at the right end, to the right of the woman kissing a man on his forehead, have been covered with white paint:



Thanks for joining me on this short trip back a few years. I'll try to keep an eye on this fence for more changes. If you notice any, please let me know with the "Contact us" form at the right edge or by leaving a comment at the bottom of the page (you can remain anonymous).

A walk around Old Town Artisans

Across the street from the east side of the Tucson Museum of Art is Old Town Artisans, a collection of restaurants and stores around an inside patio between them. In the past year or two, LuxxArte Artists' Collective Members have painted doors and added a different desert plant at the top of each door. There are also murals showing desert scenes. From luxxarte.com, use the menus or go straight to a list of the artists and an overview of the Old Town Artisans Mural Project.

We'll start on the north side, walk along the west side, then around the south side (which is now a pedestrian street, closed to traffic):

Here's an example of what you'll see in the rest of the post — the east end of the north side of the building and its label. There's more information after:

Saguaro (and explanation)

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-saguaro
Video: youtu.be/CcFPwELbyqU

Almost every mural and door has a label to its right side. (As always, you can click on the lahel photo for a larger view.) I'll include the label after every mural photo. From top to bottom, the labels have:

• The name of the plant or the title
• The person who speaks in the corresponding video
• The artist(s) who painted it
• Who made the video

The QR code opens a page on the luxxarte.com website with a YouTube video embedded. So you don't have to point your cell phone camera at the QR code on this blog page, I follow the label photo with two shortened links:

• A link to the luxxarte.com page
• A link directly to the video

(Clicking on the link opens the web page or video.)

OK? Let's start our walk around the building. The first doorway is to the right of the saguaro mural…

Olive

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-olives
Video: youtu.be/X_iKSEetZ3Q

Mesquite

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-mesquite
Video: youtu.be/qROrJq_jM_0

Prickly Pear / Nopal

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-nopal-pricklypear
Video: youtu.be/Mm5R608neGM

Here's a close-up of the (very fun) window:

Corn / Maize

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-corn
Video: youtu.be/PR5j9B_zEHE

Chile / Chiletepin

humanity360.org/ilm-chitepines
youtu.be/FWTSsP7mMBY

Cholla

There's no label. Johanna Martinez painted the mural. She told me: “Somehow they never got an interview on the cholla.”

Tepary Beans

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-teparybeans
Video: youtu.be/Z_J795Qe738

Agave

The south half of the west wall has three murals (Chile / Chiletepin, Cholla, and Tepary Beans), then a mural with one agave. The agave is partly hidden behind utility poles. Let's start with a photo of those, then look at the mural head-on and the agave from the right side:

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-agave
Video: youtu.be/rKdzL8zwwqI

Black Mission Fig

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-blackmissionfigs
Video: youtu.be/17twRz4o8sc

Tucson Rose

This door wasn't labeled, but Johanna Martinez painted the mural. She told me that the “mural was just for fun…not part of the Foodways project.” I didn't find a video on www.humanity360.org.

Dryland Farming

The mural's title on the label is “Ha:l Squash.” The QR code opens a video titled “Dryland Farming.”

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-drylandfarming
Video: youtu.be/e8RVKPD-HFg

Amaranth

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-amaranth
Video: youtu.be/7E1xruuEOZc

Sonoran White Wheat

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-sonoranwhitewheat
Video: youtu.be/KNgL9BejtTc

Pomegranate

Web page: humanity360.org/ilm-pomegranate
Video: youtu.be/c0MRQeIerL0

Wrapping up...

I took almost all of the photos on November 18 and 27, 2022. I went back during May and June, 2023, for a few that I'd missed.