Burn some calories around a mural-covered home

If you're having a big meal tomorrow (Thanksgiving), think about taking a mural-hunting and calorie-burning walk around the Barrio Viejo (just south of downtown) this holiday weekend. See our mural map at map.tucsonmurals.org.

Even if you don't take a walk, park somewhere around the corner of Kennedy Street and Rubio Alley (a.k.a. Rubio Avenue). Here's the home along the alley; it's lined with murals and there are more in the yard:

Our blog has posted this home twice before: On October 06, 2017 in Artistic gift to neighbors and passersby and October 13, 2017 in More of Kristin's gift. Here's the alley in the 10/13/17 post. The chimney didn't have its Danny Martin mural yet:

The back yard has also changed, as we'll see soon.

Danny Martin painted several murals around the home. He painted the chimney sometime in the seven years after our last post:

Next (south) along the wall is this mural of the Virgen de Guadalupe, painted by Raechel Running:

Artist and poet Jim Harrison, created by a great long time friend from Flagstaff, Jaybyrd Willison:

Walking a bit more toward the back the alled, just past the home's wall along the alley, look right to see this Danny Martin mural. It's one of (at least) four around the home:

Behind the house is this shed:

It was hard to snap photos through the fence. Here's the east side with a bit of fence at the lower left:

I used my photo editor to straighten the Danny Martin mural:

I don't know which came first, but that mural looks identical to the one Danny painted at the Downtown Clifton. Our June 18, 2015 post Welcome to the Downtown Clifton… shows it. (Click there to see it.)

I forgot to check the back of the shed! Our post More of Kristin's gift shows it in 2017.

Another Danny Martin mural is on the Little Free Library in front of this amazing home. You can see it in our October 28, 2024 post Jackalope wrapped in lights.

Artistic gift to neighbors and passersby

A block west of the Downtown Clifton Hotel mural, owners of a home have commissioned three murals on the home's side facing the alley. (That's Rubio Alley, which Google Maps calls Rubio Avenue.) Kristin has written us twice: once with the first two photos below, then with the third photo.

Here's what she wrote in the two messages:

We had these murals painted on the side of our house facing Rubio alley in Barrio Viejo.

The image of the virgin was painted by our very good long time friend Raechel Running. She is a photographer, writer, illustrator, and visual artist who hails from Flagstaff and now resides in Barrio Viejo in Tucson just around the corner from us! Her works include covering the greater southwest and the US/Mexico borderlands.

The second mural is a portrait of Artist and poet Jim Harrison that we commissioned just after his death in April 2016. It was created by a great long time friend from Flagstaff, Jaybyrd Willison. Jaybyrd has a colorful history (literally) painting portraits in oil, being an outlaw biker and no gooder-turned-philosophical-hermit and writer.

…

We have added to our collection as well since I emailed you last. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. We continue to commission new work and will hopefully have another in progress soon. I have attached one of the murals with the artist Danny Martin standing next to it.

Google Street View shows more art on the front of their home (facing Kennedy). Fabulous!

Thanks very much, Kristin. I'm looking forward to stopping by and seeing the next mural.

Update (October 15, 2017): There are four more murals to see: More of Kristin's gift.