(If you'd only like to see the photos, please scroll down. But there's lots of information about the mural between here and there.)
I took the photo above in June, 2016. (I haven't posted it to this blog until now.) The background is a tiny piece of the amazing 200-yard-long mural along Stone Avenue between Roger Road and Limberlost Drive that started planning in 1999 and was finished in 2001. There are lots of photos and a video of that original mural in
our July 12, 2016 post. You can read more of the story in the article
This Tucson mural was restored by its original artists 20 years after its creation from the Arizona Daily Star section #ThisIsTucson. The Tucson Sentinel covered the story, including 21 photos, in the December 29 article
20-year-old Stone & Limberlost mural has new look after restoration. The Sentinel's article sums up the mural, named “The River Returns, Regenerates, Restores”:
The nearby Rillito River is the focus of the public art, and it courses up and down the wall to create arches, which hold scenes of life in Tucson along its banks. Most of the mural has shades of blue around its scenes, which start with an egg evolving from a bird to fish on one end and the fish evolving back into an egg on the other. The mural's river teems with fish amid its waters, and runs length of the wall between scenes of the city, wildlife and young and old Tucson residents. Colored tiles make up trees and member of families, and metal sculptures of flowers taller than the wall stand in front of it.
The mural was repainted last month — December, 2021 — by a number of the original artists, several of whom hadn't painted together in the 20 intervening years. This blog's posts
Huge community mural repainting: help needed! and
Community mural dedication today! show parts of the story.
On December 31, 2021, I posted before-and-after photos of each section of the mural in
New Year, New Mural. If you haven't scrolled through those photos, I suggest it. Each pair of photos is marked its section number — 1, 2, 3, …, up to 16 — from left (#1, north end) to right (#16, south end). If you'd like, you can use those numbers to find where I took each of the close-up photos below.
Taking close-up photos in 2021 that exactly match the same place in 2016 was a big job. I eventually ran out of time to edit the photos as well as I wanted to. So
the colors in the photos may not match the mural… it was a cloudy, gray day and editing to make the colors perfect took more time than I had. To see the exact colors, please visit the mural yourself! (There's a business at the south end with a small parking lot. I suggest driving just past the north end onto Calle Arizona and parking along the street.)
Here are the 22 close-ups, from left (north) to right (end) — numbered as I explained above. Below these are photos that the lead artist, Pasqualina Azzarello, posted on Instagram.
To left of mural:
To left of mural:
Section 1:
To left of mural:
Section 2:
Sections 2-3:
Section 3:
Section 3:
Section 3:
Section 5:
Section 5:
Section 6:
Section 7 (“after” photo is missing right edge):
Section 8:
Section 9 (steel flowers are gone):
Section 10:
Section 10:
Section 12:
Section 12:
Section 13:
Section 13:
Finally, here are “after & before” photos that lead artist Pasqualina Azzarello posted to Instagram on December 24, 2021, just after painting was complete. To move through the photos, in a computer click on the white arrow in a circle; on a phone, swipe left:
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