Exceptional elementary

Howell Elementary School has two mural-covered buildings near the corner of Longfellow & Holmes (just south of 5th Avenue). Classes weren't in session while I was there in May, and the gate was open:

The walls are covered with desert scenes of critters making music:

Above them all is the slogan "Opening Minds Through The Arts":

Down under (Speedway)

Mural-spotter extraordinaire Melo King sent photos of two longggg murals by the bus stops/underpasses along Speedway at the U of A. The first is over Olive, between Mountain and Euclid:

The second is over Highland, between Mountain and Cherry:

Update: As always, you can click on an image for a larger view. Use your browser's "Back" button to return. And you might want to try that on the last photo above. On February 16, 2011, while I was waiting for a bus at the stop next to the mural, I spotted some UFOs that weren't on Melo's original picture. Did the original muralist add them, or was it a clever tagger? I snapped the photo below...


Update (January 21, 2016): For more-detailed photos of the Olive mural more than five years later, see today's entry Over Olive again.

(Not a) ratty mural

This fun mural fits the business as well as the building. It's at Desert Rat Truck Centers, 3705 S. Palo Verde:

Beautiful mural in a surprising spot

Melo King spotted this wild and gorgeous wraparound mural at 901 E. 12th Street, behind the Sonoran Plant Nursery — (which is behind the OfficeMax store on Broadway, just east of the Diamondback Bridge).

She took the second photo after asking permission to come inside the fence. The muralist was Martin Q. Chamanacux. What a great find!

Around the corner...

...from the huge mural on one side of the building, Paseo Redondo, east of Granada... is another wall with two murals that Melo King photographed. First, at the right side of the wall, a continuation of the previous mural:

The rest of this wall has a big graffiti mural:

Update (April 15, 2022): A new mural covers the whole wall. See it in today's post Art near Tucson Museum of Art.

More from Melo

A week ago I mentioned Melodi King — also known as Melo. She's working on a map of downtown Tucson murals that could grow into a much bigger project. If it all works out, I'll let you know about it here!

In the meantime, she's been revisiting downtown mural sites and taking more photos. Here's a scene from Fourth Avenue: Creative Ventures at 522 N. 4th:

At left side, you can see part of Breakout Studios, 526 N. 4th. Earlier this year, I posted a photo of the mural on front of the then-vacant building. Now the building is neatly painted, but without the mural. Things change...

Update (September 28, 2012): Here are more photos.

Big Brothers Big Sisters needs a muralist...

...to help this weather-beaten mural on the Toole Avenue side of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Angel Youth Center:

It's at the corner with Alameda. (The shadows are from early-morning light.)

Here's the same mural back in July, 2006.

Updates: On Saturday, June 25, 2011, Joe Pagac painted a new mural. The new mural is in our June 30 post.

Armory Park Center

Here's another of Melo King's photos: the front of the Armory Park Center on 5th Avenue.

Look up!

Melo King sent this photo of the top of one of the new buildings downtown. It's east of the Ronstadt Center, just north of the corner of Arizona Avenue and Congress:

Bicycles on stage

My May 2009 post Murals past and present showed murals on both sides of the outdoor stage at Winsett Park, 316 N. 4th. Melo King noticed that I hadn't shown the mural behind the stage itself. Here's her photo:

Country in the city, part 2

Last year's post Country in the city showed the mural on the south side of the Tucson Yoga building at 12th Street and 4th Avenue. For some reason, I didn't include the mural on the east side of that same building. Here's part of it — and parts of two bicycle-parking loops:

The photo is from Melodi King (better known as Melo). She's building a clickable map of Tucson murals. I'll post more of her photos next. Thanks, Melo!

Next along the block...

...from the Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood Garden murals is this mural in the neighborhood playground, a bit north of 11th Avenue & University. It's too long for one photo, but here are the center and right sections:

Creative Costumes...

...has this mural on their front wall, so you'll only catch a glance as you drive by. Instead, pull in at 4220 East Speedway and have a closer look.

(Another way to get closer is by clicking on the photo. To return to the blog, use your browser's "Back" button.)

Fish and feet

Here's an unusual mural. It's at Speedway Veterinary Hospital, 3736 East Speedway. (The dark part at the right side is a tree's shadow.)

Video: The Tucson Murals Project

Hidden but worth the trip

If anyone in Tucson should know that you can find murals anywhere, I should. So, last May, as I was driving along East Pinal Vista after a visit to Utterback Middle School, I looked in the vacant lot south of me and saw...

...this mural. All I had was my cell phone camera, which couldn't shoot a photo wide enough to capture the whole scene. Next time!

The mural is on the opposite side of a wall behind the homes along Sunland Vista, just south of the corner with East Pinal Vista. (The homes along Sunland Vista are behind the mural. To find the mural, drive west along Pinal Vista, pass Sunland Vista, and, a few seconds later, as you see the vacant lot on your left, you'll spot the mural on the wall. Here's a satellite view. The spot where I took the photo is near the marker, on one of the roads through the vacant lot. If you can think of a better way to describe it, please let me know!)

Update (December 20, 2013): This may be one of the murals to be painted over; today's post has more information.

Welcome to Fourth Avenue!

Here are both sides of the mural on 4th Avenue at 7th Street. The merchants (and the tagger, I guess) welcome you to one of Tucson's most interesting streets for shopping... and for murals.

Garden murals...

...or mural garden? These photos are from University, just west of 11th, the Organic Community Garden and Mini-Nature Park, in the art-filled Dunbar/Spring neighborhood. I took them in May:

There are more murals — and more to see, too — in this part of the block. Next north on 11th, for instance, is the mural in the neighborhood playground.

Arizona Ave. from the archive

Tucson has so many murals (and I enjoy riding my bike so much) that I have a lot more mural photos than I have time to post. This week, here are two shots from May — on Arizona Avenue, just south of Congress. The murals — or the tags :( — may have changed in four months, so head for this alleyway and check for yourself!

How'd we miss this?

I use the table of murals to keep track of the more than 250 murals on this blog. (It's gotten so long that it's a bit confusing, but it still helps when I want to know whether a mural at a particular place is on the blog — and for you, I hope, when you want to know what murals are in an area.) Anyway, thousands of people walk and ride past this mural, at the corner of Broadway & Church, every day, but it wasn't on this blog... until now.

Update (October 1, 2014): Here's an article from the Tucson Citizen archive — May 30, 2008 — about the dedication of the mural: New downtown mural dedicated Friday.

Update (June 6, 2023): Elizabeth Bernays wrote on Facebook (with a photo) that the mural was removed for a new building:



I think it's been gone for some time, but I hadn't updated this post until now.

New woman, same spider

The last two weeks' posts have covered murals around Fourth Avenue — and changes in murals at the Tucson Museum of Art. This week, here's more on both of those themes.

First, Fourth Avenue. Back on May 17th, as I was headed for the finish of that week's Meet Me at Maynard's walk, I spotted this mural at Sacred Art and Piercing Studios, 315 N. 4th:

Last week, as I rode my bike along Fourth Avenue, I noticed that the mural had changed... or, at least, I thought it had. The spider looked the same, but the woman had changed... or had she? I snapped a photo and checked it against my backlog of mural photos when I got home. Sure enough:

Things change... murals do, too.

And that leads to the story of the murals painted by students at TMA's Museum School for the Visual Arts, covered here in our August 9th post. Two days ago — on Friday, only a week after I'd posted that story — I heard that a tagger had ruined the murals, and that the murals and the tags had just been erased. More students will get a chance for fame outside their school... but let's hope that thay'll have longer than these muralists were given before a tagger trashed their hard work. Here's a photo of the spot where the murals were: the (newly) red wall in the middle of the shot. Keep your eye on this wall!

Found around Fourth Ave. #3

What reason would United Fire Equipment Company have to hire a muralist to put a huge work like this in a storage area behind two fences and razor wire? (Maybe there used to be a different company or setup?) It's on the northeast corner of 7th St. & Arizona Ave. — though I took the photo from the corner of 7th Street & 5th Avenue. (To get this shot, I needed the maximum zoom setting on my little point-and-shoot camera.) When you go mural-hunting, bring your binoculars...

Found around Fourth Ave. #2

A block west of 4th Avenue, just north of 8th Street on Herbert (an alley), I spotted this painting on the back wall of a building, facing a trash bin.

Why would an artist put something this interesting in a spot where people have to track it down? I don't know... but it's one of the things that makes murals interesting to me.

Update, January 22, 2011: The mural is gone — behind one of the many new-looking rectangular patches of paint on the alley walls.

Found around Fourth Ave. #1

Fourth Avenue (the section between downtown and the U of A, that is) has so many murals that I'm always spotting something new. This mural has been at 526 N. 4th for a while, I guess — the store opened and closed before I caught this early-morning photo:

(Update: By October, the mural was gone. You can read more here.)

Update (January 15, 2015): BreakOut Studios has a new mural on the north side of their new location.

Murals at the moment

Last week's post showed a mural with a pretty certain time limit: until Dave Ewoldt is elected (or not) — or maybe, if he gets into the Senate, until he finishes that job. We'll see!

In the meantime, in this 250th post on the Tucson Murals Project, here are a couple of murals in transition. They're views while the murals were being painted, back in May, and the finished views in July. The artists were students in the Tucson Museum of Art's Museum School for the Visual Arts (which is having an open house on August 12, by the way).

Here's the south side, during and after:

And, next, the north side during and after:

Mural for the moment

Many murals are painted to be in the same spot for years. Others stay up for a few weeks or months. This one, for Arizona State Senate candidate Dave Ewoldt, is the second kind, I think — there until the election.

Painted in July, it's at the corner of Grant and Forgeus.

Pretty on a porch

Just off Fourth Avenue (a great place for mural lovers to wander, by the way) is this home at 334 E. 5th Street:

Besides making your porch a more pleasant place to sit, isn't a mural a great gift to give to passersby? You'll find more of the murals that grace Tucson homes as you browse through this blog.

Last (and least?) on Pima

The last of five murals in the blocks of Pima west of Craycroft is on the side of a tiny building at 5214 E. Pima, Southwest Desert Dogs:

The shadows are from early-morning light.

Maybe a mural, part 8

Another piece of wall art that might not be a "mural" are the painted doors that line this building along the south side of the street at 5316 E. Pima, Kids First Preschool & Child Care:

Does a floor-to-ceiling piece of glass count as a "wall"? (And hey, what's with the yellow door saying "rain rain go away?" :) Please remember that you can click any image for a larger view and use your browser's "back" button to come back.

Maybe a mural, part 7

In April and May, I posted a series of photos of wall art that might or might not be a mural, depending on your definition of "mural." (The last post was number six.)

Here's the wall in front of Little Angels Day Care, at 4826 E. Pima:

It's basically some angel figures on top of a desert-looking background. Mural or not? What do you think?

Sunflower families

A block west of the mural at Charlie's are these two families of smiling sunflowers. They're along the parking lot at The Parent Connection, 5326 E. Pima.

Plenty on Pima

Pima Street, in the blocks west of Craycroft, is a good place to spot murals. Here's the first of them: at Charlie's Drive-in Liquors, 5451 E. Pima:

The deep colors and the shadows are from early-morning light.

J.P. again

Joe Pagac, that is. Actually, I'm in Tucson for a couple of weeks, too. So I'll post photos I took this morning instead of (as I've been doing) photos I took earlier this year.

As you may have seen in earlier posts, this muralist paints new work on the side of the Rialto Theatre. (You can find them by typing Joe Pagac into the search box in the right column.) He also paints murals on the east wall of the Bookmans location on Grant near Campbell.

Now Joe is signing his murals “Joe Pagac .com” and there are photos of his murals on his website. Since I can hardly keep up with all of his new work, from now on you might just want to check his website for the latest. Here's one more batch of photos, though… first, close-ups at the Rialto (the shadows are from early-morning light):

and at Bookmans (remember, you can click on any image for a larger view; use your browser's "back" button to come back):

Flying pizza

This scene is on the side of the Magpies Pizza building, along 5th Street at 4th Avenue. (There's more farther along the wall, at the west end... but I'll let you find that on your own. Fourth Avenue is a great place to see murals.)

Mural streets in San Francisco

A year ago, while Randy was in Iraq, he posted photos of murals in Baghdad. Although this blog focuses on Tucson murals, I agree that it's good to have some variety once in a while!

I'm in the San Francisco area this summer. The City's Mission District is absolutely packed with murals... especially on the mural streets like Balmy:

Residents here contribute by, for instance, decorating their windows to fit with the murals on the walls outside.

(By the way, one great place to see more details of the Bay Area is Naomi Pitcairn's Citi Wallz. She's a website client of mine. Still, if you're into urban art, I think you'll agree that her photos are outstanding.)

Balmy Street drew a steady stream of tourists and local visitors while I was there. Tucson could do more of the same...