More from Ed Muren III

Our March 2nd post showed a mural by Ed Muren III on the east side of the Rialto. A quick Google search found more about muralist Muren, such as:

• His MySpace page (he knows a lot of artists; to see a lot of murals, click on a friend, then click on Photos)
• His Facebook page
• A Tucson Weekly article and video from last week about his mural on the roll-up door for the Battle Stags Fine Art Garage.

I'd already snapped a photo of the door along 7th Avenue just north of Toole back on February 3rd. It's just south of the railroad tracks, so the image — a locomotive with a horse formed from the smoke above — really fits the location:

Update (January 3, 2013): There are two smaller murals around the door.

Joe Pagac has (or had) company

Muralist Joe Pagac does a lot of work around Tucson. One of the places he's painted most is the east side of the Rialto Theatre. His concert murals popped up so often there that I gave up even trying to photograph them all (which is a bit sad; they're always great).

Every time I went by in the first half of 2010, he'd have single murals stretching the length of the space (just south of Congress Street as you enter downtown) — like this Patty Griffin mural from March, 2010. In recent months, though, he's had four panels in that space. For instance, here's a photo from two weeks ago, February 18:

Instead of the usual signature JoePagac.com, the Ozomatli mural was signed Ed Muren III. This was the first work I'd seen of Ed's, but I've found another and I'll post it next: on March 6. (I'll also try to get downtown soon and see whether Joe has done all of the next batch of Rialto murals himself.)

Che Guevara on 6th & Toole

Riding by 6th & Toole today, I saw an artist painting a mural. I stopped, of course. :) It was Paco Velez.

This newest mural along the wall by the 6th Avenue underpass is toward the north end of the wall — near the railroad tracks. Paco is planning to paint at least two more murals closer to the tracks (to the right of this one). Both will be of women, both politicians, but you'll have to wait to find out who they'll be. :) Stay tuned!

The continuing saga at Toole & 6th

As you've seen on this blog (most recently in the February 27th post), the building at the northwest corner of 6th & Toole Avenues changes a lot as time goes on... it's probably the building we've shown the most over the five-plus years since Randy started this blog. (The first time was May 25, 2009: Train, trolley, and a three-eyed alien.)

For today, here are two views from the corner — looking northwest, then north — on November 6, 2011:

Happy Leap Year Day! Please stay tuned for the next four years... we'll try to keep you up to date (sort of!) on this always-surprising corner canvas.

Update (March 1, 2012): I just heard the story of the mural with the yellow background in the second photo. The man with the gloves is O.J. Simpson, and the artist who painted it is Dave Sayre. (As always, you can click on the photo for a larger view.) Thanks to James — I didn't get his last name — for the info. And see tomorrow's post (March 2) for more about this wall.

One day, six months ago...

The building at 191-197 East Toole — the northwest corner of the wildly-angled intersection of two Avenues, Toole and 6th — looks different every time I ride by it.

(Here's a satellite view from Google Maps. When you click there, it'll probably look different than however it does now. By the way, I hope that link will show you the 45° view instead of a view from straight above. If it doesn't, try the menu at the top right of the window.)

Anyhow, here's a photo of the front of 197 E. Toole — Studio One — on August 28th, 2011:

Our next post, on February 29th, will show two other views from the same day.

Update (March 1, 2012): Today I met the man who works in this studio, Paco Velez. There'll be a photo on the March 2nd post. He's since painted over the giraffe, but he painted three more on the east side of the building, as you can see in the second photo on our February 29th post. (Are you keeping all of this straight? :)

Roses & More revisited

In May, 2009, I rolled by the Roses & More store on Tucson Boulevard (at the corner of Broadway) and snapped their mural on the west side.

Fast-forward to August 28, 2011: I rode by the Broadway side and noticed that the roof seemed to be painted with the same swirls as the mural on the wall below. The paint was weathered, but the pattern was easy to see:

Looking back now, the west side roof has faded paint, too, but I can't tell what was there. If you know, please email me or write a comment below.

Update (May 7, 2019): For more color, see today's entry More Roses & More photos from Chris Andrews. You'll see that the roof has a starry sky.

The Natural Way

I snapped this photo of the mural — and a bit of the bushes underneath it — on August 28, 2011, at Healing Spirit Medicine, 2531 E. 22nd. (It was still there when I rode by last week.)

Progress partly preserved

Back on July 2, 2011, we covered a construction wall on Congress east of 5th. I titled it Progress. (Click there if you'd like to see it.)

Since then, part of the wall — around 278 E. Congress — has been taken down to uncover... Playground Tucson. (You can read about the opening on the January 16th entry in the I Love Downtown Tucson blog.)

Just a bit of the original wall — the fish standing up — was still there three days ago (Saturday the 18th)... and, stretching farther along Congress to the west, a bunch of new bubbles:

The addresses 274 and 272 are painted on the columns between the bubbles.

Unpublished murals updated

I've found so many murals around Tucson that I'm still several months behind with the job of posting all of their photos. In the meantime, I've put the photos of most new murals on the website TucsonArt.info. The pages are built automatically by a program. The photos haven't been edited yet. I haven't even looked at all 400 pages (almost 200 medium-sized photos, 200 larger versions, plus a few overall pages)! With all that said, here's the place you can find the unpublished murals:

tucsonart.info/murals/unpublished/

It's a bit complicated at first. But if you look around and read the instructions at the start and end of a page, I think it'll make sense.

If you find any problems (that I haven't mentioned above), please click the "Contact" link on any of those pages and let me know. Otherwise, I hope those pages will let you know what's coming on this blog through mid-2012 or so.

Enjoy!
Jerry

P.S. I haven't updated the table of murals for a few months now. It's on my to-do list for the next few weeks.

Studio 4013

Here's the front entrance to Studio 4013 LLC, at 4013 E. Ft. Lowell. I took the photo on August 12, 2011.

TMA mural reappears at Galeria Mistica

Photo by Carter Allen

At the start of 2011, after almost 20 years on display, the iconic mural Nuestro futuro/Nuestras raices humanas was taken down from the Tucson Museum of Art. (If you missed the story, it's in Goodbye to one Tineo mural and Adios para siempre.)

The mural, which was painted on plywood (and only intended to be temporary), has since been cut into pieces. You can see the pieces, and meet artist David Tineo, at Galeria Mistica, 2318 South 4th Avenue, Saturday, February 25, from 1 to 6 PM.

An email from TMA this week said “55 remnant pieces have been carefully crafted for sale with a portion of the proceeds going directly back to the Museum.”

A Day 'N Nite Salon & Spa

Here's the northwest corner of A Day 'N Nite Salon & Spa at 3916 E. Ft Lowell (just east of Alvernon). I found it on August 12, 2011.

Catalina High School Park

These two tile murals are around the entrance gate, on Dodge south of the corner with Seneca.

Slower posting, keeping in touch

Beginning six months ago — on August 7 — we tried to cut the backlog of mural photos by posting here every day. The backlog is down. So I'll switch back to posting two or three times a week.

If you've been opening the blog every day to see a fresh post, here are a couple of other ways to be reminded as soon as we post something:

1. Use your feed reader (it's built into Firefox and recent versions of Internet explorer) with one of these two feeds:
   
   • Atom: http://tucsonmurals.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
   • RSS: http://tucsonmurals.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
2. You can get an email version of the blog. Just write to me and ask to be added to the email list. You'll get an email message each time we add a new post.

Hey, I'm finally catching up! Thanks for reading.

Found the "E"

On Saturday's post, we showed the construction wall mural being painted on the south side of Broadway between Herbert and 5th Avenues. I guessed that the three letters painted so far would eventually become R-E-A-D.

By yesterday morning, the mural looked finished. It was signed Jaque Fragua © 2012.

(By the way, just to the left of this new mural, along the west side of the building, is the mural from the (former?) Childrens Black + White Photography Gallery. There's a photo in our May 28, 2009 post.)

Harriet Johnson Park ramada

At the northeast corner of 25th & Edlin, Harriet Johnson Park has a ramada covered with miniature murals. When I was there on July 30, a few of them had been trashed with paint and a package sticker. Other than that, it's a great spot for a picnic:

(The background colors are actually all the same; the lighting varied.)

This is our 550th blog post. Thanks to the artists, Nina Borgia-Aberle and Stephen Grebe, and to all the contributors who helped make this art-filled ramada. The second plaque above lists the principals of Corbett school and shows part of a mural there; you can see the mural in Cactus and city at Corbett School.

Monster truck mural

I found this desert scene on the south side of Simmons 4x4 Auto Repair Center, 3743 S. Country Club, six months ago: August 5th.

Many hands make...

...light work... or, an interesting mural! I found this on July 30, 2011, on the west side of the parking lot along Langely Avenue, at Sonoran Science Academy, 6880 East Broadway.

(The photo also shows a post and a a few shadows.)

Construction wall under construction

Yesterday morning I turned onto eastbound Broadway at 5th Avenue. This construction wall was along the south side, covering part of the building between 5th and Herbert Avenues.

Most of the mural's left side wasn't finished yet. But the people reading books and the letters R...A-D gave a good idea of where the mural is headed.

Painted planes: The Boneyard Project

The Pima Air & Space Museum is hosting a show organized by local gallery owner Eric Firestone: painted airplanes, planes’ nose cones, and a Vietnam-era bomb. It's called The Boneyard Project, and it's on view at the museum through the end of May. Here's more:

• The Caliente article (look for the related “Meet the Artists” story and the 7 photos)


• The museum's photos on Facebook

Douglas detour

Though this blog covers murals around Tucson, sometimes we stretch the definition of “around” to places like Bisbee, San Francisco and Iraq. :) This photo is from the lobby of the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas on Sunday, January 29. It's 42 feet long, by Louis Tiffany & Co., with desert scenes as well as a gorgeous tree in the panel next to the left edge.

Creative carport

On a sunny morning six months ago, July 30th, I took this photo of the end of the carport at 6912 E. Rosewood Street. (It shows a bit of the car in the carport, and I've edited the photo to brighten the shadows.) Normally I wouldn't walk onto someone's property to snap a photo, but the artist who painted the mural invited me. She painted it in 2003, though she's since moved away. Here's the story, from an email she wrote:

“The mural was designed and painted entirely by me. I got tired of driving up to an ugly brown wall every day, and decided to beautify it. I attended a mural painting class (offered by now defunct Pink Adobe Gallery) just a few weeks before I painted the mural. The class helped me refine my original ideas for the wall. I had no prior painting experience, and my original design was beyond my skills. I love telavera pottery, and Bird of Paradise is one of my favorite flowers, and voila. I had an idea. ... It was a delightful labor of love!”

W. Arthur Sewell Elementary

This energizing mural is along a sports court at the east side of the campus of W. Arthur Sewell elementary school. (Here's a map of the school area.) I took the photo from Chantilly between 6th and Holmes on July 30, 2011.

Hidden on Aviation Highway

Barraza-Aviation (the quick route from Davis-Monthan to downtown) is decorated with murals here and there along its north-side wall — by the highway as well as the bikeway on the other side of the wall. If you're buzzing along in a car, though, you'd better look fast! (Riding a bike, or parking near an exit and walking a bit, will give you a better chance to see the murals.)

These three murals are some of the best-hidden (along with the trashed murals at the 22nd Street junction). They're on the highway side just west of the junction with 34th Street. I took the photos on July 27, 2011.

Garden on Laguna

I rode by this mural, on the east side of 202 W. Laguna (the Castro Avenue side), early on the morning of July 27th.

Update (May 18, 2018): There's a new mural. See today's entry Garden on Laguna II.

Moonlight on Mabel...

...and sunshine, and cactus... are part of this mural on the wall around the home at 815 E. Mabel:

Gemstone Mineral Interiors

Back on July 23, I wondered about this building at 1202 N. Main — wrapped in magnificent murals with no business sign. Google Maps says the building houses Gemstone Mineral Interiors. Though I'm still catching up on the backlog of murals to post — six months to go — at least I'm right on time for the Gem Show!

The photo above is from the northwest, on Main Avenue, and the photo below shows the south side, along Helen Street.


Update (February 15, 2012): I just noticed that Randy found these murals four years ago. His photos are in our September 8, 2008 post Drive-by Dinosaurs.

Nick DeGrazia mural

I thought I'd follow yesterday's post of the sign from Ted DeGrazia's former studio with a photo of the porch at 146 W. Drachman (on the northeast corner with 10th Avenue).

When I find a mural, I look for a signature. This one, at the bottom left, had a familiar name:

I'd heard of Ted DeGrazia, but I hadn't heard of Nick. A son of Ted's, maybe? A Google search this week for Nick Ted DeGrazia turned up a couple of stories: Bonnie Henry's column Ted DeGrazia: Always time for the kids (Arizona Daily Star, June 7, 2009) and a guest commentary in Tucson Weekly by Ron Butler, Buying DeGrazia on eBay: a tribute (July 21, 2005). Apparently Nicholas was Ted's son, and Mr. Butler's article said:

Nick, who worked as a boxer and a wrangler, decided to take up painting. He copied his father's work in the simplest of styles, mimicked the colors and of course the very familiar and famous "DeGrazia" signature which, one assumes, he was fully entitled to use.

I took the photos on July 27, 2010.

Sign from Ted DeGrazia's studio

Driving along Prince Road two months ago (November 16), just east of Campbell, I noticed something on a building that looked like a mural. I turned around and pulled in. It was a framed piece of weathered wood, and the face looked familiar…

I walked into the business behind the sign, C'est La Vie Vintage Boutique, to ask. The very helpful business owner, Sharon, told me the story. Sure enough, this was artist Ted DeGrazia — the sign from his former studio, which used to be just west of here on the southwest corner of Prince & Campbell. The studio is gone now… but the landlord of the building with the mural kept the portrait from the sign that used to sit in front of the studio along Campbell.

I found more in a biography of Ted DeGrazia. The studio was built in 1944, and… well, I'll let you read the rest of the story yourself!

Update (November 27, 2019): The mural has been gone for at least a couple of months. The business there is Sandra Arce Art Gallery.

Youth Farm Project covers main library

Head downtown soon to see these big photos from the Youth Farm Project — glued to the south side of the building with wheat paste (a vegetable-based glue). Here are some of them. They went up Sunday, and they'll be there into February. (There's one more coming — on the east side, I think — next weekend.)



It's a project of the Community Food Bank. There's a story and a video on the KVOA TV website.

El Rio revisited

Back on May 2, 2008, we posted photos by Warren V. of some of the fabulous murals at the El Rio Neighborhood Center, 1390 W. Speedway.

Here are some more photos that I took on July 20, 2011. If you haven't been there, it's worth the trip to see!