Ten years of Tucson murals

Today (July 12, 2016) marks the start of the second decade of Tucson murals on this blog. Randy Garsee started The Tucson Murals Project blog on July 12, 2006, with the entry Looonnnggg on Limberlost. Randy showed only a couple of photos of this blocks-long mural (on the east side of Stone Avenue north of Limberlost). So David Aber and I went back on June 12th of this year to cover every inch of it.

Let's start with a video (84 seconds long) showing the mural from north to south.



(You can also click for a full-size page view of the video.)

David also took 16 photos of the mural and carefully stitched them into (very wide!) panoramas. We'll show each of them three ways:

• As a (very small) image
• You can click on that image to see it twice as large — which is still so tiny that you can't see much detail.
• After each of the images, there's a link you can click on to see the full-size panorama. It should open a new window or tab in your browser. Here are a few tips:
  
  • Depending on your browser or your computer, this very wide image could overwhelm it! But, if it works, it's a spectacular way to see all of the mural, from north to south.
  • If it works, you should be able to either drag the image from left (the north end) to right — or use the scroll bar that appears at the bottom.
  • If the image is too tall for your screen, your browser can probably shrink the image. There are a few ways do this. Maybe you can "pinch" the page to make it smaller. Or, if you have a menu bar at the top the window, click and move your mouse to get a "zoom out" choice:
    
    
    
    Or you might find a menu at the top-right corner:
    
    
    
    Whew! It's not very complicated once you try it, and the full-size view lets you see the detail in this amazing mural.

Here's the left side:

Click to see the left side full-size. Next, the right side:

Click to see the right side full-size. If you'd like to see the whole mural, here it is:

Click to see the whole mural full-size. In case you can't see those panoramas, later (at the end of this entry) I'll show each of the photos that David used to build the panorama. While Dave was shooting the complete mural, I snapped shots of parts that I especially like…

To finish: In case you didn't see David's panoramas above, here are the 16 photos he used to build the stitched panoramas. He used the expansion joints along the wall to have uniform widths… so the individual photos below are chopped in ways that may seem arbitrary. Also, some of the photos have more background than others in order to get a full view of the metal sculptures in front of the mural. With all of that said, here are his photos:

The tall steel flowers were made by Kim Young, the founder of BICAS.

Oh, and just south of the mural is a mailbox mounted on a pair of scissors.

Next: On to another ten years of Tucson murals!

Update (December 13, 2021): The mural is being repainted! Today's post has more info. Look for more posts by December 20, 2021 or so.

Update (January 11, 2022): The mural is finished. There are complete before-and-after photos in our December 31, 2021 post New Year, New Mural. There are close-up before-and-after photos of parts of the mural in today's post Stone Curves mural: before & after close-up photos. Today's post also has lots of information about the mural's history and the repainting.

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 38: To-Ree-Nee Wolf Keiser

We're at the last of this series, each showing the prgress of a mural from a blank white wall (in most cases) to a finished and spectacular work of art. (By the way, we're posting this on Friday, instead of the usual Thursday, because the blog's tenth anniversary is this coming Tuesday. So next week's schedule will be pushed back by a day.)

The eighth mural is on Fifth Avenue, just north of Broadway. The wall stayed blank for quite a while after other artists had started their murals. Here's the view on May 1st, May 8th, May 14th, May 19th, and May 30th:

When I saw the mural start to take shape on my June 4th visit, I realized that it was completely different that Pete Goldlust's design shown at the Downtown Mural Project design open house held April 28th. (If you'd like to see it, click that link and scroll down.) Not long after, I read that the artist was now To-Ree-Nee Wolf Keiser:

The camera I used this time couldn't quite fit in the whole mural due to the light post at the right edge. So here's a shot from across the street:

June 10th, there was color at the ends and bottom center. I brought the same camera that wouldn't show the entire mural, so here are (most of) the two ends:

The murals were looking nearly finished on June 19th, with a couple of white spots :

June 27th, there were a couple of white areas: an irregular shape at the center and a rectangular one at top right. The top right had dots in it:

Thanks to a tip from David Aber, I met the artist in person on July 4th. She talked about different parts of the design (which I should have made notes about!) and filled in the white rectangle shown at the top right above:

When I came by this morning (Friday July 8th), the platform was gone. I stood between the desert willows and the wall (I wish I'd tried that before instead of shooting from the ends), but it worked pretty well. I've stitched the three photos into one:

(As always, you can click on the photo for a bigger view.) The stitching has a couple of jumps near the top, but I think it gives a pretty good idea of the mural. It's definitely worth walking up and seeing it in person!

That's it for the eight mew murals from the Downtown Murals Project. This coming Tuesday is the tenth-anniversary blog entry… and Friday will be another entry. Then we'll get back to the normal Monday and Thursday schedule. Thanks for coming along!