Art in an alley: 2016 and 2013

I just discovered some mural photos I took on November 13, 2016. (I'm trying to organize all of my photos, not just the murals: It's frustrating because I've had lots of computer problems, backups I can't restore, multiple copies of some photos… ah, sigh, the problems of art-lovers.) Anyway, I was at the corner of Railroad Avenue and 15th Street when I looked northeast and saw a garage wall:

The base of the saguaro — actually, the whole mural — has painted rocks and real rocks:

While I'm out on my bicycle or in my car, if I come across a mural when I wasn't looking for one, I'll usually send myself an email message from my phone. My phone (unhelpfully) auto-corrected the location of this mural, but I didn't notice until now. So I went hunting with Geotagger and Google Maps to find the spot. Then I went to Google Street View and found a view from April, 2013:



At the bottom left is a trash container that looks like the same concept as ones that were painted more recently in cooperation with the City and the Tucson Arts Brigade. The garage wall design is different, though.

Update (February 16, 2018): This series of nearly-lost photos resumes with today's entry.

New on North Stone

I drive along North Stone fairly often, so I know most of the (many!) murals by heart. But, as I drove southbound from Glenn on October 7, 2017, I saw something new:

Here's the artist's signature on the bottom-left corner:

Black Bear Diner

The Black Bear Diner replaced Coco's in Aug. of 2017.  I found this mural on the east exterior wall on 12/04/2017:

Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

Desert Museum stingray mural

Joe Pagac painted this mural at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and Mark Fleming took photos on December 7th, 2017:

A kind Tucson tradition

I'd like to close 2017 with photos of special Tucson murals, “bells” awarded to especially kind Tucsonans — and more. You've probably heard of Ben's Bells. In case you haven't,or you'd like to know, the Ben's Bells home page tells their story. Or you can go straight to photos of their murals pages.

(The photo is from our April 28, 2014 entry Ben's Bells at Starr Center.)

A kind 2018 from The Tucson Murals Project!

More holiday food?!

If you haven't had enough holiday fare, how about donuts? :-P I just searched online with Bing for Amy's Donuts Tucson and found lots of rave reviews for a donut shop open 24/7, packed with people at 10 pm. 'Nuf said? (I'm not sure if they'll be open on Christmas, so you might want to stock up ahead of time…)

They also have a scrumptious mural on the east side of their (extremely-brightly decorated) building: donuts floating over Tucson. Let's chow down on the whole mural and two closeups:

Yum!

Look out!

Back on May 15th, we showed a photo of a mural titled "Look out for each other". Since then, Kikie Wilkins has sent in a photo of another mural included on the right-hand (west) side of Rock Martinez’ mural:

I'm pretty sure the BMX rider, in front of the big letters PERAZA, is Kevin Peraza of Tucson. (I found that info online on the G-Form website.) He's doing some (to me, at least) pretty amazing riding — which led to my takeoff of Rock's mural title.

I stopped by on November 6th to get closer photos:

Mosaics on Oracle

I found both of these mosaics in the median on N. Oracle Rd. between W. Adams St. and W. Lee St.
The artist(s) will have to remain anonymous.

Click on either photo for larger and sharper images of both.

Kip's; no, Vip's; no, ??'s Big Boy on Steinfeld warehouse

When I saw Mark Fleming's emailed photo from May 27th, I recognized the iconic Vip's Big Boy restaurant statue with a hamburger on his upstretched arm. (Do you remember that?) Then I noticed Mark had named it Kip's. That led me to a Wikipedia article about a (formerly) big restaurant chain — well, multiple chains — in the section of a long article named Roster of named franchisees. (There's a lot more, like the way to make different burgers and how the statue evolved, which you can see by scrolling that page up.) But I digress… :)

The mural is pasted onto the wall. There were lots more (earlier) paste-ups at the end of our October 30, 2014 entry Steinfeld Warehouse revisited (and re-energized).

Much better photos of Joe Pagac's underwater mural

Around the month we posted A few bold underwater human and alien fish (?) in mid-2016, a lot was changing on the mural hotspot of 191 East Toole Avenue. (If you haven't been there, it's worth a trip: There are murals on all but one side — and along Toole bordering the parking lot. Cross the tracks along 6th Avenue to see the building's north side.)

That blog entry has a couple of photos of a then-new mural by Joe Pagac:

That's an edited versions of one of Mark Fleming’s May 27, 2017 photos. There are more below.

The humans are holding clown fish, and their hair looks like sea anemone. It's a typically clever Joe Pagac mural. See the ramp at the left bottom, with some stuff along it? The buckets and cans could be for Joe's paint, and the ramp might be for him to reach part of the mural — though I think he finished the mural more than a year before Mark snapped these photos.

Now, as we take a look at detailed photos, take a look at a clever part:

What's at the end of the ramp? I don't mean the security lamps. If you don't see it yet, look just under the fish's mouth: That's a door handle, attached to the door:

The only reason I noticed it, as I shot my photos from far away, was that the door opened as someone was waiting to go inside. (I may have lost that photo, but I'll watch for it.)

Let's wrap this up with more closeups from left to right:

When David Aber spotted this blog entry, he wrote a couple of notes and sent links to two news articles:

1. The mural is titled "Harboring Beauty" and 2. Joe paid homeless men and women to pose for the mural.

Both stories below include photos and stories of other Pagac murals:

Local muralist paints Tucson brighter

The Man Behind the Mural: Joe Pagac

Thanks for those tips, David!

More of Mark's great photos next time.

Update (December 9, 2017): I found my photos of the opened door at the end of the ramp (circled in red above). Here's the best of them. I didn't catch the person walking in, but you can see that the door is open.

I took the photo on June 13, 2017.

Update (November 19, 2018): Today's Cactus Catz blog entry has more photos and info: Mural : Joe Pagac’s Harboring Beauty.

Parking lot morphs into cracked earth

This mural, on the south side of a parking lot next to the fading mural on the former Access Tucson building, was painted sometime earlier this year. It doesn't seem to be signed. I like the way that the paved parking lot (at the bottom of the photo above) becomes cracked earth. (You can click on the photo for a larger view.) Kikie Wilkins (click there to visit his website) sent the photo above on November 5th. He wrote:

[This photo,] at the Wavelab Studios, I don’t know what the actual title of this mural is, nor do I know who painted it. I figured it looked like Salvador Duran, so that’s what I went with. A friend of mine, Jake Sullivan (who owns Wooden Tooth Records on 4th, and who has played with Salvador) told me it was kind of funny and it would be a Sal thing to do to paint a mural of himself. I don’t know how much of a tongue-in-cheek thing this would be; I’ve only met Salvador a couple of times. I would think one of the guys at that Wavelab Studio building would know a lot more.

I'll try to catch up with someone at Wavelab Studios. If you know any part of the story, please leave a comment below. (You can remain anonymous.)

The mural is so wide that it's hard to photograph all at once. Here are a couple of close-ups from Mark Fleming. The first looks to me like the left end of the mural:

Mark Fleming took these photos on May 27th or so. He suggests that maybe the mural was commissioned by the people in the building behind who share a wall with the mural, Wavelab Recording Studios.

This is the first of three sets of Mark's photos. You can see the others in the next two blog entries.

Update (July 30, 2019): Cactus Catz posted a comment saying that the artist is Diego Roa. Today's blog entry includes a photo of the man in this mural, Salvador Duran. Here he is — in front of his mural in the Lost Barrio:

Map of all 1,000 (or so) murals

This blog's co-editor David Aber has done incredible work updating the long-lost map of Tucson murals…

I can't begin to tell you how much work this is!

There's a link to the map, and some tips for using it, in the blog's page Mural map. Find it by clicking there or by going to the top-right corner of this window, under "Pages", and clicking "Mural map".

Bravo, Dave!!

The Bridal Shop in black & white (and a barber shop too)

The Bridal Shop is actually on the east side of this building; the mural is on the west wall.

Next, four closeups from right (south) to left (north):

The left side is next to the entrance of a barber shop. The muralist cleverly painted a barber pole on that edge.

Google Street view shows a white wall in April 2015 and the mural in May 2016. So it was painted sometime between those dates. I found it on March 20th, 2017.

Murals blog notices, and other art news, on Facebook (and Twitter)

Over the years, I've tweeted over 3,500 art events, notices of new entries on this blog (and the mailbox art blog and the pocket parks blog) to the @TucsonArt feed on Twitter (if you'd like to see it, click there… you don't have to be a Twitter member). Of course, if you're already a Twitter user, you can just follow @TucsonArt.

I've set up an automatic way to send those tweets to the Tucson Art page on Facebook. (If you aren't a Facebook user, there'll be a "nag screen" covering half or all of the page. Scroll down a ways and it will cover all of the screen. Soon you'll get a "Not Now" link to click. Grrr.)

(If you only want to read about this blog, look for the "Subscribe To" or "Follow by Email" near the top right corner of this window.)

Joe Pagac mural unveiling tomorrow

Joe posted an announcement on Facebook November 2nd that I just spotted:

We are doing a big mural unveiling this coming Tuesday, November 7th At Stone and 6th Street From 5:30 - 7:30 pm. I will be handing out awards for donors to the project (extra merch will be on sale there), the mayor will be making a little speech and I'm hoping to get some food trucks there as well (food trucks, contact me if you want in!). At 7:30 we can all cruise over to the Tuesday Night Bike Ride and ride together (ride starts at 8 at the Old Main flagpole).

In case you haven't seen it yet: The mural was finished in June. This blog has lots of photos of the mural being madee. You can see the finished mural in Closeups of Epic Rides mural.

A movie crew chases outlaws chasing a train

Prolific Tucson muralist Joe Pagac is at it again. He's painted a new mural at the Roadhouse Cinemas. This Arizona Daily Star article starts with a picture of it (and Joe):

Tucson's dine-in movie theater, RoadHouse, is adding more seating, auditoriums

The story came out online yesterday, November 3rd.

Update (November 29, 2022): Today's post has photos… five years later!

Former Access Tucson mural fading

Eight-plus years ago, I posted an entry here with a photo of the mural on the side of the (then) AccessTucson building downtown, “Girls Unchained.” In May, 2015, Access Tucson closed this building. It re-emerged as AT Community Media.

As of May 29, 2017, the building was for sale and its complex mural was fading. (That's partly because it's on a west-facing wall. The strong afternoon sun can be tough on murals.) I snapped a few closeups:

I searched Google for Doña, Claw, and Miss 17. A January 15, 2004 Tucson Weekly article explains that woman graffiti writers started painting walls around the world in the 1970s. One was Lady Pink. Women like Claw, Miss 17, and Doña followed her lead. You can see signs of all of them in this mural.

As of October 16, 2017, the mural was still there and the building was still for sale. I grabbed more photos:

Update (September 17, 2018): Today's Cactus Catz blog entry has more photos and info: “Girls Unchained” Mural — downtown Tucson.