Chance meeting leads to talk, mural

When I met Paco Velez back on March 2nd, he mentioned that he'd be talking that night at the U of A Museum of Art: people would tell stories about living close to a border (the Mexican border and others). It was part of The Border Project: Soundscapes, Landscapes & Lifescapes. (The show's last day is this Sunday, March 11, by the way.) The stories sounded great, so I headed for the museum that evening.

I hadn't been to the museum for a while, so I was surprised by the new mural over the front door:

It was in the same style as the mural that went up on the nearby Architecture Buiilding in November. A sign just inside the gallery explained:

Taller Yonke (Guadalupe Serrano and Alberto Morackis) Paseo de Humanidad (Passage of Humanity) 2004 ... represents the parade of people who have migrated away from their homes in search of a better life. Once installed on the Mexican side of the border fence in Nogales, the gigantic aluminum artwork incorporates traditional Aztec and Mayan codices to provide cultural reference for those braving the journey into the United States. The piece also shows migrants returning home, "carrying the rewards and trophies of this perilous journey." As Guadalupe Serrano writes, Paseo de Humanidad is not meant to be political... however it tries to create dialogue between our communities on the complex issue of immigration."

Desert on Desmond (view on Village)

This magnificent mural is along the west wall of the home at 1833 N. Desmond Lane:

The mural stretches along Village Drive south of the corner with Desmond, and it ends at the alley halfway between Desmond Lane and Louis Lane (no, not Lois Lane :). I rode by on October 31, 2011.

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.