Slow summer (sorry...)

Mural lovers: If I've left you moaning “more murals!”... well, I'm trying to get back to this blog. I've been too busy this past month or two to keep this volunteer project (almost 850 posts over the past seven years) going by myself.

Now I'm headed out on a much-needed vacation. But, first, I'm back for a bit — with another post from my big mural photo archive. Today's mural is humble: either faded from a long spell under the sun... or never finished in the first place...

What do you think happened here? I found it on September 13, 2012 along the east wall of 4842 E. 26th — on the Santa Rosa side.

I'll be back in August! (And I may be able to sneak in a couple of much greater murals in the next week or so.)

Thanks for following...

Back to the archive...

If you've been following this blog for a while, you've seen that some of the photos I post are recent; others are older. I try to keep a fresh “mix” with some new photos and some older shots. This is the oldest one I have, from ten months ago: September 3, 2012.

This is on the playground wall on the southeast corner of Tucson Chinese Christian Church, 307 East Helen.

Murals being made, part 20: Jos at Tucson Mall

You'll catch busy Jos Villabrille painting murals all over town. This spring, I found Jos (and met him for the first time) as he painted the new Good Ole Tom's location at Broadway & Wilmot. A couple of weeks ago, I met him on River Road. Yesterday, I was walking into a southwestern entrance to Tucson Mall. (Click there for a Google Map showing the mall, with a green arrow at the spot where the first — geotagged — photo was taken.)

This “murals being made” series shows any mural I find around Tucson that's in the process of being painted. (If you want to see more of the series, type murals being made into the search box at the right side of any page.) Jos seems to be working all around Tucson! He wasn't at Tucson Mall when I walked by his murals yesterday. I snapped a couple of photos, anyway.

The mural on the map above — the one nearest the entrance — looked only part-finished yesterday (around noon Friday):

The mural facing the parking lot looked finished — to my eyes, at least:

Thanks, Tucson Mall (and Jos!) for more great Sonoran Desert murals.

Los Amigos Childcare and Activity Center

On August 25 of last year, I photographed these murals wrapping around Los Amigos Childcare & Activity Center, 1300 W. St Marys at Melrose. I started from the southwest corner to the northeast corner of the mural-covered building. Some of the shots are overall; others are close-ups.

The work is signed By Alexander Reyes.

(P.S. The larger versions you get when you click on a photo used to be 1024 pixels wide (or high). I've found that Blogger doesn't charge extra for sizes of 800 pixels or smaller. So, from now on, most of the big photos will be a bit smaller. But I'm always glad to send full-resolution photos of mine to anyone who needs them. All of my mural photos are public-domain... though other photographers may keep copyright; we'll need to ask their permission.)

The mural behind the Anita Street mailbox

On January 5th, on the Tucson Mailbox Art blog, I posted photos of a stuccoed mailbox post hand-painted with angels and plants at 632 North Anita Avenue. Behind this beautiful mailbox was a mural on the front wall of the home:

I was there on August 22, 2012.

Más de Davis Bilingual School

Back on May 25, 2009, we posted a couple of photos of this art-covered school. Back then, at least, it was named Davis Bilingual Learning Center. I'm not sure of the latest taste in school names, so I'll just call it Davis Bilingual School. Around the grounds is a lot of art in (naturally enough) both Spanish and English. If you click there, you can see the two photos I posted in 2009. Here are some more from August 22, 2012.

Let's start with a better photo of the the bench I showed in the 2009 post. In the middle of the center of the seat, it's signed Made by Los Artistas de Davis 2004 and also says In Memory of Melissa Gomez.:

A mural in an arch at the northeast side of the school, with a sign saying Dr. Valenzuela 1981-2011, and a close-up of the plaque toward the top:

As always, you can click on a photo for a larger view.

(By the way, there are more mural-filled arches on the south side of the school. You can see some of them in the first photo on the previous post I mentioned.)

Let's finish with a mosaic plaque at the southwest entrance to this art-filled place:

You can see this — and more — at 500 W. St. Marys (corner of Granada). The grounds may may be locked up this summer; I haven't checked. During the year, I'd recommend you check in at the school office before looking around. I got there early in the morning — after the grounds were open, but before the students did.

Update (December 1, 2014): There are even more murals here. See Art(y) school: Davis Bilingual.

What's new at the library

The Eckstrom-Columbus Branch Library, at 22nd & Columbus, opened a week ago after its remodeling. It's a nice building, larger, with more computers and other modern features.

It also has a nice new tile mural next to its new west entrance:

I snapped the photo on June 7th.

More murals!

That title has two meanings, and both are thanks to tips from the Tucson Arts Brigade.

The Community Arts and Murals blog has stories about (among other things) mural projects and how they can help to transform a community. There are also lots of links to organizations, resources and people.

MuralFarm.org is an interactive database of thousands of murals in Philadelphia.

Would you like to spend an evening at La Cocina in beautiful Old Town Artisans, June 18th, helping TAB make murals while you help yourself to a buffet dinner? Lots of artists and musicians will be there too:

(As always, you can click for a larger view.)

Davis Community Garden

Just northeast of where St. Marys crosses I-10, at the corner of 5th & Anita, is this community garden:

I was there on August 22nd, during last year's monsoon. The garden also has art inside the fence:

Hands across Borton (maybe a mural, part 47)

¡Hola, Tucson! — listeners from this morning's Fred and Jeff Show, and all the rest of you, too. This morning, I'll be a guest on the second half of the show (which runs from 11 to noon); soon after you should also be able to hear a podcast online at their website. In the meantime, here's a mural photo and — in case this is your first visit — some info about this blog. (You can read more in the page titled, appropriately enough, About this blog.)

This occasional “maybe a mural” series shows things that you might, or might not, call a “mural.” This one almost definitely isn't, but I thought it'd make a nice break from all of the flat art we've been posting here :)...

This was out front (the north side) of Elizabeth Borton Magnet School, on the southeast corner of 22nd & Euclid, August 17, 2012. Here's a close-up of some of those hands:

Unfortunately, the hands were gone when I rode by yesterday... it's just a box of soil now.

We've got a big backlog of murals to post, and this was at the top of the stack. To see some newer murals, scroll on down to some of the earlier posts.

You can also find murals by:

• Scrolling down a bit until you see the Blog Archive in the right column. There you can find murals back to the day Randy Garsee started this blog (in July, 2006).
• Typing a street name, artist name, or something else about the mural in the search box at the right side of any page on this blog.
• Using the murals map, table of murals, or murals tour. They're all on the TucsonArt.info murals page.

Thanks for visiting! I hope you enjoy Tucson's nearly 1,000 murals (and counting) on these pages.

South Tucson fire station update

Not long after I posted South Tucson fire station on May 19th, the artist who was leading the scouts left a comment saying that the mural wasn't quite finished when I photographed it:

Today I've updated that post and added new close-up photos. (Click on the post's name to see them.)

Long look on Longfellow

After I spotted the mailbox here at 321 N. Longfellow, I almost missed this mural alongside the driveway, set far back:

I'll never walk onto someone's property to photograph a mural; that's a view from a zoom lens. It's an iridescent mural with a cat (temporarily) on top. I was there three days ago: May 28th.

Back in (actually, on) BLX

(Apologies, AC/DC fans, for that title. :)

The longtime mural on the side of BLX Skate Shop, 7th & Toole Avenues, has been replaced by this one with movie characters:

(That's a support wire across the left edge.) I found it on May 24th.

By the way, that mural is one of the 14 shown in the article The Big Picture, by Paul M. Ingram of The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. It's a great little “newspaper” written by New York Times interns right here in Tucson.

Update (May 11, 2015): That mural is by Danny Martin. He has a little more info about it on his website; he says it's a 1980s film mural with “Beetlejuice Geena Davis / MR Stay Puft / Kurt Russell.” I also found a photo of the mural cut into a skate deck.

A Corvette for Indy 500 Day?

I was looking through my backlog of Tucson mural photos for a race car that would fit the Indy 500. (In case you're interested, here's a long list of Indy 500 history.) I didn't find what I wanted, but I did find this Corvette mural, on the west side of O'Rielly Chevrolet facing Park Place Mall. (Here's a Google Map.) It'd probably belong better at a NASCAR race, but it'll have to do.

I snapped the photo on April 6th.

Half-hidden home mural

As I was ricing along Olsen Avenue last August 15th, I spotted a mural inside the back yard of the home at 2101 East Drachman. The first glimpse was from alley between Adams and Drachman, and the second — the photo shown here — was along Olsen Avenue. It has Trompe-œ’il vigas on a home, and something below... I didn't look over the wall (and we won't show the hidden part of any mural onl a home, anyway), so imagine it for yourself!

South Tucson fire station (murals being made, part 19)

I read Arizona Daily Star reporter Kimberly Matas’ story Scouts battle graffiti with South Tucson mural in today's paper. The story didn't include a photo, though. So I went right over to the northwest corner of West 27th Street & South 5th Avenue — just behind the police and fire station — to see the mural and grab a photo:

Update (June 1, 2013): Here are close-ups after the mural was completed (as usual, you can click on a photo for an even bigger view):

For a bonus, there's an old fire engine parked next to the mural:

The article says that muralist Germaine Pesquiera guided the members of Girl Scout Troop 645, along with troop leader Pilar Ruiz. Thanks, folks, for another great piece of South Tucson street art!

Maybe a mural, part 46: Exquisite on Elm

The home at 2350 Elm Street (it's on the southwest corner of Norton & Elm) has amazing art all along its walls. A year ago, we posted a photo of two dragons at the south end, along Norton Street, in Maybe a mural, part 32: critters glued on. Along the wall on the Elm Street side, though, is another (maybe) mural, fit perfectly underneath the lamp above it:

It's a collage of “quotations” from famous artists’ work. I took the photo on May 14th.

You can see more of the art at this gallery-along-the-street on the TucsonArt.info website in the page 2350 Elm Street.

Joe Pagac at Bookmans, August 2012

Since Joe Pagac stopped re-painting the east wall of the Rialto Theatre a while back (you can see his last — and permanent? — mural in our March 7th, 2013 post), I've still spotted new work of his from time to time on the east wall of the Bookmans store at 1930 E. Grant. (But I haven't stopped by for a while.)

Let's go back to the archives for a photo from August 15, 2012. It's a happy family playing music, games, and reading a book (all things, coincidentally, you can get at Bookmans) in a park somewhere with downtown Tucson behind:

More from 103 S. Calle de Jardin

On February 17, 2010, we showed the mural-covered home at 103 S. Calle de Jardin. Last month, I came back on April 25th for a close-up of the mailbox at the south end of that wall that I'd shot in 2010. While I was there, I noticed murals and tile near the home's driveway — as well as the artist's signature: 11-5-2002 Manny Garcia.

(Here's the photo of the mailbox — from the Tucson Mailbox Art blog.)

Sabor Tropical

These delicious murals are outside Sabor Tropical restaurant, 1929 East Grant:

I took the photos on August 15, 2012.