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!

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 37: Luis Mena

Luis Gustavo Mena has been painting murals in Tucson since the 1970s. Mena is one of eight artists who was chosen to paint in the first (but, I hope, not the last!) series of new downtown murals. You've seen his work in places like Broadway next to the Garces footbridge, in the new Parque de San Cosme near the fire station downtown, and my favorite (of the ones I've found so far, that is): Native Americans facing Columbus’ ships coming across the Atlantic.

Mena's mural covered a notoriously-tagged corner at the corner of North 6th & East Pennington. Back in 2008, it was one of the first murals we covered on this blog:

    In the Shadows of Downtown

Then the taggers took over, as you can see in this series from Google Street View. (Each link will open a new window or tab. When you close it, this page will still be here.)

• March 2011 (shows the whole mural; the blog entry above doesn't)
• July 2013
• April 2015

Fast-forward to 2016. On May 1st, he had outlines drawn. After the overview (you can click for a closer view, as always) is a closeup looking out from the center. The mural extends onto the curved ceiling:

Here are two photos from May 8th. The outlines are surrounded in blue, and there's a bit of yellow. (That yellow area will change later during the month; look ahead to June 4th.) The first shows the south-facing wall; the other shows the corner and east-facing wall:

There wasn't much change by May 14th:

Let's jump ahead five days to May 19th. The left end looks about the same, but Mena has been working on the right end. There's more golden color and more painted-out area at the right end:

He did a lot of work in the next 11 days! There's color everywhere on May 30th:

On June 4th, the mural is looking nearly finished to me. Mena hasn't needed scaffolding, and he hasn't put barriers around the mural (maybe because it's next to an active sidewalk), so it was hard for me to be sure. Notice the change on the left side of the mural just to the right of the post:

Past sunset on June 11th, he was putting finishing touches on the mural when I caught up with him there:

On June 19th, it looked to me like the mural had been finished:

We'll wrap up this series of eight new murals on Thursday.

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 36: Rachel, Tim and Alexandra

Alexandra Gjurasic, Tim Schirack and Rachel Slick worked together on a mural covering the west side of Café 54. It's the fifth of eight Downtown Murals Project works that we've covered here, from start to finish.

May 1st started the way most of the murals did: a blank wall. This one was off-white or tan (as you can see more clearly at the right side of photos farther below):

The artists didn't start right away. On May 8th I stopped by and saw the outline of mountains at the bottom of the “canvas” — with white behind:

By May 14th, things were happening.Besides the scaffolding, there was a hydraulic lift, art, and some barriers around it all:

On the morning of May 19th, I found the three artists hard at work (with a few kids, as well as passersby stopping to have a look and chat with the artists). I introduced myself and asked if I could take photos.

First, here's Rachel on the lift. She's raising the platform to work on the top right corner of the mural:

When I was there, Alexandra and Tim were painting closer to the ground:

And here's a lucky shot of Rachel painting the very top right corner, which sticks up from the rest of the roof. A plane was flying by in the distance:

On May 30th, the lift was gone and the barricades were scattered. (Don't miss the spider at the top right corner, where Rachel was painting as the plane flew behind.)

June 4th, the stuff was out of the way… and the mural shone:

Two more downtown murals to go! (After the last of the eight new downtown murals comes this blog's tenth-anniversary entry, which will be a doozy.)

(Downtown) Murals being made, part 35: Ignacio Garcia

You may have seen Ignacio Garcia's work at the Park Place Chalk Art Festival. (In each of these blog entries, scroll down and look for the drawings by Jose Ignacio Garcia: 2012, 2015 [look for the incredibly realistic 3-D scorpion], and 2016. I missed the 2014 Festival. And I don't think he was there in 2013.) He's also painted other murals inside and outside Tucson. But the new one on the west side of the Rialto Theatre — which you can see from 5th Avenue a bit north of Broadway — is his most prominent in Tucson, I think.

As some other artists’ did, Ignacio's design evolved after he introduced it in the April 26th meeting at the main library:

Ignacio's original design showed a two-story section of theater. But I wasn't sure which side of the “tower” would have the design, so on May 5th I walked around… and found nothing: no white walls, no scaffolding or hydraulic lifts, etc.

My next trip downtown, May 8th, where I drove and parked (a good place to park — with spaces usually available — is within a few blocks of the three-way intersection of 6th, Toole, and Alameda. There are usually spaces up Toole or along Alameda. From there, all the new murals, except Rock Martinez’, are an easy walk.) Ignacio's mural still didn't seem to be on any of the sides of the Rialto's tower.

May 19th, I caught Ignacio on his hydraulic lift stating to paint the jackalope (which, by the way, is a mythical beast: half jackrabbit, half antelope):

The muralists aimed to finish by May 30th, so I walked to 5th & Broadway to see:

Still a bit more touchup on June 4th:

June 10th, the mural had been signed:

Ignacio replaced the girl riding the jackalope with broadcaster Bill Walton, as you can see in the photo from the original presentation on April 26th:

Sorry for the poor quality. I've emailed Ignacio to ask if he has a better version.

Three more murals to go!

Update: BG Boyd Photo shared this aerial view: