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.

Our first indoor business mural

[Note from Jerry: Since Randy Garsee started this blog more than ten years ago, we've had a policy that only murals visible to the public without charge — for instance, at a school — would be shown here. But there are so many wonderful murals inside places like restaurants, where you don't have to buy anything (though the owners might appreciate it), that David and I decided to go ahead with the idea. We'll try to add a reminder every time to do things like checking in at the school office. And if you've seen indoor business murals, please feel free to send us photo(s) — after you check with the folks in charge, of course.

Enough of that! On to the yummy mural, and to David…]

On Oct. 4, 2017 I found a nice mural by Paul Lira inside Sue's Fish and Chips.  Sue's opened in 1952 and is still in business after 65 years.

We want photographers to be welcome at Sue's and other businesses, so:  Be courteous and considerate.  Always ask for permission before taking interior photos.  Don't take photos during busy hours and don't disturb any customers.

Due to the small size of Sue's dining area I was only able to photograph about 2/3 of the mural.

Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

Here's a link to a nice article about Sue's:  Still Thriving 

Here are links to previous murals at Sue's: Feb. 03, 2010
                                                                Nov. 27, 2014
                                                                April 28, 2017

Tineo on Fresno

Famous Tucson muralist David Tineo told me once that he doesn't know where all of his many murals are. I found this one when I pulled off Silverbell and parked along Fresno Street. I looked out my car window and…

This minor miracle happened almost a year ago: October 22, 2016.

Here's the view from the other end (the "teardrops" are sunlight reflections through the lens):

Next, some closeups. The left end:

Two details from the center:

The right end — left side to ceiling to right side (at the top-right corner of the right side is Jesús C.):

Note: Old blog photos won't magnify

Update (October 19, 2017): The problem I describe below seems to have gone away. (Maybe Google noticed the problem after we tried to open those photos and fixed it on their end?) I'll keep an eye on it.

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This past weekend, David Aber noticed something while he was updating the mural map. (If you haven't used the map, it's a great resource — thanks to him!)

On old blog posts — from around 2007, and for at least a couple of years after — when you click on an image to get a larger view, you'll get a dark image but no large photo. (If you'd like to see this, for some reason, one of the many entries with this problem is Virgin Videos?.)

As a long-time-ago Web programmer, I can see that the fix is to change each /s1600-h/ in the page's hidden code to say /s1600/. (Google must have changed this without fixing old pages, sigh.) I'll get to the (hundreds?) of them as soon as I can.

Until then, you'll need to look at the small version of the images. Sorry about that.

AZPM's Emmy is for DeGrazia mural story

Congratulations to Arizona Public Media on their Emmy award! It's for their eight-minute story Restoring DeGrazia, which was Arizona Illustrated episode 407. The description says, in part:

A mysterious mural in a Tucson backyard turns out to be the largest Ted DeGrazia mural still in existence. It was originally painted by the artist in 1948 or 1949 and gives us a glimpse into DeGrazia’s mind before his fame and fortune.

Here's the whole video. If you'd like to skip to the mural story without the intro, scroll the player to 1:58…



Update (October 20, 2017): An article about the mural is in the October 2016 issue of Zócalo Magazine.

Cross out L. W. Cross (and something new Oct. 13)

You've heard the stories of Friday the 13th being unlucky, yes? Two days ago, on October 13, David Aber posted photos from a mural on the side of L. W. Cross Middle School. Or so he thought.

(This isn't important to read, but you might have fun with a story of two editors on an 11-year-old blog.)

After the photos went online, he realized that the mural was actually on the school next door: Harelson Elementary, at 826 W. Chapala Drive. On top of that, I'd included photos of the same mural in an blog entry I made four years ago, Mural Heaven at Harelson. He called me today (the 15th) to talk it over.

After ten years on this blog, with many hundreds of entries, it's not easy to keep all of it straight. Still, after ten years, I've gotten pretty good at twiddling things to (mostly) make it all work out.

Just by chance, when Dave called, I was editing new photos of murals I'd posted on the 6th. I'd meant to post the new photos on the 13th, but he posted first. So I'm moving his entry from the 13th to appear today — with this note at the top. (You can see his entry below.) And I've also posted the just-edited photos so they appear as if they went online on the 13th. If I'm lucky, even the links to his post on the 13th should take people to this revised version. I hope.

And I'm sure we'll both be watching six months from now: Friday, April 13, 2018. :-)

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L. W. Cross Middle School

The L. W. Cross Middle School is in the Amphitheater Public School District and is located near Tohono Chul Park.  The mural is comprised of 231 tiles made by the school's Tile Club.

Photographed on Aug. 2, 2017.
Click on either photo for larger and sharper images.

More of Kristin's gift

A week ago, we published Artistic gift to neighbors and passersby — a series of murals that a Tucsonan named Kristin commissioned along one side of her home. She invited me to stop by and see the murals myself. On October 8th, I did.

Here's the view south from Kennedy Street along Rubio Alley (a.k.a. Rubio Avenue):

I walked along the alley and found more murals. They're facing the alley, so I'm pretty sure they aren't private. From the back (south), looking toward the front side at Kennedy Street:

Don't miss the statuette in the agave patch at the foot of the above mural:

Here's the east side of that shed:

I walked back up the alley and back toward my car, which was parked along Kennedy. On the west side wall of her home was another small mural:

Thanks again, Kristin, for your artistic gift to neighbors and passersby!

Federal law protects murals

Thanks to the Tucson Arts Brigade for tweeting this Honolulu Star-Advertiser news article (via Twitter) about VARA, the Visual Artists Rights Act:

Two disputes over isle murals show potential legal and PR pitfalls

I haven't read any more. But if you're a muralist or know one, you might want to check into this yourself and/or spread the word.

Artistic gift to neighbors and passersby

A block west of the Downtown Clifton Hotel mural, owners of a home have commissioned three murals on the home's side facing the alley. (That's Rubio Alley, which Google Maps calls Rubio Avenue.) Kristin has written us twice: once with the first two photos below, then with the third photo.

Here's what she wrote in the two messages:

We had these murals painted on the side of our house facing Rubio alley in Barrio Viejo.

The image of the virgin was painted by our very good long time friend Raechel Running. She is a photographer, writer, illustrator, and visual artist who hails from Flagstaff and now resides in Barrio Viejo in Tucson just around the corner from us! Her works include covering the greater southwest and the US/Mexico borderlands.

The second mural is a portrait of Artist and poet Jim Harrison that we commissioned just after his death in April 2016. It was created by a great long time friend from Flagstaff, Jaybyrd Willison. Jaybyrd has a colorful history (literally) painting portraits in oil, being an outlaw biker and no gooder-turned-philosophical-hermit and writer.

…

We have added to our collection as well since I emailed you last. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. We continue to commission new work and will hopefully have another in progress soon. I have attached one of the murals with the artist Danny Martin standing next to it.

Google Street View shows more art on the front of their home (facing Kennedy). Fabulous!

Thanks very much, Kristin. I'm looking forward to stopping by and seeing the next mural.

Update (October 15, 2017): There are four more murals to see: More of Kristin's gift.