Yerberia San Miguel

Herbal medicine store on S. 12th Ave. Palms and tarot cards are also read here.

The mural shows the Archangel Michael defeating Satan in battle.

On the right of the photo, note the symbolism of the cupped hands holding several people seated at a table.  Note the all-seeing eye of God, which also appears on the back of your one dollar bills.

Photographed on Feb. 6, 2019.

 Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

More mural photos in the AZ Daily Star

From time to time, the Arizona Daily Star runs an article with photos of murals. They ran another this week:

A look at some of Tucson's many beautiful murals

A lot of the murals are on this blog, but some aren't. (I don't need to tell you that Tucson has a lot of murals!)

A's Barber Shop

902 N. Grande Ave. in Barrio Hollywood.  Viewed from W. Ontario St.  Photographed on Dec. 11, 2018.

Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

(Not) Mural Lovers, part 5: Howsabout movin' that junk?

OK, to be fair: I was downtown first thing on a Saturday morning (July 27, 2018). Maybe the planter was in front of the mural to accommodate a crowd the night before. But (what looked like) an air conditioner? Grumble, grumble. (Maybe I'd been out too late the night before. :) And, when I stopped by last week, things looked back to normal.

Owwwwry Park

August 22, 2018, I stopped by to see if the long mosaic mural at Oury Park has been repaired. There wasn't much sign of that: just the owww of missing tiles. (The swimming pool re-opened this year after being closed by budget cuts. KOLD 13 has the story: Pool at Oury Park to reopen after nine years.)

The mural was still pretty spectacular unless you stood up close. Here are earlier blog entries showing it in better shape:

1. The Amazing, Fantastical, Beautiful Oury Park Mural
2. The rise and fall of Oury Park's murals

I'll include a description of the photos, left to right. I took it from the Waymarking page The Oury Park mural - Tucson, AZ. Since it's called the Artist Statement and the Description, I'll hope that copying it here isn't a problem. The artists' website isn't working.) Let's start with a photo of the mural from across the playing field in front of it.

(As always, you can click for a larger view — in this case, a much larger view: It's a big mural! Also as always, if you want a full-size copy of any individual photos below, write me through the Contact Us form at the right edge. The photos are all in the public domain, though we appreciate credit.)

I'll try to include each part of the description underneath the photo it describes. They won't always fit neatly, so you may have to do some scrolling. Here goes:

Artist Statement: The murals are a reflection on the vital elements that helped shape Barrio Anita's past and future. The murals pay homage to the family members, leaders, and artists who nurture the people of Anita. These figures are intertwined with presentations of the water that once flowed through the neighborhood and which brought together a diverse population.

Description: The Barrio Anita Mural Project combines photography, mosaic and painted murals, metal features, and words into a comprehensive community art project expressing the past, present, and future of Barrio Anita, one of Tucson’s oldest neighborhoods with a population reflecting Tucson’s heritage including Native-American, Mexican-American, Chinese-American, African-American and Anglo-American residents.

The mural measures 14’ x 390’ and viewing from the left side moving to the right the mural shows the following:

The Woman of the River has lifeblood and energy running out of her vessel, themes and colors that continue through the rest of the piece. She is covered in flowers, and she feeds spiritual energy to the community. Discussions during early meetings with the Anita community inspired this figure from tales told of the neighborhood. The artists wanted to take these stories and imbed them in the history of the neighborhood. The water and blood that flow through the piece are the synergy that weaves the entire piece together, giving it symmetry. The model for this particular figure was the granddaughter of one of the Orie Tigers baseball league.

(Above is a closeup of the clothing of the Woman of the River.)

Rio Santa Cruz. This river was once a part of the neighborhood prior to the construction of Interstate 10. Water played an important role in the daily lives of the people of this community. There was once an irrigation ditch that ran through and under some of the homes here, and people from the neighborhood used to swim in it to cool off.

Dr. Laura Banks. Banks grew up in the neighborhood during the mid 20th century. At the time there was a greater African American population in Anita. She had to drop out of high school at one point but managed to go back and finish and she then continued on to the University of Arizona. She received a degree in education and then worked at Davis School. In 1980, she was selected as the first African American Assistant Superintendent in TUSD and retired from that position in 1982. Dr. Banks was also a prominent civil-rights leader in Tucson. Today there is a Tucson middle school named after her.

Davis School. This image These images show shows the students of the past and present running in front of the historic building.

Mr. Alfredo Valenzuela. “Mr. V” taught mariachi band courses at Davis School for over 25 years and still continues despite his retirement. He has inspired hundreds of student and professional musicians. His students carried the mariachi tradition throughout the community, and this is visually represented with the lifeblood pouring through his guitar, where it gains energy and continues through the mural.

The Heart and Hands. This central image in the mural is the visual representation of the community. The hands are supporting a glass heart, again adding to the overall symmetry of the piece. The blood and water that run through the piece converge on the heart, the community, as an essential part of the circulation of Barrio Anita.

Oury Park (now David Herrera & Ramon Quiroz Park). This image features the Rosas, the neighborhood’s women’s softball team, on the left, and the Tigers, the men’s baseball league, with David Herrera as the central figure. Herrera served as director of the Recreation Center in Barrio Anita and played an essential role in getting the neighborhood involved in sports and community outreach. Alisa Cortez sits on his shoulder, representing the current rec center students.

Frank Soto and his mother. The mural closes with this pair. The Sotos’ Apache heritage reminds the viewer that this area was once Apache land. Soto’s mother holds the same vessel seen in the beginning of the mural with the lifeblood and spirit of the neighborhood flowing into it. This representation not only seals the symmetry of the mural, it also serves as a reminder of her role as a medicine woman in the barrio.

The Waymarking page The Oury Park mural - Tucson, AZ ends with:

• Artist: William Wilson & Joshua Sarantitus of Hozhographos Studios
• Date: 2005
• Media: Ceramic and glass tile, cast concrete, ecrete, steel and paint

Dent Busters

Auto Body Shop on North Stone Ave. Painted in 2018 and photographed on Jan. 30, 2019. The muralist was Clint Tzu of Old Pueblo Signs.

Click on the photo for a larger and sharper image.

Update (March 15, 2022): There's another mural along the back wall of their parking lot.

Little mural painted for Patricia

As I was wandering through the Lost Barrio (a commercial area on a dead-end part of Park Avenue south of Broadway) on August 22, 2018, I spotted this little mural on a wall by the entrance to Tooley's Cafe. It seemed to have been painted around with new wall paint, as if it had been there for a while.

The caption was a bit faded out; I darkened it. It says “Painted for Patricia / In the year Two Thousand Ten / Francisco”

But who is Francisco? The artist's last name(s) seem to have been painted over. I remember a mural on South Meyer Avenue in the same style. It has a scroll signed “Francisco / 1990”. You can see it at the bottom of the May 31,2009 entry (just by chance, exactly ten years ago!) Marvelous Meyer. If you know whether they're the same artist, or what the artist's name is, please leave a comment below. (You can remain anonymous.)

Update (June 20, 2019): Thenks to David Aber for tracking down the artist. It's Francisco Franklin, a Tucson artist for 50 years. He sells other artwork, too; he's represented by Jane Hamilton Fine Art. His page on her website is janehamiltonfineart.com/franklin/.

Murals Being Made, Part 50: Davis Elementary main entrrance

I guess it's a good thing to have too much of a good thing — if it's murals, anyway. David Aber and I are swimming in a sea of (mostly, I think) acrylic paint these days. I've been going back to my photos from the past year or so, cross-checking to try to be sure I've posted everything.

On May 12, 2018, I stopped by mural-covered Davis Bilingual Elementary school to snap photos of Luis Gustavo Mena painting a doors at the school's main (south) entrance. He wasn't finished at the time I got there; I just noticed this as I was going through the photos.

I went back to the school for permission on May 15th (2019). The person I spoke with said that Mena (as he calls himself) is well-loved and has done a lot for the school. She pointed me toward his cafeteria mural and let me wander the school to find all the murals by students. I'll include all of those photos in a later blog entry (I promise :).

Let's start with the photo I took a year ago:

Next, the finished mural, followed by a closeup of Dolores Huerta:

The colored handprints are by students.

Kon Tiki

Yes, that Kon Tiki restaurant. When I met Chris Andrews to get copies of his mural photos for this blog, I realized how many murals he's painted in this town.

You'll be seeing more of them from time to time on this blog in the next few months. Thanks, Chris.

(Not) Mural Lovers, part 4: tagged and re-tagged

In 2012, two panels of murals were erected along Toole Avenue, along the edge of the parking lot, next to the sidewalk, northwest of the building at 191 East Toole. They've gotten new murals a number of times over these seven years; if you'd like to see them, click on the following link to go to the section Northwest of 191 East Toole; it's part of this blog's page Layers of murals: histories of a few walls.

It was probably in September, 2015, that the murals were repainted for the last time. (You can see the original versions in the last two links in the list above.) Then — probably in the first half of 2018 — a tagger trashed the murals. Most had just a single tag, but one was completely trashed:

The murals stayed tagged for almost a year. But sometime around mid-May of 2019, the murals were cleaned up, the tags mostly erased or painted over. I came back as soon as I could to take photos… but the murals had been tagged again!

I decided to spend a few hours this past Sunday with my favorite free photo editor, GIMP, making copies of the mural with the tags edited out. I didn't get every bit of the damage, but it was satisfying enough!

So here are two photos of each of the ten panels, from left (the northwest end) to right (closest to the building at 191 Toole). The first photo shows the repaired and re-tagged mural on May 17, 2019. Next is my edited version. I'll wrap up with a photo of the fun sign to the right side of the panels. It hasn't been re-tagged (yet).

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For some reason, this first panel wasn't re-tagged:

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Rock replaces Rock

Back on April 7, 2015, we posted Rock Martinez at 6th & Toole: a video of Rock "CyFi" Martinez painting a mural and a photo of the partly-finished mural. Well, I think it was only partly finished… it stayed there, with no changes (as far as I could tell) until I came back on May 5, 2018, to find:

The left half of the wall had been replaced with a mural featuring Tucson's El Tiradito shrine.

I came back on July 27th and got a much better closeup:

You can see more photos of this busy wall over time on the section called 197 East Toole of the page Layers of murals: histories of a few walls.

Art makers and lovers, please keep us all in touch

A big part of why I do this stuff is that I love helping people find Tucson art. I post photos of murals, and I have a blog about quirky mailboxes, Tucson Mailbox Art. You might be one of 350 followers of @TucsonArt on Twitter, which retweets anouncements of new entries on the murals and mailbox blogs — as well as sending announcements of art evenrs from artists I've met who have mailing lists or Twitter feeds. (Murals blog co-editor David Aber contributes lots of murals and some amazing mailboxes too. Where does he find them??)

If you love art — either to make it or just look at it — I'd be glad to spread the word about things you make or find. Email a photo (larger, with more pixels worth of detail, is better) announcement flier, etc., to or use the "Contact Us" form in the right oolumn of any page. I'll do my best!

Drunken Chicken

From time to time, we'll show a mural or two from Cactus Catz. She has both a blog and an Instagram feed. The photos here are from around the front door of The Drunken Chicken restaurant, on her Instagram post.

Thank you, Mary.