End-to-end Plush art, 2013 and before

It was a year ago — Christmas Day, 2013 — that I went out for a bike ride to burn off my figgy pudding (or, more likely, tamales :). I rolled by the Plush parking lot and saw a lot of new art. The photos start at the northeast end and finish at the southwest:

For a look at the whole parking lot — though not the same murals you see above — here's a Google Street View showing the view from the east end. The view is currently from June 2013. (For earlier views from the same spot, click on "Street View - June 2013" at the upper-left and use the slider that appears. The 2008 view shows the lot before it was painted!) To see a map, click on "Back to map" at the lower-left corner.

Joe just now

Last week we posted a video of a Joe Pagac mural in progress on the side of the Rialto Theatre. Today, about an hour ago, I walked by the Rialto and saw a new mural:

Sometime this year, a new downspout was run over the top of the little man with a sign (which often changed) at the right edge of the mural. (At least they angled the pipe around the main mural space!)

Flashback: 100 Congress Street, 1974

You Tucsonans who've been here since 1974 — or were visiting back then — might have seen some murals on Congress that were since hidden. Mark Fleming found them again on November 9th of this year. He wrote:

A mural from 1974 exposed during demolition of 100 E Congress store. Perhaps back then the clientele was fraternity or sorority? The Dylan piece was in a derelict store next door. These two decrepit stores seem to have defied the latest renewal efforts. They are in bad shape. 100 E Congress no roof and no south wall.

I think Mark got the date from a line in the next-to-last photo below: John Iungerich 1974 / PO? 443 Coolidge AZ 8.....

Here are the photos as Mark sent them, without my usual nitpicky editing:

If you have any other photos of long-gone Tucson murals, please let me know!

Time-lapse video of muralist Joe Pagac

Heather Hoch of Tucson Weekly has posted a time-lapse video of Tucson muralist Joe Pagac painting over two murals and making two new ones:



The story is titled Watch a Time Lapse Video of Joe Pagac Painting a Mural at Rialto Theatre. (You can click there to see the story and a larger video.)

Spotted at Grande & Congress

In the first half of September, Mark Fleming sent this photo (no date in the camera file) of a “Free Rosy” paste-up on a hardware store:

Google Maps Street View shows the store on the southeast corner, a bit east of Grande.

Thanks for helping this blog alive, Mark, until I can get back out on my bicycle! I hope that'll be a couple of weeks from now.

Update (September 13, 2022): Today's post Parade of murals on 910 West Congress has photos of this wall between October 2013 and April 2022.

Update (May 13, 2024): There are much better photos of the next mural here — which was painted sometime before April 2022 — in today's post Congress mural parade 1 of 3: 910 W. Congress.

Finessing Frank's

Frank's Auto Refinishing has something you might not expect: wall-to-wall art. I caught the building at sunrise back in 2012.

Mark Fleming stopped by this year and sent photos in September. A lot is the same (though the sides look white instead of a warm color, but that might have been the sunrise)... there's also some new art and signage. Let's look. First, the east side from south to north:

See the differences? The first photo shows a new mural at the left side, some green tube lights around the column, and a bunch of fine print. In the third, Frank has added body shop at the top.

Next, the north side: first all of it, then close-ups from east to west:

The big change here is the gorgeous mural in the last photo. I don't think it was there two years ago!

Thanks for keeping us up to date, Mark.

Ex-BLX

When the BLX Skate Shop was at the corner of 7th and Toole, it kept its corner fun with a changing mural on the 7th Avenue side. Now BLX has moved to 426 E. 7th Street, just off 4th Avenue. And there's a new mural that hasn't changed for months. Unlike the earlier murals — for obvious reasons — this one doesn't say blocks:

Mark Fleming sent the photo in September.

Update (January 12, 2015): There's a mural at the new BLX location but the mural at the old location has been covered over with greenish paint. (I hope you can keep this straight! Art isn't always predictable...)

Street art online

If you can't get enough street art, here are three places online to satisfy your holiday hunger.

Banksy Revisited

Last month, as I was searching for art online, I found the daily blog called Banksy Revisited (named for the famous UK street artist Banksy). It's amazing! You could spend half a day looking at the art in each day's post:

Today's Banksy Revisited front page

To get a link in your mailbox each day, look for the “Subscribe to updates” box at the right side.

Google Street Art

This summer, I ran across an article on the Guardian (a newspaper in the United Kingdom) about a new Google site with thousands of photos of street art:

Google launches online street art gallery to bring global graffiti to anyone

The art is fantastic. So far, most of it is from Paris, London, New York, Manila, and Lisbon. Maybe we can get Google to bring their cameras to Tucson?!

Fatcap

This website lists street art worldwide. Here's the Tucson page:

Fatcap Tucson page

Art(y) school: Davis Bilingual

Here's our third page of murals from this art-filled school. (The first two were Arte para y por los estudiantes and Más de Davis Bilingual School.)

Let's start with a mural on the side of the school:

Next, murals on the left and right sides of a door:

Murals wrapping around a building (maybe the same building as above?). The third through fifth shots show close-ups of the second. In the second and third photos, you can see that the mural includes a picture of itself:

The last photo is signed with David Tineo 10/10/84 and the names of students who worked with him.

I don't know how I missed all of this during my two visits to Davis Bilingual! Thank you, Mark Fleming.

Thanksgiving feast: Sue's Fish & Chips

Sue's Fish & Chips is a South Tucson tradition. What better to show on Thanksgiving Day than food murals?

There are photos of an earlier mural version in our February 2, 2010 entry.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, thanks to Mark Fleming for these photos. He sent them in September.

Update from 2017: There's also a mural behind the store.

Right to Dream Center Murals

I try to keep up with all that the Tucson Arts Brigade does to bring people together and make great art. (If you haven't heard of TAB, check out their website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.) Last week I read their blog post about the new Safe Park Dream Center murals at Central City Assembly:

Right To Dream Center Murals: Moving towards the Sun

Thanks to TAB and all the people who volunteer with them to make Tucson a more beautiful place (in many ways!).

A vase of flowers and a cat...

...are what I spotted on front of the Cat Hospital of Tucson a year ago, November 25, 2013:

A year ago at the (former) IST

A while back, we published a couple of photos of the International School of Tucson at tne end of 2010. Last year, I rolled by on 1st Avenue and noticed a bunch of multicolored walls — but no school. It turns out the school had moved to 1701 East Seneca. (Here's the IST website.) I snapped a few photos, anyway.

This is the old convenience-store front at 711 Lester St. You can see the 2011 mural in the background:

And their other building in the same area, at 1730 N. 1st Avenue:

I was there on November 28, 2013.

Way out west (or east?)

We don't have many murals from the far east side of town — partly because I almost never go that way on my bicycle. Thanks to David Aber, though, here's a mural on the side of Tucson Pool & Spa:

He wrote: “The mural is old and faded. I had to enhance the photo to bring out as many details as possible.” And there are lots of details! An army of critters, from a spider and a scorpion on up, are looking on jealously — or climbing in! — to join the cowboy in the tank (or is it a spa?):

Great catch, Dave.

Update (March 26, 2021): I found an aerial view from BG Boyd Photography, who sent me a larger version:

Thank you, BG!

Ash Alley (Tucson's Greenwich Village) close-ups

Mark Fleming just pointed out an article on page 47 of the November Zócalo magazine titled Ash Alley: Tucson's Greenwich Village by Steve Renzi.

After World War II, the article says, Tucson grew. New artists and craftspeople needed a place. The area around one-block Ash Alley came to include studios and an outdoor gallery. It even had its own newspaper, the Ash Alley Bugle. Two of the first newcomers to Ash Alley — and the last to leave, in 1977 — were Jack and Sally Petty. Outside Petty's Studio Gallery was a mural that included three smiling frogs.

On December 29, 2008, Randy posted a photo of the mural — but only a rough location. Five years later — January 21, 2014 — I posted another photo with the exact location. Along with this week's email about the Zócalo article, Mark sent along five photos of his own. The date stored along with the images says that he took them on November 9th.

First, the whole mural (what's left of it). Then, close-ups from left to right:

(I edited the second photo to lighten the shadow at top and darken the rest.) Many thanks, Mark!