Howdy from Tuxon

Joe Pagac wrote online on July 3rd that he got help from Arielle Pagac-Alelunas, Lena Alelunas, and Brett Wolgemuth to finish this mural in time for the opening of The Tuxon hotel. I snapped the photo on July 7th.

Bookstore Southwest

Almost ten years ago, I showed a photo of the mural on Bookstore Southwest Adult Shop as part of the entry Five horses on Speedway. The wraparound murals deserve a closer look:

I stopped by on May 10th.

Butterfly Lady

By Sawaki and Wagon Burner Arts.  Photographed on Aug. 30, 2020.

The first photo below had to be taken at an angle due to the tight space and a chain-link fence.  The second photo is the result of perspective correction and cropping.

Click on either photo for larger and sharper images.

197 East Toole all repainted (Murals being made, part 56)

The mural-covered building at the corner of Toole Avenue, 6th Avenue, and Alameda keeps changing and changing. That's especially true of the east side wall along 6th. (Here's a list of murals on that wall.)

Usually one or two murals are replaced at a time. This past summer, though, every mural was repainted or finished. (The muralists kept the image of Che Guevara from one of the murals and painted a new background around it.) Let's start with the latest murals (I think!) before the mass repainting, from left (January 2020) to right (December 2018):

I never saw the third mural in the first photo, of migrants, finished.

At the end of July, I noticed the murals being repainted. I came back on August 3rd:

Here's the fourth of eight murals at sunrise on August 4th:

Next, a screen grab from the video Desert Delirium - The Surreal Murals of Tucson, AZ, by Rob Allen. He recorded it on August 9th. The mural at the far end is being finished:

On August 15, the blue square had a sort of wildcat (a bit different from the U of A's Wildcat):

September 13th, I came back. The scaffolding was gone. There was a white square near the right end… maybe another mural is coming? Unfortunately, a car was parked in front. But I worked around it and took photos of everything except the white square:

The Black Lives Matter mural below is by Nolan Patterson (@basik__art on Instagram):

This page from Corazones Unidos at Raices Taller 222 Gallery & Workshop will probably disappear when the exhibition ends: https://www.raicestaller222.com/copy-of-javier-valenzuela. So use the artist names:

Studio ONE Painted during the time of coronavirus, this mural was completed by our good friends, compadres, and comadres down the street at 197 E Toole Ave in Tucson: Studio ONE – A Space for Art and Activism. Participating Artists Paco Velez Anzueto, David Contreras, Chris Miller, Ses One, Crystal Triste, and assisted by Akasia Oberly and Vier Oner

"Safe Shift"

Painted by Sal Sawaki, Sketch 71/Rickey A Bush & James.  Sponsored by Wagon Burner Arts at 2801 E. Grant Rd. and viewed from N. Treat Ave.

Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.

Photographed on Aug. 6, 2020.

Update from Jerry Peek (February 4, 2024): Today I was going through some photos I'd taken for this blog to see if I'd missed any murals. I found photos of the day Sketch (Rickey Bush) took me to see this mural, May 29, 2023. The mural is on the west side of the Greater Tucson Fire Foundation's shop called Safe Shift Estate Resale, which helps to support GTFF's endowment. Among other things on the front door were “Taking care of those who take care of us”. The website TucsonFireFoundation.org has two sentences I'll repeat here: “In 2019, the number of firefighters who took their own life was greater than the number killed fighting fires. We’re here to provide our firefighters and their families with the physical and mental health support they need.” The GTFF's endowment is explained at https://www.tucsonfirefoundation.org/endowment/.

Two closeups I took of the mural:

The woman in the second closeup is Patty Vallance. A quick web search showed that she volunteered for a number of causes. Among other things, she helped to create the Fire Foundation. She died suddenly at age 62 on June 3, 2020 — two months before David Aber took the first three photos here. The Arizona Daily Star article Patty Vallance, businesswoman, author, was key supporter of Tucson Fire Foundation tells more.

Three landscapes in one mural

A high plains landscape, a fantastic dragon, and a coastline, all in this mural. I found it on May 29th.

KAVA

Found at 'The Kava Bar' and photographed on Aug. 30, 2020.   Kava is a root from the South Pacific that is ground and mixed with water. It makes a muscle-relaxing, antidepressant drink.  Its taste has been compared to a "bitter mud puddle".

Artist Not Known

Click for a larger and sharper image.

Magnificent entrance and quirky mailbox

Yesterday on the Tucson Mailbox Art blog, we showed a mailbox with what looks to me like a mouse on top. Nearby it is the gorgeous entrance to the home:

I was there on May 29th.

Around the corner at MSA Annex

Last time we saw Black Lives Matter murals on the west side of the Mercado San Agustin Annex. Here's a mural from the east end of the north side:

The artist's name is Yu Yu Shiratori. She titled the mural “Stillness.” (Her Instagram is @yuyu_shiratori. You don't need an account to click and scroll through.) For further info from the Southern Arizona Japanese Cultural Coalition, read Stillness.

I was there on July 7th.

Goodbye Tucson Arts Brigade, TAB murals restored

A year or so ago, I saw a brief message from Executive Director Michael B. Schwartz of the Tucson Arts Brigade. Apparently TAB was shutting down, though I wasn't quite sure. I tried to find news online for a while but found nothing definite. Yesterday, David Aber found this post from Michael dated August 22, 2020:

What ever hapened to Tucson Arts Brigade?

I'm sorry to see TAB go. They did a lot of good.

In January 2016, Michael demanded that I remove all of the photos of TAB murals from this blog. (He later disputed that.) Although I believe he can't control photos of public art that aren't taken for profit (see yesterday's blog entry, Photographing public art: is it allowed?, for some perspective), I did what he asked. Now I've restored the photos. If you'd like to revisit those blog entries, here they are. (After you visit each page, you can click your "back" button to return here.)

• September 14, 2006: My First E-mailed Mural Pic!!!
• May 22, 2009: Ironic, isn't it?
• June 19, 2011: Barrio Centro mural unveiling
• March 14, 2012: 29th Street overpass and mural project
• September 16, 2012: TAB grand opening, overpass update
• September 29, 2012: Murals being made, part 9: TAB on Tucson Blvd.
• February 02, 2015: A treat on Treat… and more to come
• February 16, 2015: Murals being made, part 26: Jeane Cohen at CCA
• February 19, 2015: More from Central City Assembly
• August 03, 2015: Walkway treat: Treat Walkway

While I'm at it, here are blog entries about TAB that came later. The photos were never removed from these entries:

• Bronx Wash (Although the credits panel doesn't mention TAB, Michael Schwartz was listed as lead artist… and this is a group project): March 14, 2011, December 19, 2016, December 21, 2016, December 23, 2016, March 16, 2018, April 24, 2020
• February 02, 2015: A treat on Treat… and more to come
• August 03, 2015: Walkway treat: Treat Walkway
• Summer 2016: (Downtown) Murals being made, parts… 31: Niki Glen, 32: Issac Caruso, 33: Jessica Gonzales, 34: Rock Martinez, 35: Ignacio Garcia, 36: Rachel, Tim and Alexandra, 37: Luis Mena, 38: To-Ree-Nee Wolf Keiser
• March 15, 2019: "Sugar Hill"

Photographing public art: is it allowed?

David Aber found this really useful article. I can't guarantee that it's legally exactly correct. But it gives lots of examples that make sense. By the way, it's a Microsoft Word file… your browser may or may not be able to open it:

https://indyarts.org/docman/artist-services/85-blog-post-re-public-art-copyrights/file

(If you can't open Microsoft Word files and you're using a computer, you might want to get the excellent free package called LibreOffice; download that file and open it in LibreOffice. On a phone — Android, at least — there are a number of apps… if you don't have one, try searching for "Office". Finally, if you trust Google to see your documents, check out Google Docs, which is available on a number of platforms.)

BLM murals on MSA Annex (Murals being made, part 55)

Back on June 5th, I heard that Black Lives Matter murals were going to be painted at the Mercado San Agustin Annex that weekend. I got there on Saturday the 6th and found artists working:

I went back on July 7th to snap the finished murals. My first two photos had glare from the sun, so I took them again on September 13th:

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

Here's an article from AZ Weekend with more info: Murals with a message: Artists paint downtown in support of Black Lives Matter

Update (June 23, 2023): Today's post Morphing MSA murals shows what happened in the area around these murals between 2019 and 2023. One of these murals is gone; there's also a new one.

A monster and a rose

Empire Tattoo has a mural above the store entrance:

Here's a closeup:

I was there May 10th.

Teatime for the bugs

Sarah Herr emailed this photo on Sunday, September 20. The hidden data in the photo says she took it that morning. “Finding murals has been a good antidote for COVID gym closures,” she wrote.

What a fun mural! Thank you, Sarah.

TucsonLifestyle: Making It Matter

I just found this July 25 magazine article about Joe Pagac facilitating Black Lives Matter murals and muralists:

Making It Matter

Roy Metcalfe repainted

February 7, 2014, we published a photo of a faded mural on Roy Metcalfe Automotive. Sometime since then, it was repainted. I spotted it on May 10th while I was photographing the murals on the Chicago Bar next door (which, confusingly, had the same street address):

The artist who repainted it (but didn't do the previous mural) was Gabrielle Ames. As it turns out, she also painted the Chicago Bar murals next door.

"Rhythms of Nature"

The City of Tucson requires that 1% of the budget of a Capital Improvement Project be set aside for public art.  Thus, the East Broadway Road Improvement Project between Camino Seco and Houghton Rd. has included six public art installations.  They were created by Niki Glen Studios.  Niki calls them "Concrete Sculptures".  I call them murals.  Whether you agree, or not, I think you will find them interesting.

"The Bountiful Desert"

Desert Life

Sundial

Waterfall

Desert Stream

Not a mural, but interesting nonetheless.

Photographed on July 27 and Aug. 30, 2020.

Click on any photo for a slide show of larger and sharper images.

Video: KGUN9 interviews Joe Pagac and Ignacio Garcia

KGUN9 TV starts their story Growing mural scene earns Tucson national reputation with a interesting video interview with Tucson muralists Joe Pagac and Ignacio Garcia.

The rest of the article says some things I don't agree with. For instance, it says Tucson has “a dozen artists credited with nearly 60 murals throughout the city.” We easily have more than 100 artists, and this blog has around 1,500 murals (though not all of them still exist). It mentions the City of Tucson's mural map, which shows 25 of those murals… this blog's mural map shows many hundreds.

It's great to spread the word about Tucson murals! I wrote to KGUN9 and suggested they check this blog to find more murals and muralists.

Sahuaro H. S.

Sahuaro High School students painted this one.  I wasn't able to find their names.  Nor was I able to find a title for the mural.  Sahuaro High is located at 545 N. Camino Seco.  The mural can only be seen from E. Vicksburg St. and it was photographed on May 1, 2020.

Complete Mural

Left Half

Right Half

Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.

Your * Planet Next!!

David Aber spotted this amazing mural online and let me know. I'd been to Gospel Supplies, the store on Broadway… this mural turned out to be in the alley behind it. I stopped by on May 10th. What an obscure place for a great mural! Here are closeups, left to right:

Again, note that the mural isn't at the front of the address below (Gospel Supplies). It's in the alley behind: