During 2023, I found a couple of Joe Pagac murals downtown, which had been there for years, with graffiti tags. They're two of my favorites by Joe. It used to be that taggers would respect murals… but I guess some people these days don't care if they selfishly trash something other people enjoy. I listed both mural’s location (shown at the end of this post) as the fake address “131 East Toole Avenue.” Actually, the murals are a bit northwest and southeast on either side of that point.
191 East Toole
On February 17, I saw Joe's unique mural showing homeless people he had recruited as models to swim underwater. Some of the paint was falling off the wall — probably a base coating Joe had painted on the wall before adding the mural. But the long tag was the most heartbreaking:
If you walk to the end of the little stub of 7th Avenue off of Toole Avenue, near Stone, Joe painted a mural on the side of Borderlands Brewing along the railroad tracks. There are lots of photos in Joe Pagac's Borderlands Brewing mural, posted April 10, 2015. Sometime not too long ago, someone decided to show how much he loved the IRA by ruining Joe's masterpiece. I'll start with one original closeup, then tagged versions of the same place and two other places:
Twenty years after Eleanor Kohloss painted a mural on a Tucson Water site — a water well, maybe? — she repainted it.
I found an old photo on Bing Maps Streetside View. (It looks like Google's Street View photo, from March 2022, was taken after Eleanor repainted the mural.)
I can't see how to embed the Bing photo within this web page, so here's a link:
If you come across a work of art for the first time, it's not always obvious whether the artist will keep adding or changing it. That's what happened with this mural on John Henry's Bar downtown on April 29, 2023. I saw the mural with a lift parked in front, so I guessed there was more to do. Here's what I saw:
April 29, 2023
No need to use your phone on that QR code… I've done it for you. It's a link to the Wikipedia page John Henry (folklore).
The Arizona Daily Star article New bar named for railroad folk hero set to open in downtown Tucson this fall — published Aug 2, 2019 and Updated Dec 22, 2023 — says that the owner wanted to hire Joe Pagac to paint the mural. But I've heard it's by Michael Schwartz; the way John Henry is painted does look to me like Michael's work. (If you know better, please leave a comment below — you can stay anonymous if you'd like — or use the contact form along the right column of this page.)
A month later, I came back.
May 29, 2023
When I compare the photos from both dates side by side, I can't see a difference. (If you can, please leave a comment or use the contact form.)
Happy New Year! Here's news for you about this blog. David Aber and I have been posting here twice a week — Tuesdays and Fridays. But we have so many murals on our to-do list that we'll start posting three times a week — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — until we work down the backlog (??).
On December 12, 2023, in Volcano, David Aber posted a photo of Joe Pagac's volcano mural on the northeast corner of 6th Street and 6th Avenue. I had taken photos on May 12, 2023, while Joe was painting… but I forgot to update our to-do list of murals, so David didn't know about my photos. After I saw David's post, I decided to stop by again and take a few close-up photos. So this is another post about the same mural.
May 12, 2013
Here's Joe painting. He told me that scaffolding is so expensive to rent that he decided to buy his own. His car — I believe that's a shark — is parked next to the scaffolding. In the vertical photo below, check out the poster he hangs at the top of the scaffolding.
December 16, 2023
A few days after David posted his photo of the mural, I was downtown in the middle of a day of mural-hunting. (I was trying to shorten our long list of murals to photograph.) As I drove by the corner of 6th and 6th, I decided to take photos here with my point-and-shoot camera that has a 40x optical zoom lens; it let me get detailed shots from the fence along 6th Avenue, quite a distance from the mural. I could even zoom in on Joe's signature at the bottom right corner.
I'm glad to tell you that last year's Rock the Spot mural painting celebration downtown wasn't the last. November 30 to December 3, artists from around the country repainted most of the murals around this parking lot.
The parking lot stretches between Congress Street on the south end to Pennington Street on the north end. There's also a narrow space that runs between the middle of the east side of the parking lot to Scott Avenue. (If you'd like to see a map, look for 61 E Congress St Parking on this Google Map.) I started photographing at the southwest corner, close to Congress. Then I walked clockwise, including a narrow “notch” between the parking lot to Scott Avenue and back. That is:
Along the west wall
Walked along Pennington (the north side)… there are no murals here
Halfway along the east side
Clockwise around the “notch” between the parking lot to Scott Avenue and back
Along the rest of the east wall to Congress Street.
I also took close-ups of some murals. I include the close-ups after the overall photo. A few murals were here before this year's (2023) Rock the Spot; I've labeled them.
I haven't edited these photos to straighten, crop to only the mural, etc. There are just too many!
Update (December 2, 2024): There are two new murals by now. I took another walk around on November 24. The photos are here: Rock the Spot 2023: All around again.
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Jerry Peek's images are public-domain. For non-profit use, he'd appreciate a mention of his name and JerryPeek.com. For profit, please ask first from the contact form above; give the title of the blog entry, which image, and what you'd like to do.
For full-size versions of these shrunken photos — for instance, to print in a magazine — Jerry has them.
(Jerry is a volunteer who loves to show you murals, and your kindness will help him go on.) Thanks for reading!
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