Roskruge repainted

Roskruge Bilingual Magnet K-8 School is bordered by two streets: 6th Street and 2nd Avenue. A mural used to stretch along 2nd Avenue just north of 6th, but the 6th Avenue side had only plain brown mountains and a blue sky. In 2022, the 2nd Avenue side got an updated mural and the 6th Avenue side a new mural. In a minute, we'll take a detailed look along both streets. First, an overview…

Second Avenue overview

Here's the west side of 2nd Avenue just north of 6th Street, taken on November 27, 2022. It shows an updated mural painted recently by Alley Cat Murals:

Just a bit north of that corner on January 11, 2010, there was an earlier version of the same mural shown in our post Scholars on Second Avenue:

Back in 2010, we often didn't show complete murals on the blog — only parts of them. I found a photo of the entire mural, from the same corner, on Google Maps Street View in April 2015:



(A link to open that view in a new window is: https://goo.gl/maps/DZbEeCF4ed8qPASR8.)

We'll see close-up photos of both the new mural and the original one in a minute.

Sixth Street overview

As I mentioned, the 6th Street side used to have only simple sky and mountains — a continuation of the left side of the previous Street View photo. When I was there on November 27, 2022, the 6th Street side had been repainted:

Sixth Street close-ups

The mural starts at the west end, along 6th Street, and continues until the north end along 2nd Avenue. Let's see close-ups, starting at the west end, on November 27, 2022:

The first section

The second section

Detail of second section

The third section

Detail of the third section

Detail of the third section

The fourth section

Detail of the fourth section

The fifth section

Detail of the fifth section

…Continuing along Second Avenue…

Let's start at the corner of 6th Street (to the left) and 2nd Avenue (at the right):

From the fifth section into the sixth

The sixth section

Detail of the sixth section

Sixth-seventh sections, May 2013

The seventh section

Detail of the seventh section

The eighth section

Detail of the eighth section

Around the eighth section, May 2013

The ninth section
(as always, you can click for a larger view)

Around the ninth section, May 2013

Right (north) end of the ninth section, May 2013

The other side of the wall

We've been looking at the wall from the streets outside the campus. Inside the east wall around campus (on the west side of that wall), there's another mural. We showed it in our November 3, 2011 post What the scholars see.

Here are a complete photo from then and the middle of the mural from November 27, 2022. As far as I can tell, the mural hadn't been repainted (yet?):

Murals being made, even more (part 39, continued)

On October 3, 2016, I posted photos of a new mural on walls around a Tucson Electric Power substation. Here's one:

At the time I wrote that, the mural didn't seem finished. But I never went back to check (or to see another mural that another artist had painted at Valley of the Moon). Last week, a friend sent me photos of part of the TEP mural. Hers show the mural looking finished. I've mixed them into the original blog entry. Now the revised blog entry shows the progress:

Murals being made, part 39: TEP south of Cushing

Murals being made, part 39: TEP south of Cushing

Artist Sabrina Vincent (also known as Slov) sent email to tell me about a new mural of hers at Valley of the Moon. (I haven't had a chance to see it yet. Closer to Halloween, I hope?)

Slov also mentioned that Allison Miller, from the Desert Museum, was painting a mural that Allison had mentioned to me in July. (Back then, she sent me a photo of their new Stingray mural on Speedway. Allison wrote “The next mural will be on a TEP substation in the Menlo Park neighborhood (on Simpson, off of the I-10 Frontage Rd.); it’s theme is all about Pollinators!”) Then I saw a story from Tucson News Now: TEP, Desert Museum create giant 'paint-by-numbers' mural. Slov said Allison and crew would start Saturday and finiah Sunday: quick work! (Click on the photo in that story to see a view of the volunteers at work on Saturday.)

It was dumping rain by the time I got there yesterday. I decided to come back today. It's a big mural! Small parts look like they might not be quite finished (maybe because of that rainstorm?), but overall it's spectacularly big, wrapping around two walls of a TEP substation. Let's look, starting at the southwest corner (the end along Simpson), to the corner of the frontage road, to the north end farther up the frontage road.

Update (February 9, 2018): My guess that the mural wasn't quite finished when I took the 2016 photos was right. An artist friend walked by this week and snapped some photos that she sent me. I've added her 2018 photos between my original 2016 photos below. (I'm also guessing that the mural was finished shortly after I took my 2016 photos.) Let's start with the first five original photos from 2016:

(The white flower above, and a few other white spots along the mural, are what make me think that it's not… quite… finished.)

The first photo below, from 2016, is completely missing a pomegranate, a lot of the flower (toward the left-hand side) isn't finished, and the left tip of the butterfly's wing is blank. The second through fourth photos below, from 2018, show the same spot and then more detail:

Back to 2016:

Next, 2016 followed by 2018:

Back to 2016:

To find the mural, turn south from either Congress or Cushing Streets onto “Freeway”, the frontage road along the west side of I-10. The substation is just past the Riverpark Inn at the corner with Simpson Street.

Thanks, Slov, Allison, and crew!

Stingray on Speedway

Allison Miller, a muralist who also works at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, sent this photo of a new mural along the south side of Speedway where it (over-)crosses Highland Avenue:

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

Allison wrote:

In June, the Desert Museum (with the help of community volunteers) completed the attached stingray mural; it is located at the top of the Highland Underpass (off of Speedway Blvd, between Mountain & Cherry). It’s the first mural in a series of works that are designed to promote Sonoran Desert conservation awareness. The next mural will be on a TEP substation in the Menlo Park neighborhood (on Simpson, off of the I-10 Frontage Rd.); its theme is all about Pollinators! The Desert Museum is currently seeking volunteers who are interested in becoming involved: www.desertmuseum.org/volunteer.

What a gorgeous mural! Thanks, Allison. I'll be looking forward to the next one on the power substation.

Update (October 3, 2016): There's a series of photos of the mural in progress in the entry Murals being made, part 39: TEP south of Cushing.

The Thinkers un-Tagged

A twenty-year Tucson tradition is the mural called “The Thinkers.” It's just east of 4th Avenue on the south side of 6th Street. Randy showed it during 2009 in the entry Mural Montage: A Tucson Favorite.

In the last year or so, a tagger trashed the mural with huge graffiti garbage. Maybe the same criminal was the one who also tagged a great mural half a block farther west along 6th. Anyway, The Thinkers was one of my favorite Tucson murals… I was angry and heartbroken.

Then, this past weekend, Allison Miller posted to Facebook that the original artist, Eleanor Kohloss, had repaired the mural. And Eleanor replied:

I raced downtown the next day to get photos (partly with the hope that I'd get there before the same tagger came back to vandalize the same mural again). I made it.

First, the whole mural:

Next, three photos from left (the east end) to right (west). The middle photo is mostly the bus stop which was added — very unfortunately — since the mural was painted in 1996. (Wouldn't a simple bench have done the job? How about moving this artistic bus stop a couple of blocks farther along 6th Street?? Sigh.)

Although you've really gotta stand in front of this mural to appreciate it, here are a few parts that were easy to photograph. (The dog/people and their “thought bubbles” are mostly intertwined, so it's hard to snap just one part of the scene.) The first one is at the bottom of the left third:

This couple, thinking of each other, are above the bus stop roof:

And in the middle of the right half:

Update (August 21, 2016): Eleanor wrote on Facebook “I had lots of help from Allison Miller who besides being a mom, full time employee at [Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum], mural artist in her own right, and VOLUNTEERS to repair tagged murals. She climbed up and repainted the figures over the bus shelter the time before this last tag. It is such a fragile wall, we have been looking into coatings but it might not be able to withstand the power wash to remove the spray paint.”

Update (August 19, 2022): I got email from a man named Douglas and his sister Vickie. He wrote: “My mom is the waitress holding the plate. She worked at Caruso's restaurant for 32 years.I worked there as well a couple summers as a bus boy when I was in high school in the late 70's. My brother worked at the bar next door. Everybody called her Mom.” Here's the part of the mural showing Mom:

Later, Doug added: “I did read about Eleanor Kohloss who painted the mural in 1996 that she captured some locales (my Mom) as well as some are fictional. My brother did tell me that Mrs. Kohloss asked my mom if she could put on the mural. My mom was honored to have her do that.”

Now all we need are stories about the other zillion people on the mural! I'd really like to meet Eleanor some day.

More about the Swanway Park mural

On Saturday, we posted a photo from Allison Miller of a postcard-like mural in Swanway Park that, I wrote, was painted by Allison Miller.

On Monday, Allison happened to be at Bentley's (where she painted a mural based on the movie E.T.… by the way, I took a new and more-evenly-lit photo of the mural. I've just replaced the second photo on that mural page with the shot I took Monday.) She walked over to say hello and mention that the Swanway Park mural was actually a community project. She emailed me two photos:

Thanks much for the updates!

New @ 1st & Arcadia

This is a photo of the “Greetings from Tucson” mural on 1st St. & Arcadia (located in Swan Way Park on the back wall of Flooring Direct). The mural was done to beautify the park... because the wall was consistently a target for graffiti. Pittsburgh Paint (previously located on Swan) generously donated all the paint, and Lowe’s (Speedway & Kolb) donated paintbrushes. Lead Artist Allison Miller hosted a community paint day in collaboration with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tucson. The mural was completed in August, 2012 and was inspired by the historic “Greetings from Tucson” postcard.

Allison's latest project is to organize a community mural for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. If you’re interested in participating, call her at 520-883-3071.

Thanks so much, Allison!

Update (March 21, 2015): Here's a photo that I took earlier today of (almost) all of the mural with (almost) no tree in front of it: