City Paint Phoenix 19 – New “Krank” Mural
You might remember that we met this artist almost two years ago in my post titled, “Cabezas Curiosas.” It appears that Tyson Krank has been busy again….
I happened to drive through the alley behind the Laird Apartments, at 317 West McDowell Road in Phoenix, a couple of months ago to take another look at the Southwest Goddess mural that I shared here in February, 2015. What a nice surprise to find this bit of a treasure just waiting to be appreciated. The time of day brought the shadows of the power lines, as well as the over-brightness noticed on the right half of the above image….
Eyes like dark pools…..fantastic detail wrought with spray paint.
Iphound art….
If you’d like to see more posts on street-art/building murals, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click Street Art – Graffiti under the Categories widget to see more posts containing images of artwork from both Phoenix and Salt Lake City.
City Paint Phoenix 13 – Muscle Man of Roosevelt Community Church
Appearing on the east-facing wall of the Roosevelt Community Church at 924 N. 1st Street, in Phoenix, this familiar sight finally became subject for one of my stops during a photographic excursion that included the abstract net-art that I featured in this earlier post, Her Secret is Patience. This was a rather fruitful venture, as it provided fodder for at least another five City Paint Phoenix features that will appear here in the next several weeks.
I won’t claim to have any understanding, knowledge, or insight into the meaning of the mural or its significance on the side of a church building whose congregation purports to be open-minded and accepting of all peoples, etc., etc., but I will suggest that maybe it has something to do with the connectedness of the members of the human species, as displayed by the red-meat that we all possess beneath our variously hued external coverings of skin…rising from the dust of the earth…and then, maybe…our spirit/energy/soul/etc. transcending our terrestrial trappings and going out into the ether to join the rest of the cosmos…etc., etc., and so on…I don’t know. I already said that…I just don’t know. But here it is anyway, an intriguing mural along Roosevelt Row, another contribution to the local street-art scene.
The only artist attribution I could find for the mural was a single article in a local newspaper that provided three names – Bishop Ortega, Larry Valencia, and Anthony Vasquez.
As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this latest addition to the City Paint Phoenix street art series…and I thank you for visiting. I think it would be fun to hear/read what you think of the mural and what it might mean. I know there are several friends here who have extensive experience in the art world…so please feel free to share your thoughts….
City Paint Phoenix 12 – Cabezas Curiosas
Driving through the city on my way to work a few weeks ago, I happened to look south and spied a couple of faces staring back at me. I had time to spare before I had to clock-in at the office, so I parked the truck on a side street and took a little walk with my camera.
Moving a little closer, and a little to the east to get the tree out of the way….
I walked down the street a bit and attempted to approach the mural from the property entrance to the left of the mural and found that there was yet more….
Three more faces, two of the masked people and….a snowman? Given that this wall was right at the entrance to the parking lot of a small apartment building, there was no problem gaining access and taking a few closer shots.
Enjoy the gallery….and remember that you can click on any image to be taken to a sort of slide-show that allows you to view each image in a larger format.
As I was heading back to the truck, I happened to glance across the street and found yet another Cabeza Curiosa mural….
I found these murals on buildings located at the intersection of 7th Street and Pierce, just east of downtown proper in Phoenix, Arizona. As you can see in three of the images above, the artist is listed as “@t_krank” on Twitter, Tyson Krank, and you can follow this link to a short article about him in one of the local newspapers.
I hope you enjoyed this latest presentation of the City Paint Phoenix series. You can see other posts of Phoenix’s street art, and Salt Lake City’s, as well, by scrolling to the bottom of the page, finding the “Categories” widget, and clicking on “Street Art – Graffiti.”
City Paint Phoenix 11 – Film Bar abstract
I found this mural quite by accident a little over a month ago. I had intentionally taken a different route to work so that I could photograph a particular mural, and afterwards, I happened to spy this bit of purple and blue decorating a wall a couple of blocks away. So, at the risk of being late to the office and missing the “timely punch” of the clock, I stopped and made a few more hasty images. The mural is located on the north wall of a downtown theater called the “Film Bar.” It is located at 812 North 2nd Street, which makes it about two miles from my workplace…and just down the road a little bit from the area that I have mentioned here on several occasions, Roosevelt Row, a showcase of local street art and culture.
This first gallery shows the complete mural and then the sections, moving from left to right….
This second gallery presents some greater detail in isolation form….
Walking around the building to where I had seen some “graffiti-type” art decorating a trash dumpster, I found this surplus image on the east-facing wall…obviously touched with the morning’s sun and companion shadows.
The last photograph shows the signature of the artist, Joe Rael, whom you might remember from an earlier post, City Paint Phoenix 2 – Hair Pollution.
If you’d like to see more of the City Paint Phoenix posts, or earlier images of street art in Salt Lake City, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Street Art – Graffiti title under the Categories widget to be taken to a continuous feed of the posts.
City Paint Phoenix 3 – Flowers…with a Salt Lake City connection….
I’ve been traveling the streets of Phoenix for the past five months with a new eye that is open and welcoming of things that I had never noticed in my earlier years of living here. If you’ve been following this blog for at least a little while, you might know or recall that I’ve recently returned to this desert home after living in the Salt Lake City area for about four years…after having lived here in Phoenix for over 20 years…and you might remember, too, that I started a City Paint series in Phoenix that was similar to a series that I had going in Salt Lake for a couple of years. Well…this is the third post in my collection of graffiti and street art displays that I’ve discovered while driving about my new/old home.
This flower shop is located on the south-east corner of 5th Street and Roosevelt Street, just south of the center of town in an area that has become something of an art district over the last several years. From all appearances, the flower shop has closed its doors for business…the rooms were empty as I looked in from the street…and as you can tell by looking at this second image, the plaster is cracking on the wall and the paint is beginning to peel…which is understandable, given that the mural is on the west-facing wall of the building and in near constant exposure to the desert sun.
When I did a Google search of the artists (as provided by the names under the “E” in the first photo), I found that El Mac had created another image that I had seen in the past…which I had shared in another blog post almost three years ago. I featured the below photograph in In the Heart of the City and in City Paint 4 – Tucked-Away Alley-Way, and provided a third glimpse of it in the first image from City Paint 17 – Gallenson’s Gun-shop Elk Mural.
You can find these murals on El Mac’s web site at Ave Maria and Kofie and Mac…pages five and eight if you want to visit from going to his home-page. After you get to his home-page, click on the “Spraypaint” subheading…and be prepared to be amazed at what you’ll find. If you’d like to view more posts on the street art, building murals, and related graffiti that I’ve discovered in both the Salt Lake and Phoenix areas, you can scroll to the bottom of this page and click on Street Art – Graffiti under the Categories widget to see the earlier other posts.
City Paint Phoenix 2 – Hair Pollution
It’s been a few weeks since I started the City Paint Phoenix series, but here’s the second installment…all images were taken the same morning as the first of the series, City Paint Phoenix 1 – “Old Man Phoenix.” I don’t have a single image of the entire mural, as I would have had to stand a couple of dozen feet further away, and doing so would have brought me fully into the morning sun, so please try to imagine these first six images linked together from left to right, and you’ll have the entire mural. This piece of art is on the west-facing wall of a salon named, “Hair Pollution,” at 1524 E McDowell Road in Phoenix proper. I’m not sure how long the mural has been on this wall, but I found various links to it on-line, dating from 2012…when the paint was much less faded by the Arizona sun.
The second collection of photographs are close-ups or isolation shots of the various components, elements of the greater mural that struck me as significant in their singularity and caused me to wonder at how and why they might or could be related in such a way that would cause the artist, Joerael Julian Elliott, to combine them in this presentation. By the way, if you follow the link to the artist’s website, you’ll find (among other fantastic and wonderful things) a photo of the mural in its full form if you click on the “Public, and then the “Street” tabs. Also, please remember that you can click on any image to be taken to a slide-show that provides an even closer look at each photograph.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this second showing in the series of City Paint Phoenix…a representation of some of the street and building art that I’ve found during my commute and wanderings in my new and old home of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. If you’d like to see earlier postings, from both Phoenix and Salt Lake City, you can scroll to the bottom of this page and find the Categories widget…click on Street Art – Graffiti, and you’ll be taken to a continuous scroll of those earlier posts. Thank you for visiting….
City Paint Phoenix 1 – “Old Man Phoenix” at the Garfield Galleria
If you’ve been following or visiting my blog for the past few years, you will likely remember the City Paint series of posts that featured street art, graffiti, and building art that I found during my explorations of Salt Lake City, Utah. As you might also remember, I am no longer in Salt Lake, as my family and I have returned to Phoenix, Arizona….
In an effort to re-establish or re-orient myself in the locale and to introduce you to a bit of my new and old home town, I will begin sharing similar artwork that I find during my official and unofficial wanderings of Phoenix’s neighborhoods. I offer those two categories of wanderings for anyone interested, only to state that part of my responsibilities with my new (and old) employment here in this pan of desert is to venture into the wide city and county looking for individuals who might need to visit our clinic for one reason or another. During my searchings for street addresses and hang-outs, in addition to my lengthy commute to and from my workplace (and occasional recreational and photography-oriented explorations), I can’t help but notice the markings and decorations of buildings and alley walls that I pass along the way.
While I have noticed a striking difference in the style of art between the Phoenix and Salt Lake City offerings (although not necessarily with this first post), I still find the Phoenix art to be as creatively compelling and worthy of respectful consideration…for not only is it born of artistic minds and hands, it is also wrought with a richness of symbol and story and meaning that is so much greater than the simple results of the stroke of a brush or spraying of a can of paint.
So…please join me in this new venture of appreciating the street art, graffiti, and building art of Phoenix, Arizona, USA…as you have joined me in Salt Lake City. This first selection is from the side of a building at the Garfield Galleria…316 West McDowell Road in Phoenix proper.
If you’re interested, you can read more about the Garfield Galleria at this link…and if you’d like to check-out the artist, Coxy, you can click on his name to be taken to the street art page on his web-site. If you venture beyond that linked page to learn more about him, be fore-warned that some of his work is rather graphic…body parts…etc.
As always, thank you for joining me here at Scott’s Place…for visiting and sharing a bit of your time with me…and if you’d like to see more from my City Paint series, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Street Art – Graffiti under the Categories widget.
City Paint 17 – Gallenson’s Gun-shop Elk Mural
I found this mural “under construction” back in April or May of 2013 and have been driving past it a couple of times a month since, hoping to find the parking lot unoccupied and the building not drenched in overly bright sunlight. Finally, last weekend, I happened to find the mural with both of those conditions met, so here it is. I’m not sure who the artist is, but it is probably the same one who created the mural in City Paint 9 – Oriental Furniture, as the style seems to be a dead-match. You might remember Gallenson’s Gun-shop from the Five on Five western mural that I featured in City Paint – 6 through 6.5. That mural is located to the far left of this one on the perpendicular wall at the south end of the rear parking lot. Anyway, here it is…rather busy for the eyes, but it’s pretty awesome at the same time.
And remember, you can click on any image to be taken to a gallery where you can view each photo in greater detail…and if you’d like to see more posts on Salt Lake City’s street art, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Street Art – Graffiti under the categories widget.
City Paint 16 – Utah Arts Alliance Legends Mural
If you remember the City Paint post about the Urban Jungle, you might recall that I mentioned that I was allowed access to the property by “someone nearby;” this happened to be the staff at the Utah Arts Alliance (UAA). Before I ventured over to make the photos of the jungle scene on the adjacent lot, I took advantage of the opportunity to capture some photos of the murals that the UAA had on the side of their building.
I couldn’t find any artist information for the next two panels. They measure somewhere around 10 x 10 feet square and are on the building just to the left of the above image.
This next one looks like it belongs in a gallery somewhere…can you imagine creating it on the side of a building and then leaving it out in the elements of the weather?
I didn’t speak with the arts alliance staff about the following gallery, so I don’t know if they’ve even properly titled it, but I refer to it as the “Legends” mural because of the status of the personalities shown…they are singers, composers, actors, philosophers, authors, scientists, and even social activists. The mural was painted by a street art duo known as Weird Chief. If you’d like, you can click on their highlighted name and be taken to their web-site to read their bios and see more of their work.
Here’s another gallery of some close-up images of the mural –
And lastly, this is what the mural looks like complete…minus the “far right” panel that is actually on a smaller segment of adjoining wall that is just off-frame to the right.
If you’d like to see more examples of Salt Lake City’s street and building art as I’ve presented them in this City Paint series, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Street Art – Graffiti” category to be taken to a continuous feed of the earlier posts.
City Paint 15 – Korner Market Mural – 2013
If you’ve been following this blog for some time, you might remember the earlier posts on the Korner Market’s murals…City Paint – 3 2012…The End? and City Paint 12.2 – 2020…Perfect Vision – Mural Complete. I realize that it’s a little late in the year and that the mural has been completed for a few months already…with next year’s remake only another four or five months away, but here’s 2013’s rendition. I’ve not been able to determine the theme and have not spoken with the Korner Market staff to learn more about it, so maybe you’ll have some ideas for us. To see the images in a larger presentation, click on any of them to be taken to a slide-show of the photos.
I’d like to give credit to the artists who created the work, but can’t decipher any of the names that might be hidden in the script on the mural. I would imagine that at least some of the artists who contributed to the earlier murals also helped create this one, but I’m not sure, so I’m not going to list any names.
You can click on the highlighted titles above to be taken back to the earlier posts. If you’d like to see more of Salt Lake City’s street art and graffiti, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Category labeled “Street Art – Graffiti” to see a continuous feed of all of the earlier posts.
City Paint 14 – Qaderi Sweetz N Spicez mural
I have spent the last few Monday afternoons riding around with representatives from another agency, networking, I suppose, finding common ground for our two programs, searching for ways that we might serve a specific population from our two different perspectives.
One of the advantages of being a passenger is the opportunity to look around without having to pay attention to traffic…theoretically, one can take-in the scenery while still attending to the conversation. The key, of course, is to not tune-out the other parties while becoming engrossed in the city-scapes and in watching all manner of humanity passing on the sidewalks, etc.
This past Monday, I happened to notice a flash of color on the parking lot wall as we passed a particular business…a flash of color that I had never noticed in my daily commute and coincidental passing of the building and parking lot every single morning on my way to work. During our course of meandering about the neighborhood, we passed the location a couple of times and I was able to discern that the flash of color was actually a mural…and even from my poor vantage point of the inside of a moving vehicle, I could tell that it was more than just a bunch of graffiti and crap art that one sees in some parts of a larger city.
On my way to work yesterday morning, I passed the location, looked at the clock in my truck to see if I had time to make a quick stop, and then promptly made a U-turn at the next light and went back to take a closer look at the mural….and to snap a few shots of what appear to be an incomplete work of art…a work in progress….
The mural is painted on the north wall of the parking lot at an Indian grocery store named, “Qaderi Sweetz N Spicez.” For those interested, it is located at 1785 S. State Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. You can click on the highlighted name to be taken to the business’s Google+ page, or click here to be taken to an article from The Salt Lake Tribune that announced the store’s opening this past July.
I haven’t spoken with anyone at the store about the mural…yet…(?) so I can’t say with any certainty what the intention or theme might be, but if I were to choose one for myself, I might offer that it has something to do with the faces of Woman…those many presentations of identity that we see in our everyday lives, or maybe ones that transcend definition or explanation and exist in our species’ memories before words were known.
If you noticed the bit of script in the lower left-hand corner of the second image above, you might have been able to discern at least one name, possibly another one or two, of the artists who likely contributed to the mural. The most notable name, to me anyway, is that of Kier, an artist whose work you can see in several of the other works that I’ve featured here in the City Paint Series, the first being “City Paint 3 – 2012…The End?” If you’re interested, you can click on that highlighted name and be taken back to the post to find another link that provides more info on Kier.
As I mentioned above, I believe the mural might not be complete yet. To the right of the smiling woman, there is what appears to be the beginnings of another image, and still further to the right of that one, some black markings on the cinder-block wall that might be an outline of still another image. I am curious to see how this one turns-out…and might even be so curious that I stop by the store to ask someone about the mural and to inquire about all of the artists involved in creating this work of art…..so stay-tuned for updates.
If you’d like to see the other City Paint images of street art and graffiti from around Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Street Art – Graffiti” category to see all of them. Thank you, again, for visiting…for spending a bit of your time with me.
City Paint 13 – Urban Jungle Mural
Six months after I posted City Paint 5.1 – Ironclad Tattoo Re-do, the artist, Shae Petersen (AKA: FiftyK), happened to stumble across my blog and commented on the photos. He also informed me that he had just completed another mural…and invited me to stop-by for a visit.
I hope you’ll forgive the bit of sun-flare in the first three photos. I managed to find someone nearby who allowed me into the fenced and locked property at almost noon on a mid-week day…so I couldn’t be choosy with the shooting arrangements…full sun overhead…shadows near the mural…anyway…I hope you’ll enjoy the images despite their flaws….
Shae told me that he had been commissioned by the Utah Arts Alliance to paint the Urban Jungle mural.
He said that it will be the backdrop feature for a new urban-art garden that will be constructed in the empty lot that is immediately in front of the mural. The painting is actually on a reception center building located at 615 West 100 South in Salt Lake City.
When I asked him about the theme and how much liberty he and Chew had in creating the mural, he said that they were essentially told to use their discretion and make it however they wanted to.
Shae told me that he and another artist, Chew, the owner of Mark’s Ark combined their talents to create the mural that they have named “Urban Jungle.”
He also told me that Chew had worked on other murals that you may have seen here on my blog… City Paint 1 – 5 Monkeys Bar and City Paint 3 – 2012 – The End?, as well as the recently posted City Paint 12.2 – 2020…Perfect Vision, and the Ironclad Tattoo mural that I mentioned above.
He said the urban jungle theme just struck them as appropriate…the animals don’t really have any significance in their selection or appearance…just seemed that they belonged there.
The mural is 127 feet in length and took the artists about two weeks to complete…for a cost of $1500.00….
You can follow this link to view more of Shae’s work.
Thank you for spending a bit of your day with me. I hope you enjoyed the fantastically colored and skillfully rendered mural as much as I did. If you’d like to view more of the City Paint Series, as well as other tidbits of street art and graffiti that I’ve found in the Salt Lake City area, you can scroll to the bottom of the page, find the “Categories” widget, and then click on “Street Art – Graffiti.”
City Paint 12.2 – 2020…Perfect Vision – Mural Complete
Wow….I guess it’s been a while since I posted the beginning of this mural in City Paint 12.1 – 2020…Perfect Vision. I had stopped-by and taken photos of the progress on another four occasions, but had not managed to get it all together in posts to show the work…so here we are, ten months later (Really?!) and I’m just now sharing the end result…and as chance/fate would have it, this mural has already been covered and work is being done on a new one. Stay tuned….
The panorama shots that I made didn’t turn-out real well…and my stitching capabilities are nil…so we’re left with three images that I hope you can imagine as an entire mural…looking from the left in the above image…to the middle in the photo below…
…and to the far right in the next image below…three panels depicting a perfect vision for the future…maybe…hoping that we can see as clearly….?
I’ve also provided a handful of close-up images to demonstrate the detail…to show the brush-strokes of the spray-painted mural.
I do know that parts of the mural were, indeed, spray-painted, as I’ve shared in the first post…but, I am not sure if the individual artists who contributed to the greater image used brushes or not. If you remember the western mural that I shared in City Paint 6.5, you might also recall the images of the artist using an actual brush.
When sharing other artists’ work in these and other images, I attempt to give credit where it is due. I do not know all of the artists’ names who participated in creating this huge mural, but I do know that Kier Defstar played a significant role, as I was so informed by the Korner Market staff when I inquired about the 2012 mural in City Paint 3.
If you look closely at the various images, you will be able to see other names, as well…. I have heard about some of these other artists and have only seen the names of still others of them…but here they are: Brute, Amer, Mark’s Ark, Aloha Family, Marlee, Lost Art, and Sily. If there are other artists who worked on the mural, I apologize for not naming them…I simply don’t know who they are right now. With any luck (?), some of the other artists might happen across the images on my blog and let me know that they, too, contributed to the masterpiece…….it’s happened before……
I have offered that the Aloha Family is a group of artists, simply because it appears in the below photo that they are…possibly the individual artists’ names are here, too?
And maybe this is another artist’s signature?
Is the space-ship preparing to kidnap a large cat in the image below? I’m not sure…but I do love the detail on the woman’s portrait….
This is crazy beautiful as you stand next to it on the street and look at it face to face……
And finally, what I understand to be the centerpiece of the mural, the exotic woman looking into and maybe even divining the future…she appears to be a mixture of the various phenotypes of our human species…intelligent, strong, beautiful……
Thank you, as always, for visiting…for spending your time with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed viewing the finished product of the 2020 Perfect Vision mural. If you’d like to see the other City Paint images of street art and graffiti from around Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Street Art – Graffiti” category to see all of them.
it’s not what you look at…
A modern interpretation and expression of: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau……found at the ruins of the Tintic Standard Reduction Mill just east of Goshen, Utah….
Tintic Standard Reduction Mill
A week or so ago, my second son and I headed out into the beyond…took a tour around Utah Lake…essentially followed in the tire-tracks of my third son who had made the trip on his bike last summer. At the southern end of the lake, the road heads back east. About two and a half miles past the town of Goshen, you can see what appears to be the remains of something on the side of a mountain. Even from a distance, you can also see that it has been frequented by taggers and graffiti artists. My cycling son had mentioned the ruins after his ride and suggested that we needed to check it out sometime.
After leaving this site and finding a stronger signal for his phone, my second son determined that these were/are the ruins of the Tintic Standard Reduction Mill…an ore processing facility that was built between 1919-1921…and only used for four years…so it has been standing vacant and abandoned since 1925. For a very brief history of the mill, you can click on the highlighted name to be taken to the Wiki article that provides a bit of information.
This link to the Historic American Engineering Record provides a more extensive history…and shows us what the ruins looked like back in 1971, after it had been abandoned for 46 years, and before a select demographic of our country decided that they needed to decorate the place with their spray-painted opinions and expressions of art. The following images represent what the place looks like today…42 years after the essentially “clean” images from 1971…and 88 years after it was abandoned.
The entirety of the mill structure spans an elevation equivalent to eight stories of a building and is situated on the side of Warm Springs Mountain, 5,535 ft elev.
The circular structures are leaching vats where the crushed ore would be chemically processed to remove the silver, copper, lead, and gold.
Don’t know enough about it to even guess what the circular things below were/are….
Under the vats…supports…drains(?)…retention walls….
The inside of a leaching vat…
These are the ore bins toward the right of the photo…above the leaching vats.
A view looking over the ore bins…with my son at the far end.
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My son looking into the silver precipitator…the square-shaped structure with the conical (inverted pyramids) chute underneath…situated to the left of the leaching vats in the third photo above.
If you click on the link for the Historic American Engineering Record, you can see the diagrams that identify the various parts of the mill that I have named in the post…the leaching vats, silver precipitator, ore bins, roaster, etc….
I believe that’s the water tank in the photo below…with Savannah and Shilo painted on it…….and if you look in the very first photo above…and notice the somewhat removed, shadowy structure to the very bottom right, those are the lead precipitate bins…..
Looking over the ore bins…in the opposite direction.
The front of the roaster section….
I believe the space between the large structure on the right side of the image and the broken-through wall (that general area) is where the crusher was located…and the large structure is where the ore was roasted.
Warm Springs pond/lake below the mill….
Looking over the roaster, ore bins, silver precipitator, and leaching vats….
The below image is from the highest, developed area of the mill…where I was standing on the remaining foundation of what I believe you can see in the very top left corner of the last image of the post.
The Tintic Standard Reduction Mill before its decline….
Hmm…so this post was quite a bit longer than my normal fare…but I hope you enjoyed it anyway…..
As always, thank you for being here.
City Paint 12.1 – 2020 Mural…Perfect Vision
If you remember the next two photographs from the my earlier post “City Paint 3 – 2012…The End?” you might also remember that I had spoken with one of the clerks in the Korner Market who told me that the mural was going to be painted-over in the next few weeks…and it was supposed to be something even more grand in scale and content than the Maya calendar predicting the end of life as we know it.
It has taken a bit longer than the projected few weeks to get the new mural underway…but here it is….
I actually drove past this street scene on my way to meet the artist from the Five on Five western mural and almost did a quick U-turn to go back and see what was happening…but given the level of activity with the BBQ grill and tent and crowd of people milling about, I figured they would still be there when I was finished with the interview. I had just checked the wall earlier in the week, too, and nothing had been done, so I would imagine that the work was started on Saturday, June 9.
From the conversation that I had with the store clerk back in March, I understood that only one artist would be doing the work, Kier Defstar…but as you can see in this photograph, there were two artists working on it. If you click on Kier’s name, it will take you to a City Weekly interview from November 2010. While it’s not current info, it does provide a great background on the artist.
On my way to work two days later, I stopped to see what progress had been made through the rest of the weekend. I was surprised to see this man working at such an early hour on a Monday morning. When I asked him if he was Kier, he said that he wasn’t, but that Kier had done the work on the woman’s head and some other pieces, but they had two or three other artists working on it, as well. I asked the man for his name so I could give him credit for contribution to the mural, but he politely declined to give me even his first name. He said that he hadn’t painted in 12 years, but Kier had asked him to help. The man said he’s been published in different books and magazines, but he prefers to avoid the media nowadays. I assured him that I was just a guy taking pictures and had nothing to do with the formal media and wouldn’t share his name if he didn’t want me to, but he still refused. He said to give Kier the credit for the mural, as it was mostly his idea and he had painted the most significant part…the woman.
The man said that the theme for this mural is 2020…as in the year…and as in perfect vision. The contents of the mural are supposed to be exploding or pouring from the woman’s head…signifying her ideas and dreams for the future…he said it is meant to be much more positive than the earlier mural, depicting hope instead of a final destruction.
I took these last three photos yesterday morning, Tuesday, Jun 19. Quite a bit of progress has been made in a week and a half….
There seemed to be no vantage point available in taking a picture of this entire image without the street-lamp being included….
As with the Five on Five western mural, I will be visiting this 2020 mural every few days and posting updates of its progress until it is completed…so stay tuned. Also, if you’re interested, you can view all of the posts in the City Paint series by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Category button for Street Art – Graffiti.
And, as always, thank you for visiting. 🙂
City Paint 6.5 – “Becoming” Artist’s Insight
In my most recent post on this western mural, City Paint 6.4 – “Becoming” almost finished…, I mentioned that I had spoken with the artist and that we were going to meet the following weekend. Well…because of life and parades and being called-in to work, that meeting finally took place three weekends later.
Aside from talking about life and relationships with girlfriends and wives, his siblings, my children, living in military families, maturing on our paths in life, sports, mixed-martial-arts, college, art, blogging, sports-talk-radio, trust, forgiveness, graffiti, street code, bastards who tag over other artists’ work, guns, bartering, Utah history, and religion…we also talked about his mural….
The artist, Gerry (pronounced “Gary”) Swanson (at www.silentswanart.com), has named the mural “Five on Five,” a sports reference to a battle being waged between a group of Native Americans and a group of western cowboys.
He was not formally commissioned to paint the mural, but he has done work for Gallenson’s Gun Shop in the past, so the store owner trusted that he would create something appropriate without having any guidelines or requirements. Gerry said he wanted the mural to showcase an event from the history of the Mountain West…which included guns.
He said that the canyon provides a literal and metaphorical boundary or divide between the opposing sides, such geographical features are common to the Mountain West area, so it seemed fitting that it would be the line of demarkation between the participants.
When I asked him if this was a fair fight, guns vs bows and arrows, he said that the cowboys might have had a technological advantage, but the braves were stronger physically and had time and nature on their side. The sun was painted as it was to represent the familiar image of the Maya calendar, easily applied to these native people, as they are of the same indigenous stock as the Maya. The natives were aware of time, but it was simply part of life, the cowboys were caught-up in time and attemtpted to control it, marking their actions and lives by its rules. The vegetation was supporting the braves, pushing them into the battle, while it was wrapping around the cowboys and hindering their efforts.
Gerry said that the cowboys weren’t in full control of their horses and are off balanced and not shooting straight, one cowboy is even on the ground wielding a bowie knife…while one of the natives isn’t even presenting a weapon…he’s in the charge, yes, but not needful of a weapon yet…so the battle isn’t as unfair as it might first appear.
The natives and the cowboys are painted the same color because they share in the brotherhood of their singular species, yet the braves have their white stripes and the cowboys have their red shirts, as opposing teams are given to wearing opposite colors when on the field of play.
Gerry said he put bandanas over the mouths of the cowboys to protect them against the dust, whereas the natives didn’t need the same protection, as they were adapted to their environment and had stronger constitutions. When I mentioned that some commentors on the blog thought the cowboys might have been hiding behind their masks, he said he hadn’t considered that perspective, but he likes it. He said he loves to stand within earshot of people as they are discussing the mural (or any of his other work), so he can hear what they think it means, and in that vein, he appreciates the comments and the thoughts that drive them.
Additional “essentials” for painting a mural on a bright, sunny, spring afternoon in Salt Lake City….
Gerry said it might be interesting to add birds or some other object to the bandanas to increase the effect, to heighten the observers’ awareness of them…. On a side note, Gerry said that he is not finished with the detail on the guns yet; I understood that there would be greater definition, but the bright silver will remain.
To view the other posts that show the progress of this mural, please click on these highlighted titles: City Paint 6.1 – Becoming, City Paint 6.2 – Progress Report on “Becoming,” and City Paint 6.3 – Another progress report on “Becoming.” You can also scroll to the bottom of this page and click on “Street Art – Graffiti” under the Categories heading to view all of the posts in the City Paint series.
City Paint 11 – Something-ist
I spoke with one of the men who works at the window/glass business to the left of this mural…he said it’s left-over from the arts festival that Salt Lake City sponsored last year or the year before…and he doesn’t know what it says….maybe one of you can figure out what it means…the letters appear to form into a word of something-ist…. I’d love to hear your ideas….
City Paint 6.4 – “Becoming” almost finished….
If you have been following my City Paint series for the past couple of months, and the “Becoming” series in particular, you will/might remember that I have been sharing the progress made by certain artists in creating a western mural with spray-paint. The mural is located in the alley/parking area behind Gallenson’s Gun Shop at 166 East 200 South, in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. To have a more complete understanding as to how the mural developed, and possibly a greater appreciation for the completed work, I would offer that you visit the earlier posts in their numerical order to witness their progress in “becoming.” To visit the earlier posts, just click on their highlighted names…City Paint 6.1 – Becoming, City Paint 6.2 – Progress Report on “Becoming,” and City Paint 6.3 – Another progress report on “Becoming.” If you are interested, you can also scroll to the bottom of the page and select the “Street Art – Graffiti” category to view the complete City Paint series.
I spoke with the artist today, Gerry Swanson, and am planning to meet him this coming Sunday to capture some images of the final work…stay tuned…. You can visit his website at www.silentswanart.com.
These last several shots are close-ups of different pieces of the mural, provided to show the finer details of the artists’ strokes (?) of applying the paint….
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City Paint 9 – Oriental Furniture
The place is obviously closed…and the mural has been created on the wood that was used to cover the store-front windows. I was actually looking for the business next door at 50 East 300 South when I stumbled across this one. I rather like it….
City Paint 6.3 – Another progress report on “Becoming”
I can’t imagine that there’s much more work to be done in completing this mural…but then again, I’m not the artist, so I can’t fairly judge what else he/she/they might have planned. You can click on these earlier posts’ titles to see the progress that’s been made since the beginning of the work…City Paint 6.1 – Becoming, and City Paint 6.2 – Progress Report on “Becoming,” or you can scroll to the bottom of the page and select the “Street Art – Graffiti” category to view the complete City Paint series.
City Paint 8 – 7th West and Genesee
This is probably more “typical” of what comes to mind when we think of graffiti in the neighborhoods of a city. I took these photos in the Glendale area of Salt Lake City…an older part of town that is home to many Hispanic and Tongan families. This is also an area that has its share of difficulties with gang activity….
These last two shots contain messages from the building next door….
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City Paint 1.2 – 5 Monkeys Bar Addendum
I took my daughter out for a Saturday morning drive-about, looking to see what we might see…and so that she might find something to use in her “Art Appreciation” course for school. We went back to the site of City Paint 1 -5 Monkeys Bar in Murray, Utah, and found that they had added a new mural to their series…this one being their name-sake piece. Again, it was too good to resist another photo-shoot. On a side-note, this mural and the other 5 Monkey pieces were created by Kier, the same guy who did the huge mural that I featured in City Paint 3 – 2012…The End?
City Paint 6.2 – Progress Report on “Becoming”
If you’ll scroll back to “City Paint 6.1 – Becoming,” you’ll see the first two weeks’ progress on this western-themed mural that happens to be on the wall that encloses a parking lot behind a gun store, of all things. This is the third installment of the mural’s progress, the first two being covered in the earlier post. By the amount of work that’s been done since the last set of shots, it looks like it might be completed during this next week.
The first three shots are the three panels of the mural that are similar to the photos from the earlier post, presented in order from left to right.
And the final four photos are close-ups of the significant pieces of the mural, offered to show greater detail of the work….
Scott's Place...Images and Words 