City Paint Phoenix 23 – “No More Stolen Sisters”
It’s been a while since I shared any street art findings from Phoenix….
Wednesday morning before work…driving up and down Roosevelt Row and the many feeder streets that lead to and from the artsy neighborhood and its surround…quiet and COVID-near-empty streets.
It had been a while since I had driven this particular alleyway…who knew…at The Churchill in Phoenix.
It’s not just a painting…click on the below links to read more….
Amnesty International – No More Stolen Sisters
Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women
The Guardian – No More Stolen Sisters
Equal Means Equal – No More Stolen Sisters
To read more about the artist, La Morena, click on this link.
City Paint Phoenix 21- “El Salvador”
While the overriding subject matter, philosophy, or world-view is not one that I personally endorse, I can’t help but acknowledge the artwork as noteworthy, especially given that it’s on the side of a building in inner-city Phoenix.
Situated on the south-facing wall of Buster’s Market at 603 N 15th Avenue, just west of downtown Phoenix proper, this is an image that I have seen more than a couple of times over three years ago. Conducting field-work provides ample opportunity to participate in the sensory experience of the local culture.
I could have waited a few seconds longer to make the first photograph without a person in it, but I specifically wanted him there to offer perspective to scale, etc. For what it’s worth, the building has been around since 1926 and cannot help but be an important source of groceries and other necessities for neighborhood residents, as there is not a supermarket within a few miles.
And for those interested, the artist’s information is provided below…”Enuf” is a local man named Francisco Garcia and he and this mural are featured in this Phoenix New Times article. If you’re not compelled to click on the link, I will provide that the mural is actually entitled “Jesus Saves,” and the artist claims that it is something of a self-portrait that was inspired by the “Forgiven” painting by Thomas Blackshear.
And lastly, if you’d like to view more street-art from Phoenix and Salt Lake City, you can click on this link to be taken to a continuous scroll of posts featuring beautiful murals and art work from both cities.
City Paint Phoenix 20 – Hiding…maybe…?
I haven’t been near Roosevelt Row in some time…so it was a pleasant surprise to find some new (?) work.
This single mural is on the east-facing wall of 407 E Roosevelt Street in what is essentially downtown Phoenix…on what I understand to be an art gallery named “modified/arts.” I don’t know the name of the mural or exactly what the artist is conveying…but I don’t want to, either…the possibilities and what they strike in my mind are enough….
The artist is Hugo Medina. Please click on his name for more information about him and his work.
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 18 – Fernando’s Alignment Shop
I haven’t had any new hiking adventures of late, but I did come across a nice mural the other day on my lunch-time walk. This one was kind of a surprise, as I literally drive past the place every other day or so and had not seen it. This mural is on the west side of Fernando’s Alignment Shop at 1946 E Roosevelt Street, a bit east of downtown and three real blocks away from my workplace. There are other lesser-quality paintings on a couple of the other walls, so it was something of a treat to find this one.
I don’t get involved in politics on my blog and I’m not going to do so now, but it appears that this mural is in support of the “#nodapl” movement…which you can read about here and here, pages that present both sides of the issue.
My sharing of the mural here is simply to share the mural…the street/building art that I have found in Phoenix.
The second, third, and fourth images are the left, center, and right panels of the mural….
And the following gallery is simply a set of close-up images focusing on separate sections….
In attempting to give credit to the artist, I researched the name/label that we can see in the far right, lower section of the mural, something that looks like “Gua Che Collection 2016,” and couldn’t find anything relating to a particular artist’s collection. It appears that “gouache” is simply a type of painting…anyway, here it is…..yet another example of iphound art in Phoenix….enjoy.
City Paint Phoenix 17 – Tribute to Bowie
When a couple of you mentioned that the man in the last installment of City Paint Phoenix looked like David Bowie, it reminded me that I had previously observed a section of city wall that had actually been decorated with images that were very distinctly Bowie.
The mural is located at 1715 N 7th Street in Phoenix, about one block north of McDowell Road for any local readers….
While I was never a fan, I understand that David Bowie was an iconic figure in the music world for a period that spanned decades.
So instead of blabbing on and on about the guy and his career from any research that I would have had to conduct in order to do so, I will simply offer that I find the mural and the skill of the artist to be rather compelling….
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And lastly, to give proper credit for the work, I will close the post with a panel sharing the artist’s information…Maggie Keane…please click on her highlighted name to learn a little more about her.
As always, thank you for visiting and viewing another presentation of iPhound beauty…. If you’d like to view other presentations of street art from both Phoenix and Salt Lake City, you can click on this link to be taken to a continuous scroll of the posts.
City Paint Phoenix 15 – Inspiration
Found in an alleyway where people park their garbage cans so the collection service can do their thing and haul away the waste. There was a stretch of decorated wall that ran more than 100 yards deep into the alley…the backsides of backyard walls in a mid-city residential area. The art was created as part of Paint Phx 2015.
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 10 – Nuestra Senora del Desierto
Here is yet another of El Mac’s murals that one can find in Phoenix. You can see some of his other work in City Paint Phoenix 3, 6, 7, and City Paint 4 and 17 in Salt Lake City….and you can get to those other posts by scrolling to the bottom right corner of this page and clicking on Street Art – Graffiti under the Categories widget. This particular mural is located on the south and street-facing side of Love and Hate Tattoo and Piercing, located at 322 West McDowell Road. You can click on their highlighted name to be taken to their webpage…if you’re interested.
City Paint Phoenix 9 – through your eyes
You might remember that in the last City Paint post about the mermaid knitting her tail, I mentioned another mural about Native American/Pacific Islander myths being melded into one vision, or something like that….well, this is that mural. I didn’t to into much detail about it in the earlier post, but the owner of the building told me that this mural represents the joining of myths from these two cultures…or the one people trying to understand or view the other through that other’s totem or spirit animal. You can see by the alignment of figures, from left to right, that the Pacific Islander is looking toward the right…through the Native American’s spirit animal, the wolf, to his own spirit animal, the whale…and the Native American on the far right is looking through the whale to his own animal on the far left. That’s what I understood, anyway…and I hope it’s a fair representation in word of what the artist meant to portray when he explained it to the building owner….or what I understood the building owner to say about what the artist said…….hmm…..
If you will click on the first image in this first gallery, you’ll see the mural entire…the next four images are segments of the mural when viewed from left to right.
The second gallery contains isolation shots of what I thought were some of the more interesting portions of the mural….
And lastly, these are some angled shots that give yet another perspective….to what I think is a fascinating and remarkable bit of building art. If you’re new to the gallery presentation of the images, you can click on any photo to be taken to a slide-show presentation of the images where you can view them in a larger format.
City Paint Phoenix 8 – The Mermaid Knitting her Tail
In a comment on another post, I mentioned to Andy at LensScaper that I happened to see some artists painting murals that day….
…and I said I’d be going back to capture some images of the work. I didn’t get there the next day, like I had hoped, but I did manage to get there a little later when the mural was complete.
Coincidentally, the owner of the building (Joseph…or maybe it was James….?) was walking out to his vehicle as I was driving mine into the parking lot. After asking if it was OK to be there on the property and make some photos, I asked the man if he knew anything about the mural. He mentioned that an artist from Hong Kong was actually brought into town to create the mural as part of the Paint Phoenix 2015 paint festival….and that this is a mermaid weaving (knitting?) her tail. Joseph also mentioned something about it being the subject of a Chinese myth, but maybe I misunderstood or got that part of the conversation mixed-up with another part in which he was discussing a Native American/Pacific Islander combination mural that’s on the other side of the building…which I shall be featuring here shortly. And finally, Joseph/James, also told me about a couple of other locations nearby where I could find some wall murals painted by other artists who participated in the event…again…to be shown in another post.
To wrap-up the post, I’ve included a small gallery of some isolation images that you can click on to see in greater detail.
And as always, if you’d like to see more of the City Paint Phoenix posts, or even 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 7 – Southwest Goddess
I’ve seen it referred to as “The Phoenix Goddess” in a few different locations, but the artist, El Mac, refers to it as Southwest Goddess on his website…click here if you’d like to check it out for yourself.
The directions I found on-line on how to find the mural states simply that it’s in an alley south of McDowell Road between 3rd and 5th Avenues…another set of directions indicate that it’s on an essentially hidden wall of the Laird Apartments at 317 West McDowell Road.
I happened to find it through the first directions, driving up and down alleyways…. There were two other murals close-by, one of which you can see in green paint on the left side of the first image above. I may feature them in a later post.
The fact that the mural is on the east-facing wall of the apartments might have something to do with it remaining in such good condition after being there for 10 years.
This is the fourth mural by El Mac that I’ve featured in the City Paint series…two others in Phoenix and one in Salt Lake City. I have already collected images of two of his other murals in the Phoenix area and know where a third one is, but haven’t gotten to it yet with my camera.
If you’ve enjoyed viewing this fine example of street art, spray-paint murals, building art, or whatever else you’d like to call it, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click Street Art – Graffiti under the Categories widget to see more posts containing this genre of art from both Phoenix and Salt Lake City, Utah.
City Paint Phoenix 6 – Indigenous Woman
What could very likely be the newest mural in Phoenix was created by El Mac and his collaborators. You might remember that I featured some of his other work in an earlier post. I’d like to thank a fellow-blogger and Phoenician, Candace from Glenrosa Journeys, for telling me about the mural. She used to follow the local street-art scene, going from mural to mural, capturing images as they were constantly being painted and painted-over, but she now focuses her blogging and photography around “birds and other critters.”
Candace mentioned that the mural is located at Heavy Pedal…and when I Googled that name, I found that it’s located just down the road from my work-place, at 1309 East Van Buren Street. When I checked further to learn anything I could about the mural, I found this article in the Phoenix New Times.
I stopped by the shop on my way to work with the intention of capturing some images of the mural without any cars parked in front of it…but being on the east-facing side of the building, it was the recipient of the morning’s light from the rising sun…and the attendant shadows that ride along with it. So, the first two images (taken from outside of the gated and locked parking lot) show the shadows and glow of the sunrise, and the photographs in the following gallery show what it looked like about three and a half hours later. If you’d like to view the images in greater detail, just click on any photo in the gallery to be taken to a slide-show where they are displayed in a larger format. It’s crazy and wonderful what these guys can do with spray paint….
And…if you’d like to see earlier posts on street and building art in Phoenix and Salt Lake City, you can scroll to the bottom of the page, find the Categories widget, and click on Street Art – Graffiti to be taken to a continuous scroll of the posts.
City Paint Phoenix 5 – Morning Blessing
I found this “shed-sized” mural on the other side of the parking lot behind the Barrio Cafe at 2814 N 16th St. This entire area contains houses, restaurants, sports shops, and alley walls that have been decorated with street art…some of it is easier to understand or conceptualize, and some of it is in abstract form that simply entertains in its presentation and demonstrates the skill of the artists.
A closer look….
…and credits…for the Medicine Paint Art Collective and Impact Project. You can click on this link to be taken to the home page of the organization if you’d like to learn more about them….
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….
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