I’ve been interested in murals and other forms of wall painting (graffiti and the like) since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. There was part of my early life where I was able to explore well beyond my home, in the cross-over land between inner-city and farmland. Graffiti to me, is an early succession “weed” if you will, like when the dandelions poke up through the cracks in the asphalt. Graffiti shows up in the paved over places, breaking through the cold and dead concrete of the city. It also shows up on old farm buildings, dilapidated homes long neglected because corporate farming interests have bought up the family farm; stitching our city living and the wide open fallow fields.
I was young when I started to ponder the people behind the paintings; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Every one of them had something to say and they’d interact with each other. Bigger, well thought-out murals would get tagged, and sometimes they’d get repainted, other times they wouldn’t. I’d drive by a church with a long wall, often hideously tagged up. One day it had a fresh coat of beige paint, and in roughly painted brown letters it said “Please Stop Painting Our Church, God is Watching” - in the 15 years after that, I rarely saw any unwanted painting on that wall.
The interaction of the people through paintings on walls has fascinated me for almost 4 decades, and I’m so excited to share with you the murals of Tucson - a city much like my own hometown of Fresno, California. Tucson has become my home and I love it and it’s paintings, painters, graffiti artists, and taggers alike. Observation and commentary are my schtick, so we’ll see how this unfolds.
I’ll be sharing from the archives of the Tucson Murals Project, the long-lived mural blog; including writing and commentary on murals, public art, and things that be a-happenin’ in Tucson.
