Filed under: Art, Phoenix | Tags: Art, Calle 16, Downtown Phoenix, El Mac, Lalo Cota, Murals, Phoenix
Well, the murals have been here all along, thriving and growing in numbers. I just didn’t get out to take photos of them for awhile due to the holidays, changes at work, life. Now I’ve lost track of where all the new ones are. Although I’ve tried to keep up through Facebook, it’s going to take some doing to catch up on them all.
But Calle 16, which is quite close to our house, was an easy way to jump back in and there have been a lot of additions and changes there. Check out this previous post of mine from almost a year ago to see how some of the murals have changed since then.
The El Mac portion remains unchanged while Lalo Cota changed his part of it, on the above wall.
This particular wall is all new work that was done in December 2012 and January 2013 by several artists.
This is along the back and side of Barrio Cafe. The owner, Chef Silvana, was the impetus for the whole Calle 16 project several years ago.
This wall is also shown in the previous post mentioned above, as it appeared then. So you can see that there have been some overpaintings and changes while other walls remain the same.
If you’re ever in Phoenix, check out our alleys for lots of colorful surprises.
Filed under: Art, Home, Phoenix | Tags: Art, Downtown Phoenix, Holidays, Home, Lalo Cota, Murals, Phoenix, Religion
Yup, you’re in the right place. It’s Día de Los Muertos and we’re going to celebrate!
In most regions of Mexico, November 1 honors children and infants, whereas deceased adults are honored on November 2. This is indicated by generally referring to November 1 as Día de los Inocentes (“Day of the Innocents”) and November 2 as Día de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”).
Let’s party!
These photos were taken at the Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center, where they are having a Día de Los Muertos festival on Friday in downtown Phoenix that I hope to attend…so I may have an additional Day of the Dead post in the near future.
Many catrinas and calaveras to dance with…
This is a bottle of Kah Tequila that Tony gave me for my birthday last summer. They make 3 different calaveras for 3 different tequilas, the black one, a white one, and a yellow one…I’ll be getting the other 2 at some point.
If you’ve read my blog for long, you know I usually post Day of the Dead murals for November 1. Here is a link to last year’s post, 2010′s post, and 2009′s post. We have a lot of those types of murals in Phoenix, done by Lalo Cota, Angel Diaz, Pablo Luna, and others, but I could not find any that I haven’t already posted here for today’s post. So, above, is a mural I’ve never shown nor seen, I don’t know if it is still around, but it was done by Lalo Cota and it’s on his business card, so I scanned it, just so I wouldn’t be breaking my own tradition. I wanted to post a photo of this mural, also by Lalo, but by the time I went to shoot it, it had been overpainted.
My cousin, who also loves Day of the Dead, sent me this as well as the metal skeleton (and some other goodies) in the next photo. Love them!
And I added this Day of the Dead cross to my large cross collection.
¡Viva La Vida!
Filed under: Art, Phoenix | Tags: Amanda Adkins, Angel Diaz, Art, Calle 16, Colton Brock, Downtown Phoenix, Gennaro Garcia, Global Community, Greater Good, Hugo Medina, Isaac Nicholas Caruso, JB Snyder, Katie Beltran, Kyllan Maney, Lalo Cota, Lauren Lee, Murals, Phoenix, Sebastien Millon, Thomas Breeze Marcus
This is a mural that was done in August at an event called the Great Paint Escape. Several local muralists, many of whom I have blogged about before, participated in the making of this mural: Hugo Medina, Colton Brock, Thomas Breeze Marcus, Angel Diaz, Gennaro Garcia, Isaac Nicholas Caruso, Amanda Adkins, Katie Beltran, JB Snyder, Lauren Lee, Sebastien Millon, and Kyllan Maney. Hugo Medina (curator) and Colton Brock did the hands and Phoenix skyline ahead of time. It represented someone laying on the ground, looking up, and framing the blank canvas of Phoenix with their hands.
On the night of the event, the other artists painted the rest of the mural. While the painting was going on outside, the artists were also painting smaller pieces inside to be sold at a silent auction benefiting Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona on First Friday in September. That is JB Snyder painting above. I was unable to attend the second event so I don’t know if more has been added to the mural; I’ll have to go check it out again soon.
This one (above) was just done a couple weeks ago on a new bar and gastropub “committed to craft beer,” Angels Trumpet Ale House, in downtown Phoenix. It’s a collaboration between Lalo Cota and Thomas Breeze Marcus. I took this photo 2 days ago and saw today on Facebook that it has had additions to it since then. I shot too soon!!!! Someday I’ll give you an update. In fact, you can see it on Breeze’s blog here.
On the back of Por Vida Gallery on Calle 16, by Angel Diaz. It used to look like this.
This mural (above), Painting Smiles, was painted by Lalo Cota, Gennaro Garcia, others of the Calle 16 Foundation, and children of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix last May. It was sponsored by Blue Bunny Ice Cream to give the children the opportunity to participate in creating a mural in the center of the Hispanic community, which reflects their heritage, diversity, culture and love for our community.
A wheat paste by Jetsonorama. It is on Calle 16 on the wall next to this mural. And, I have several more to visit soon. I keep a running list of murals to visit and I never get to the end of the list…that’s a good thing.
p.s. I became aware on my last post, much after the fact, that the first photo, which is actually an animated gif of a hummingbird, was not animating spontaneously on all computers. If you click on it, it will animate, but I think maybe a lot of people did not see the animation 
Filed under: Art, Cats, Phoenix | Tags: Cats, Downtown Phoenix, Murals, Phoenix
I saw the American Way Market down the street when I was out shooting this old building recently. I don’t know anything about this mural…it seems kind of dated and strange…but interesting.
Lotsa rainy days lately in Phoenix. The other day a rainbow appeared afterwards and I didn’t see that it was a double rainbow until I looked at my photos. It’s very faint but it’s there above the real rainbow.
Marbles watching Mrs. Obama speak at the DNC the other night.
Straight blue.
Filed under: Art, Phoenix | Tags: Arizona State University, Art, Downtown Phoenix, Global Community, Greater Good, Isaac N. Caruso, Lalo Cota, Lauren Lee, Murals, Niba DelCastillo, Parks, Phoenix, Roosevelt Row
This new Lalo Cota mural is just a couple blocks down from the Lauren Lee mural in my last post. And, being in a busy downtown area, I have had the same problem catching it with no cars in front of it. So I gave up on that plan, wanting to capture it before it might change.
I wanted to make sure I photographed it, even with cars, because I’m wondering if this is one of those walls where the mural may change regularly. Until a few weeks ago, this wall looked like this:
Gold, Oil, Drugs also by Lalo Cota. I blogged about it then here. And it was a fairly recent mural, too, so maybe the current one will not be there long either. Maybe it’s a revolving Lalo wall…not a bad thing.
You can see Niba DelCastillo’s shot of it sans cars here.
Just a little down the street from this mural is a new, temporary park with a big community mural done in late February that I posted about here. Since then, other improvements have been made to make the park a nice gathering place for people in the neighborhood (when it finally cools down).
This piece was at Arizona State University until recently.
There are little benches and shaded areas inside.
The “ribs” were just painted red a few weeks ago.
You can see monOrchid in the background with the Isaac N. Caruso mural I wrote about here.
We have some awesome downtown community activists, artists, homeowners, and business owners who work very hard to turn a formerly blighted area into a dynamic, attractive, fun place to go.
