September 2016

Month

Unique Automotives, Part 1 (the north wall)

I’ve been sort of avoiding doing a post on Unique Automotive, simply because there’s so much art! Really, it’s a huge building, and it’s virtually covered in art, art that is frequently featured on their Instagram account. There’s an interesting story behind Unique Automotive. Its founder, Brad Miser, is a former convict who started his own business after finding work hard to find despite his determination to turn his life around. Miser has done work with local youth, and the murals got started when Miser decided to turn a negative into a positive when he caught kids spray painting the building.

Below are some closeups of the north wall. The other walls will be featured in future posts.

Located at 1414 3rd Avenue South, up the hill from Hart Lane. Makeshift street parking.

Part 2

Part 3

Automotive Graffiti mural street art Nashville

September 13, 2016 2

Don’t miss your ride!

I live not far from this piece and watched it go up over a series of weekends last summer. Artists Jake Elliot and Russ Hagan worked at night, as they projected the image onto the wall of The Post East building, using the projection as a guide while they painted. The mural, which pays homage to Lockeland Springs’ origin as a trolley suburb of Nashville, is part of a larger mural program, the East Nashville Place Making Project, sponsored by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s Area Advisory Council, Chamber East. This program is one of the reasons so many of the pins on the blog map are in Lockeland Springs! The WHAT represents WHAT Creative Group, which is the business home of Jake Elliot and his wife Hana Elliot.

Located on the west wall of The Post East building at 1701 Fatherland Street, at the corner of Fatherland and 17th. Street parking is fairly easy. Grab some coffee or a smoothie at The Post and enjoy the art!

September 11, 2016 1

Art now, art past

Tropical landscape mural street art Nashville

This whimsical piece is found behind Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School on the south wall of the Horton Paper Services building. It’s a little worse for wear, as it has begun to peel in places. Facing south puts it in the sun all day, and that seems to have done some damage. It’s not age – Google street view images from March 2015 show only some graffiti tags here. They also show another mural on the west wall, one that is quite gone, for today the west wall is painted a solid blue. The mural you see below is no more. That’s one thing I’m trying to do with this blog – document art before it disappears. All art is ultimately impermanent, but outdoor art has to deal with the elements, the whims of owners and vandals, and the seemingly relentless pace of development here in Nashville. Here I try to archive some things before they are lost (the mural in the header photo for this blog, of course, is gone, painted over right about the time I started this enterprise).

UPDATE: I know now this piece is a TBS/MAG4 piece (MAG4 is apparently a member of a crew that goes by TBS. Other members seemed to have been involved in this.)

Located at 614 18th Avenue North, on the south wall of Horton Paper Services. Parking on a school day is little tight, and a lot of the street parking is presently taken up by construction workers who are building an extension to the school. Across the street is a heavily decorated semi-trailer that seems to be more or less permanently parked. I’ll feature some of that work later.

Abstract mural street art Nashville

September 9, 2016 0

Actually, kind of dry

Ordinarily, I’d use a better lit photo, but this is from the only set I have or ever will, because this installation has been erased. My photos from March 30 will have to do. There is a “moist” campaign in town. In The doomed graffiti wars of Madison Mills I noted the first instance of it in this blog, but there’s much more. A giant smokestack off the Jefferson Street bridge sports the word. And pay attention to electrical utility boxes. Often they have letters and numbers on them, made from those stickers you get at the hardware store, stuff that only makes sense to the electric company. Some clever folks have bought the same letters to add the word “moist.” Look around, you’ll find some.

This was located on a retaining wall just east of the Bagel Face at 700 Main Street, next to the Mapco at 702, behind the Turnip Truck on Woodland. You can still see traces, but every canvas has an owner.

September 6, 2016 1

Put another shovel on the fire

It’s Labor Day, so I’m going to be lazy and use this photo that popped up in my Facebook memories from last year. This is official Metro-funded public art, part of a series of works called “Watermarks” commissioned in the aftermath of the 2010 flood. “Tool Fire” (2013), situated on the Shelby Park Greenway near the pedestrian bridge, commemorates the volunteers who helped clean out homes, and the tools they would pile at the street for other volunteers who came later, according to the artist, Christopher Fennell. Not everyone is a fan, but for anyone climbing up the spiral to the bridge, it means you made it to the top, and it’s a nice place to sit.

Located just steps to the west of the Cumberland River Pedestrian Bridge, on the Shelby Bottoms (west) side. The closest parking is on the other side of the river, at the trailhead on Two Rivers Parkway at Wave Country Wave Pool and the Two Rivers Skatepark. Or rent a bike at Shelby Park and head up the greenway and give that hill a try!

September 5, 2016 0

A tale of two murals

The M&M Discount Liquor and Wine building on Gallatin is malleable. A quick perusal of Google street view reveals some of its iterations. But what I think most interesting are the two very different current murals. Here we have a brash, very visible advertisement for New Amsterdam Vodka, with its easily understood vocabulary of iconic buildings (and art!) from downtown Nashville. But around back…..Below you see a much more abstract mural, one hidden from view, easily missed even by customers of M&M or the auto parts store next door. A curious thing — but hardly the only hidden art in town.

UPDATE: Not sure why I did not originally notice the “UH” in this mural, so credit to the UH crew.

Located at 2828 Gallatin Pike, on the south and east walls of the building. Plenty of parking.

Graffiti street art mural

September 4, 2016 0

Here comes the sun!

Sometimes you just have to be patient. If I were a baseball player, I might just be able to throw a rock from my house and reach this mural, but then I’d probably hit one of the cars parked in front of it, and I don’t want to do that to my neighbors! But I finally got sight of it without cars and grabbed the shot. I think it’d be great if more homeowners did this — and it would help keep local artists in business!

Located at 1620 Gartland Avenue. Street parking available, though less when the nearby elementary school is loading or unloading students. This is a private home, so be respectful.

September 2, 2016 2

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Nashville murals, street art, graffiti, signs, sculptures and more

Month

September 2016