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The South Wall (Norf Wall gallery, part 9)

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Returning to an older project (almost finished!), here is the south outside wall of the old tire factory on Herman Street. This wall is almost entirely elaborate tags. Up on the second floor, there’s a tag for “UTL Krew.” The #utlcrew tag on Instagram reveals UTL to be a group of Atlanta artists, who use the Mibs and Seimr tags seen at the west end of the building. It would seem too they are responsible for Unsafe at any speed. At the far east of the wall, a UH tag appears, so locals were also involved in this working this wall. It’s somewhat overgrown, no doubt worse in the summer, but the tracks at least mean you don’t have to fight your way through vegetation. See Part 1 for more information on this site, and see the link for Part 1 on the map.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

Located at the north end of the 800 block of 19th Street N., at the corner of Herman Street. It’s impossible to miss. Street parking is very haphazard. There is a lot to see here, and also a lot of overgrown weeds (depending on the time of year) so wear the right shoes!

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Two sides of Dent Repair

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Gallatin Pike south of Briley Parkway is loaded with outdoor art. North of Briley, you have to look a little closer, dig a little deeper. That’s partly because of the greater number of chain stores north of Briley, but I suspect there are also differences in neighborhood culture. One place that stands out is Dent Repair of Nashville, which sits on a hill just south of the Rivergate shopping district, which is chock full of chain stores and precious little outdoor art. On the north side of Dent Repair is this mural of Lower Broad with the pearly gates to Honkytonk Heaven (which apparently is in East Nashville across the river). Waylon Jenning, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, and Johhny Cash grace an improbable scene – Lower Broad with no tourists. Where are the pedal taverns? No signature on this side. On the south side (below), a completely different mural of graffiti art that pays homage to Dent Repair itself, though like its companion on the north wall, it includes the Batman building. It seems to be signed “Nite 7 2015.” There do seem to be some other graffiti installations around town with that tag, but I can’t find an Instagram account or other page associated with it. The Google street view image shows only parts of this mural. That and the distinct styles suggest multiple artists. UPDATE: See the comment below for more information about the artist.

Located at 1414 Gallatin Pike North. There’s some street parking just south of Dent Repair, and a convenience store with lots of parking just north. Grab a soda and enjoy the art!

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The OMG/Wallpaper & Designer hidden gallery (Part 2, loading dock)

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More art from the backside of Old Made Good and Wallpaper & Designer Home Consignments. There are three walls here, though the loading bays on the east side are mostly devoid of art. Here on the north wall we see two panels, with some familiar names. On the left, the most prominent tag is Smok, which you see in a number of places around town. According to this Scene article, Smok is part of graffiti group known as the IA Crew. Whoever they are, they are prolific. The next panel is signed by Bryan Deese (Rex2) and Troy Duff (@duffomatic). Both artists are found all over town and have been featured on this blog before. On the south wall (see below), there’s a colorful piece with a name I’m not sure of. There’s also a spooky Troy Duff Nashville skyline and the first example in this blog of Ryan M. McCauley’s sleepless robot (RobotsNeverSleep). This particular Robot is not on his blog, but here is what looks like him painting this very robot on his Facebook page. And the only loading bay door with any art again has a tag that I must be misreading!

See the slideshow for individual pieces, and Part 1 for more information. See pin for Part 1 on the map.

Located at 3701 Gallatin Pike. OMG has scads and scads of parking and the area behind 3701 where the art is seems to be empty most of the time.

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A bird in the bush

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Some art is out in open, and some art is hidden. And some is just dang hard to get to – like this piece. To begin with, I don’t think I would have even seen it in the summer or fall. There’s a riot of vegetation right around it that usually would keep it covered. And it’s not anything you’d actually drive by. This is on the southwest side of a bridge on D.B. Todd that faces the backside of a warehouse. I caught a flash of color from over a block away; otherwise, I would have missed it. That riot of vegetation, even without leaves, made getting to it hard, and if it’s late summer, bring a machete. The piece has a few tags, notably TBS and SGK. While I couldn’t find information on those specifically, the Instagram account for magfour has a lot of #tbs tagged art and has the phrase “Takin By Surprise” in its motto. Not to mention several posts tagged #tennesseebombsquad. And this piece above is in fact posted at that account – so I think there’s a link. 🙂

Located on the SW corner of the bridge on D.B. Todd  Blvd. about a block north of Jo Johnston Avenue, near MLK Jr. Magnet School, and south of Herman St. This is just south of the Norf Wall project (for which I still have another four or five posts to finish up). Wear jeans and tough shoes, and in the warmer months, be prepared to really push your way through the greenery. This is definitely hidden art. I didn’t try it, but it looks like you might be able to walk along the south fence surrounding the warehouse on 19th Ave (600 block) that backs up to this mural.

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The OMG/Wallpaper & Designer hidden gallery (Part 1, west wall)

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Make a point of driving behind commercial buildings from time to time, especially if they are local shops, not chains. Often you find nothing, and sometimes you find a universe. The building that contains Old Made Good and Wallpaper & Designer Home Consignments is one of those universe places. This a place no one who doesn’t need to use the loading docks at W&D is likely to find. You might also notice these works if you park around back of American Tuxedo and Bridal, but this is pretty solidly hidden art. Thousands of people drive past on Gallatin every day and never notice. I’m breaking this one up into multiple posts mostly because of bad shadows on some of my pics. I will try to hit this place in the morning sometime soon to get some better shots of the rest of it. The art is these pics is less than half of what’s on site. I’m not sure of the artists behind the work on this wall, but there are a couple of Troy Duff pieces on the other walls that I’ll feature once I get some better photos.

UPDATE: I can’t change the URL, but this is the west wall, not east as I originally wrote.

Part 2

Located at 3701 Gallatin Pike. OMG has scads and scads of parking and the area behind 3701 where the art is seems to be empty most of the time.

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A flower grows in East Nashville

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A vibrant flower seen on a gloomy gray Nashville day. This just popped up in the last day or so. I couldn’t get the surrounding tags because of parked cars, but I’m not sure how long this will be up and the tags were fairly routine. I’ll try to add them to this post later.

UPDATE: This has been replaced with a large-scale mural, which I will blog about whenever I can get a picture of it without the trailer that has been parked in front of it for months.

Located on the back (north) side of Maker Nashville at 947 Woodland Street, but facing the alley between Woodland and Main Street, not Woodland itself. Visible from Main Street. There’s parking in the alley, though it all belongs to surrounding businesses, so be polite.

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Be happy! (Norf Wall gallery, part 8)

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Sometimes the light dawns. This piece carries the Rasmo tag you see in a lot of graffiti art installations around town, which is also often found with the “UH” tag. Gee, I wonder what “UH” might stand for. (Well, it actually seems to be used to mean many things.) Turns out #uhcrew is a tag on Instagram, and I need to go back and retag several of my posts. Learn something new every day. This is part of the huge installation I’ve been doling out in pieces at the old tire factory between 19th and 18th Avenues North near Herman Street. This piece faces south is on the southwest side of the complex, visible from 19th. The piece below is at right angles to the one above, facing west. See Part 1 for more information on this site, and see the link for Part 1 on the map.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

Located at the north end of the 800 block of 19th Street N., at the corner of Herman Street. It’s impossible to miss. Street parking is very haphazard. There is a lot of art to see here, and also a lot of overgrown weeds (depending on the time of year) so wear the right shoes!

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