Lost Art Archives - Page 5 of 15 - nashville public art

The drops of Saint Stephen

Saint Stephen mural street art Nashville

This work is by the youngest artist I’ve ever featured on this blog, save those murals that were collaborations between adults and children, such as my most recent post. Drew T. Morrison’s website doesn’t give his exact age, but a friend who knows the family tells me that Morrison is eleven or twelve years old. On his website and his Instagram account, you can see he’s already quite accomplished, and also that this piece is much calmer than most of his other work. It’s found in the outdoor seating area of Saint Stephen, the new Germantown restaurant owned by James Beard Award-winning chef RJ Cooper. Before Cooper took over the site, it was home to a restaurant called Mop/Broom. Mop/Broom also had a mural on this wall, by Nathan Brown. I never managed to get it on the blog or even photograph it, but it is preserved on Brown’s Instagram account (that’s a multi-photo post, so be sure to scroll through). A new owner often means new art, that’s not unusual.

Located at 1300 Third Avene North. The mural is in the patio on the back (north) side of the building. Street parking is available, but you might have to walk a block or two.

November 20, 2019 0

Molly Green

This building at the corner of Main Street and McFerrin has undergone a lot of changes in recent years. It’s been a couple of failed clubs and a boutique clothing store. It’s been completely white and completely black – at which time it served as a canvas for one of Emily Miller’s wheatpaste creations. For the last couple of years, it’s been home to a branch of Molly Green, a local fashion line. And perhaps befitting the lively styles that Molly Green sells (and no, that’s not actually the name of a person associated with the fashion line), the building now sports a very colorful mural from Eastside Murals. As I mentioned in my post about their mural for Bearded Iris Brewing, it has a passing resemblance to that mural, with the many dots and the snaking lines. But here those dots and lines are found on a tie-dye canvas, as opposed to the crisp black one at Bearded Iris. The mural actually wraps around the building, so there’s much more than seen in the featured photo (see slide show below). If you look close on the right, you can see a piece of the graffiti art mural featured in A few words and then who knows.

UPDATE: This building was destroyed by the March 3, 2020 tornado.

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Located at 918 Main Street, at the corner with McFerrin Avenue. There is street parking on McFerrin, more of it on the north side of Main. When Molly Green is open, the west-facing side and the back end of the east side the building often have cars parked in front of them.

November 16, 2019 0

Hunt Supply Co.

When is hidden art not hidden art? When it’s only visible from an alleyway, but that alleyway has a fair amount of foot traffic. Hunt Supply Co. supplies all your skateboarding needs and is found in an alley a couple doors back behind Beyond the Edge in the Five Points district. According to Google Maps, the alley is called “#929 Alley.” As a long-time resident of Lockeland Springs, which borders Five Points, this is news to me. Hunt Supply has been in place for a few years, long enough to acquire multiple stages of art. For some time, there was an Emily Miller wheat-pasted and skateboarding paper wolf just below the sign (see at the bottom). The current work is by David Wright of Manecoon Sign Company and an artist he credits as @_wanted_1 on Instagram (that account has no pictures or information). It features a western scene, which may or may not have much to do with skateboarding, but the wolf at the end mimics Miller’s piece. If you check out the Instagram page of Jason Hunt, the store’s owner, you’ll see a fair amount of wolf imagery, and the shop dog, Harley, has something of wolf-like look. There’s a large sign in the back which was also done by Wright.

UPDATE: This building and all its art was destroyed by the March 3, 2020 tornado.

Hunt Supply sign mural street art Nashville

Located at 118 South 11th Street D. The “D” means “behind.” There is a path that reaches from 11th to Hunt Supply, but the real front of Hunt Supply, and the main mural, faces the alley. The alley can be reached from the 1000 block Woodland Street between Five Points Pizza (at 1012) and Boston Common, aka Batter’d & Fried (at 1008 A). It can also be accessed from the 1000 block of Russell Street, next to the YMCA Community Action Program building at 1021, or from the paid parking lot next to Beyond the Edge.

Hunt Supply mural wolf street art Nashville

November 11, 2019 0

Bearded Iris Brewing, Makeover Edition

In January 2017, just a few months after starting this blog, I wrote about an interesting wall of graffiti on the rear side of Bearded Iris Brewing. I even called it “Part 1,” because I intended to come back and write about the less interesting graffiti on the building that faced that back wall of Bearded Iris, on the other side of the Cumberland River Greenway. Well, that building got torn down to make way for a parking lot, and the graffiti was replaced by this giant sign for Bearded Iris done by Eastside Murals. (The graffiti off to the left is still there, and might get a blog post someday.) This mural is reminiscent of another recent work by Eastside Murals covering the entirety of the Molly Green building at McFerrin Ave and Main Street. While the color scheme is quite different, that work also features thick flowing lines and large circles. I recently got good photos of it, so look for it on the blog soon. The featured photo above is angled because, as you can see below, trying to take a photo straight on mostly just gets you a picture of trees! The Bearded Iris Brewing logo, which you can see in the upper right of the mural and on the tanks located on the front of the building, doesn’t look much like a bearded iris flower to me but more like a stylized fleur-de-lis. Your mileage may vary.

Located at 101 Van Buren Street. The mural faces east, along the Cumberland River Greenway. There is a paid parking lot directly in front of it, but you can probably park for free for a little while in Bearded Iris’s parking lot (look for the tanks), longer if you stop in for a brew!

October 23, 2019 0

Jerry’s Artarama

Of course an art supply store has a mural. This is particularly true if that art supply store is in Nashville. When the Nashville branch of Jerry’s Aratama moved from Antioch to East Nashville two years ago, it acquired a mural even before it opened. The mural appropriately features many of the colors you might want to create art from, pouring out of tubes of the primary colors, red, blue and…wait, yellow? Ok, not actually the primary colors. But you can get green from blue and yellow, so close enough. The main mural is a joint work by Hannah Holgate, who has been on this blog before, and Marshall Hall, who is making his debut here. Both Holgate and Hall work in the frame shop at this store. I live in this neighborhood, and pass this mural every day, so why has it taken two years to put this very obvious mural on the blog? I got pictures of it a long time ago, but after that, the artists added their signatures, so I needed new ones. And the combination of an empty parking lot and good light eluded me for months. But it is just as well, as I can add the tubes of paint Hall recently put in every parking space (minus the handicapped spaces). There are eighteen in all, and all a little different. This is a very art dense spot, and as a result, this may be the most image dense article on this blog! It’s worth noting that Jerry’s Artarama is a national chain, breaking the rule that national chains don’t so local outdoor art. But of course, this is an art supply chain, and that rule is beginning to break in Nashville anyway. The slideshows below are 1) closeups of the mural and 2) four sets of the paint tubes, running east to west. There are also some signs in the parking lot, painted on artist’s palettes. You might notice some pallets (not the artist kind but the moving stuff kind) in a couple photos – those seem to be a permanent feature of the site.

UPDATE: The main mural on the wall, including the corrugated metal door, was severely damaged in the March 3, 2020 tornado. Most of it was lost, and what’s left of it will probably have to be replaced. One of the signs was damaged, but the parking lot is fine. See What we lost in the storm.

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Located at 713 Main Street. Obviously, there is parking, though you will inevitably park on top of some art. A good strategy is to get there before they are open (10:00 am every day except Sunday when they open at noon) and park next door.

October 12, 2019 0

With a Capitol View

Graffiti Capitol street art mural Nashville

It’s been a while since I’ve put any “wild” graffiti on the blog, but this one caught my eye recently and I really like it. That skull in the middle of the tag is common in Nashville graffiti. A good example is the one featured in Staying power. This tag was surprisingly difficult to research because it lies in the midst of a massive development project, Capitol View. Capitol View lies on the north side of the part of Charlotte Avenue that was recently renamed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, centered on 11th Avenue. When fully finished, it will take up six entire blocks running between MLK Blvd and Clinton Street three blocks north, while bordered by George L. Davis Blvd to the west and the railroad that roughly parallels 10th Avenue to the east. And about 10th Avenue – many of us have come to rely on Google Maps to stay up to date, but as of this writing it very much isn’t, (but it might be by the time you click that) and I could not make what I remember seeing jibe with the map. At one time, Gay Street crossed 10th Avenue and went under a railroad bridge to connect to a large, decrepit parking lot. That lot is now “Building E” of Capitol View and has a big sign on it that says “500,” as it’s official address is 500 11th Avenue. And the stretch of 10th that used to run between Nelson Merry Street and Lifeway Plaza? It’s been turned into an almost-finished park, that according to Capitol View’s Master Plan, will apparently be open to the public and linked to the greenway system. To get it, you have to go under the bridge, right where this graffiti is. Which means this graffiti probably counts as endangered art. Check it out soon.

UPDATED: This has been painted over.

Located just east of 500 11th Avenue. There is a driveway that runs between Lifeway Plaza and Nelson Merry and parallels the railroad, and the underpass where this is found is right in the middle of that stretch. There is an entrance to a parking garage right in front of it where you should able to park as a visitor for short periods of time.

October 2, 2019 0

Never quiet your roar

MK Fitness mural street art Nashville

A few months ago a small mural appeared on Main Street next to the entrance door to MK Fitness, run by personal trainer Mike Krajewski. It’s by Rachel Deeb, a photographer, artist and graphic designer who has appeared on this blog once before, in the post Put up your dukes!. That too is a mural linked to a physical training place, though in that case for Title Boxing Club. While that mural was very clearly about boxing, this one is more abstract. If you scroll down to “Prints” on this page from Deeb’s site, you’ll see a very similar print to this design. The tag, which I’m using for the title of this article, seems to indeed be the title of the work, as that’s the only thing it’s associated with on Instagram. Included in those links is a video showing Deeb creating the mural.

UPDATE: While this mural survived the March 3, 2020 tornado, the building it was on was severely damaged and has since been demolished.

Located at 715 Main Street. The mural is on the front of the building at the east end, and it faces west, towards downtown. If no parking is available in front, there are for now two closed shops next door (to the east) you can park at.

September 14, 2019 1

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