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Foolish pleasure

Beaujolais mural street art Nasville

Every year, Georges Debouef wines holds a contest for the art that will be on their label for the most recent vintage of Debouef Beaujolais. The winner in 2018 with her work “Foolish Pleasure” was Chloé Meyer, an artist with roots in Nashville and San Franciso. How a mural version of it wound up outside of Nicky’ Coal Fired Pizza I’m not sure – whether they or the owners of the Stocking 51 building gave permission for it I do not know. Certainly, it’s a wonderful splash of color in an area that while gentrifying and increasingly full of outdoor art, still displays its industrial legacy strongly. It’s a nice reminder of summer in these winter days.

UPDATE: This mural has been replaced.

There’s also a “For Becks” lego man on the other side of Nicky’s, in the ramp going up to the local branch of Frothy Monkey. These have been popping up around town – see this example below.

Lego man mural street art Nashville

Located at 5026 Centinneal Boulevard. There’s parking there and along 51st Avenue North.

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Tin Dog

Nashville street art mural "Welcome to Old Nashville"

Welcome to Old Nashville. That’s an interesting greeting for Tin Dog Tavern to make. On the one hand, it’s relatively new, having opened in 2014. But it’s also true that there’s been a dive bar on this corner of 4th Avenue South for a while. Before it was Tin Dog, it was Purple Heys, and before that, it was TC’s Triangle (the building is triangle shaped). Tin Dog sits in an interesting place. It lies on the border between Wedgewood-Houston and Chestnut Hill, two rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods that still have significant chunks of their older versions. Warehouses, factories, auto repair places and low-income housing sit side-by-side with art galleries and some of the newest high-end housing in town. Just south, the Fairgrounds are poised to become home to Nashville’s major league soccer stadium. Compared to all that, Tin Dog is very much Old Nashville. It’s anyone’s guess how long it, or some succeeding dive bar, will stick it out. The sign is an Eastside Murals creation. On the other side of the building is a graffiti installation that bears tags from the UH crew. (See below).

UPDATE: This building has been renovated and all of this work has been painted over.

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Graffiti street art tags Nashville

Graffiti street art Nashville

Graffiti street art Nashville Tin Dog

Located at 1401 4th Avenue South, at the corner with Rains Avenue. The Welcome to Nashville mural faces Rains Ave. The graffiti mural is on the south side of the building, facing an alleyway. Tin Dog has parking, much of it right in front of the mural. If you want to find the mural car-free, try early in the morning.

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Flower balm

Walden Lips mural street art Nashville

UPDATE: Some months after this post went up, the artist expanded on the original mural. The original is below.

Back when the spot now occupies by Walden was home to The Hop Stop, there was a first a mural for The Hop Stop on the building housing the bar, and then later another Hop Stop mural appeared across from it on the building where the East Tattoo Collective is found. Now Walden has followed suit, with another Tara Marie Aversa mural to go with the one on the Walden building. (There’s also one inside.) The hashtag is #flowerbalm, hence the blog title, but I did try to come up with something clever about the Rolling Stones. Did you know they had an album called Flowers? News to me – learn something new every day!

Lip and flowers mural street art Nashville

Located at 2913 Gallatin Pike, on the south side of the building. There is plenty of parking, but it’s a pay lot. There is no nearby free street parking.

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The lost art of Bongo East, Part 1

LeahDancers.jpg

One of the first murals in town that really grabbed my attention was this one and the one of a boxer next to it. It sat on the north wall of Bongo East, the Five Points branch of the Bongo Java empire. I tried to post about it before, but I realized the only photos I had of it were slightly out of focus (it’s most notable if you look at the signature and tags on the right). And I never got a new picture before construction started in the lot in front of it. I had hoped to photograph it again, as it seemed to be destined to face an open courtyard, but I saw recently that it had been painted over, a white blank wall taking its place. I suppose it clashed with the esthetic of the new building. Interestingly, it’s by Leah Tumerman, the same artist who did the bear mural on the side of Eastside Cycles, which replaced the mural in the banner of this blog, and was somewhat controversial, which I wrote about in one of my very first posts on this blog. This piece is called “Deeply Dimensional Women,” and you can find more pictures of it and close-ups on Timerman’s website. (Interestingly, her large photo of it also seems out of focus on the signature and tags.) The tags include one for Color Theory Studios, so Tinsley Dempsy likely was involved in getting this mural produced. The boxer mural you see in the photo below by Eastside Murals seems to have also been destroyed. It’s certainly blocked from view by the new building. I’ll devote another post to it later.

Construction

Located at 107 Sout 11th Street, or at least it was. The tomato-fist mural still exists, and you can see it from the sidewalk. I’ll post about it later as well. This is Five Points. There is free parking on some of the side streets, but you may have to walk a bit.

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Village

VillageClose

Art breeds art. That seems to be very true in the burgeoning outdoor art scene in Nashville. When Darek Bell of Corsair Distillery and Bell and Associates Construction bought the Continental Machinery Movers complex on Centennial Boulevard, he told the Nashville Post of his plans to include art in the development.

To recognize the evolving character of the neighborhood, Bell said he plans to work with local artists to add a large mural on the building’s Centennial Boulevard face. He pointed to the Silo Bend mural, located nearby, as an “instant landmark that garnered national attention” as a model of sorts.

Village Realty is an early client in the building (that story is at this moment behind a paywall), thus the “village” of this very new mural by Eastside Murals. The mural references a number of well known Nashville sights: the Ghost Ballet sculpture (more commonly known as “the thing down at the river that looks like a broken roller coaster”), the sign outside The Nations Bar and Grill, the Betty Boots sign, the Batman Building, the Ryman, and our very own Greek temple, the Parthenon at Centennial Park. This is the first time I have seen the Stix sculpture referenced as a local landmark in a Nashville mural. Maybe people are getting used to it!

UPDATE: This building has been demolished as part of a development project.

VillageFull

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Located at 4717 Centinneal Boulevard. At present, the parking lot is fenced though usually open. The nearest safe street parking is on 49th Avenue North.

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Impermanent, The Nations

MPSouthFull

And the blog is back! How about a whole lot of art to celebrate? Back in April, there was an art show at an old warehouse in The Nations whose only indication of its past is a damaged sign that seems to have once read “Motor Parts.” The show was carried out by Impermanent, which bills itself as “a collective of artists who are displaying their talents in the world of subversive and immersive art within an uninhibiting environment,” and was done in partnership with Nashville Civic Design Center and The Oasis Real Foundation. The show produced art both inside and out at the warehouse. This blog covers outdoor art, but you can see some of the creations inside in this video. Some of the work on the outside features tags associated with the UH crew. There is one piece signed by Brandon Donahue (look for the “inkblot” image that is the second image in the South Wall slideshow below). On the Impermanent website, the orange face above is credited to Sterbo and based on style, the mouse on the south wall and the mouse and head on the north wall appear to be the work of Adam Hale, while the ice cream-colored scene around the orange face fits the style of Kevin Bongang. Presumably, the other artists listed on Impermanent’s Who page (UPDATE: Their website has no longer exists) were also involved in producing the outdoor art. (I really should have gone to this show – I’d be better informed. It must have been laundry night!) Go check it out soon. An abandoned warehouse in the go-go-go real estate market of The Nations won’t last long.

UPDATE: These murals have been painted over.

East Wall, left to right.

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South Wall, left to right.

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West Wall, full, then left to right.

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North Wall, left to right

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Located at 1211 57th Avenue North. Street parking is available.

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Abracadabra

HPMain

This is a tale of two murals and two stores. The Hokus Pokus mural by Music City Murals on Gallatin advertises the vape store of the same name. The MCM guys must be really proud of it, as they use it as the cover art on their Facebook page. Hokus Pokus has also used the design in a billboard farther south on Gallatin. Before this mural, however, there used to be a graffiti art mural here with the “Betor” tag, he of Betor Forever. I thought I had my own photograph of it, but I can’t find it, so I’ve posted a Google street view shot below. But wait, there’s more! Sage and Serpent is a tattoo parlor in the same building, and below I include their interesting sign and an image that is posted on the back of the building. I don’t know who did either, but I would hazard a guess it’s one or both of the two artists who own Sage and Serpent.

HPold

Located at 4118 Gallatin Pike. The main mural is on the north side of the building, while the Sage and Serpent sign is on the front and the image of a hand is on the back side. There is plenty of parking in front and back of the building.

 

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