Murals Archives - Page 13 of 91 - nashville public art

Tomato Art Fest, 2020

So much that is so different in 2020, so many things lost. For most of us, the social part of life has been greatly diminished since mid March, both on a personal and a community scale. Certainly, the raucous Tomato Arts Fest that comes to the Lockeland Springs neighborhood in East Nashville each August was tampered down a great deal by the pandemic. Instead of massive crowds dressed in red and green down at Five Points, a Porch Parade of cars, some decked out in green and red, brought the fest to the people, music blaring.

Of course, it’s an arts fest, and there was still tomato-themed art to find and buy. One piece in particular you can’t exactly buy but you can admire is this fence by Tarabella Aversa. It’s on 17th Street, which explains the “Love the One 7” motto. It’s not the first Tomato Arts Fest fence, those have been seen before, like the one featured in Robots don’t care about veggies. And it’s certainly not Aversa’s first fence mural. I featured another one by her recently in One Way. Fence art is becoming a little more common, and I’ll be posting more soon.

Hopefully, the Tomato Arts Fest will be back in all of its full glory next August. Whatever happens, I’ll be documenting any outdoor art it produces.

Located at 1800 Eastland Avenue. That’s the address of the house. The mural actually faces 17th Street North, along the 500 block, near the corner with Eastland. There is street parking available on 17th. This is a private home, so please be respectful.

October 3, 2020 0

2nd Avenue AT&T Art Wall – Erin Elise Laughlin

UPDATE: This and all the murals in this series were destroyed in the Christmas Day Bombing.

Working left to right on the wall of window murals at the AT&T Central Office on 2nd Avenue (not to be confused with the more famous AT&T building in Nashville, the Batman Building on Commerce Street) the second work is by Erin Elise Laughlin.

It’s part of series of murals on the building sponsored by AT&T, the Nashville Downtown Partnership, The DISTRICT, Nashville Metro Arts Commission, and The Studio 208. All are done by women, and the project was curated by Ashley Segroves of The Studio 208. They are all on vinyl, and went up in the summer of 2018. This one seems to have faded a little bit, if you compare it to what it looked like when it first went in. Or it might just be my photo. Here’s a recent video of her work using a pouring technique, but she also uses other methods.

You can see the other murals in this series (once I’ve posted them all, there are eight in all) using the links below. There’s a bit more information about the project in Part 1.

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

This is how it looks alongside some of the other murals. Laughlin’s is in the middle of the nearest set

Located at 185 2nd Avenue North. This is downtown – lots of parking, almost none of it free.

October 1, 2020 8

Dolly at The Five Spot

This mural of Dolly Parton by Kim Radford is only a little more than a month old, but’s already made quite a splash. Lots of people have posted it to social media, and the Tennessean did a story about it. The pandemic has probably stifled its reach a bit, but pandemics come and go, Dolly is forever.

The mural came about in part out of social media. Radford had a deal to do a similar mural for a downtown honky-tonk, but when that fell through, she turned to social media, and soon The Five Spot, an East Nashville music venue near Five Points, offered its wall. Like a lot of local music venues, The Five Spot remains closed. If you want to help them out, they have a GoFundMe account. As of publication, they are at $23,000 of a $75,000 goal.

Right when Radford was doing the mural, Billboard magazine published an interview with Parton in which she expressed support for Black Lives Matter.

“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she says. “And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

Radford added part of the quote to the mural, starting with “of course,” and substituting Parton’s signature butterflies for the S’s in “ass.”

Kim Radford, by the way, only got really active doing outdoor murals in Nashville about a year ago or so. Since then, she’s become one of the more prolific of our local artists. In particular, she’s done a series of pieces for Grimey’s New and Pre-Loved Music I hope to feature soon.

This mural is on my street, and I might have put it up sooner, except that small parking lot in front of it is often full. You might have your best luck early in the morning.

Located at 1006 Forrest Avenue. The mural faces east, away from downtown and nearby Gallatin Road. There is street parking on the 1100 block of Forrest and other streets nearby.

September 28, 2020 1

Bubbles at Capitol View

This is one of four murals either by or involving Anthony Billups of Music City Murals that are found at the Capitol View complex: this one, the ones I featured in Spread Love and Riding!, and a set of murals at Frankie Pierce Park he collaborated on with Olasubomi Aka-Bashorun, which I will feature soon. I thought I’d put this one up now because, more so than most outdoor art, it’s inevitably temporary.

I did not realize when I posted Spread Love that both it and the bubble mural are on panels covering the windows of an empty retail space. Rather than have the windows look like part of construction site, the management at Capitol View opted for art. But of course, someday that space will be rented, and the panels will come down. I imagine the pandemic has slowed interest from retailers and restaurateurs for the time being. Note the padlock above the train engine, and you’ll realize there’s a door in this mural.

Of course, since they are on panels, it’s entirely possible that both murals will be repurposed. Hopefully, Capitol View will find some use for them once the space is rented.

The mural may not have been specifically designed for people to get their picture in front of, but there is an obvious pose! (Especially if you can jump.) The train references the rail line just a block east, and the jumble of buildings from Nashville’s skyline is roughly what you would see if you could look east to downtown without obstructions.

Located on the 400 block of 11th Avenue North, right next to the Clean Juice at 412 11th Ave N. There’s some street parking on 11th and nearby, and you can access free parking (meant for the businesses in the building) off the alley on the east side of the building, towards the State Capitol.

September 26, 2020 0

Walls for Women: Miss Wynta-Amor Rogers

I’ve been featuring a lot of older art of late, so here’s something new. DMA (it stands for “Do More Art”) is a collective dedicated to promoting outdoor art, namely murals. Their first big project is called “Walls for Women,” which has seen murals go up all over the state this summer in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women’s suffrage, and of course it was Tennessee’s ratification of the amendment on August 18, 1919 that enabled its passage. All the artists for the project have been women, and the murals focus on women and issues from women’s lives.

The Nashville entry is by Sarah Painter, who did the portraits, and Cymone Wilder, who did the lettering. Painter is a Florida artist, while Wilder is based here in Nashville. Their mural is named after its young subject, Wynta-Amor Rogers, a seven-year-old Long Island girl whose participation in Black Lives Matter protests resulted in a viral video.

The mural features the quote “They buried us but they didn’t know we were seeds.” That quote is also featured in a big community mural off Main Street I wrote about in We Are Seeds. It’s a variation on a line from the Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.

The larger project is spread out across Tennessee and has many sponsors. The primary sponsor for this mural was Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery, on whose wall in Marathon Village the mural is found. The curator for the project is Kristin Luna, one of DMA’s founders. In her blog announcement of the artists for Walls for Women, you can see just how white and plain this wall was before. It very much cried out for art. (Scroll down to near the bottom of the post.) Apparently this is the largest mural in the project. As far as I know, the portrait of an adult woman does not reference a specific person.

Because of trees in the park across the street, it’s impossible to take a clean image of the mural straight on, but below is my best effort.

Located at 1414 Clinton Street. That’s the address of the distillery. The mural faces the 600/700 block of 16th Avenue North, and the portrait of the adult woman sits at the corner of 16th and Clinton. There is some street parking on Clinton, and paid parking is also found on Clinton.

September 19, 2020 0

Third and Lindsley Part 1 – Find Your Look

Just a few days ago, I featured a mural at the independent music venue The East Room. Today, it’s the turn of the venerable Third and Lindsley, which has been in operation for almost 30 years. The anniversary comes up in February, but in announcing their reopening for October 1, the management speculated about not holding the anniversary party until September, because they’ve been closed for six months. Let’s hope the re-opening works out for them. Any music venue shutting down would be a loss, but it’s hard to imagine Nashville without Third and Lindsley.

As any Nashville icon should, Third and Lindsley has art. In total, there are three outdoor murals, two relatively new ones by the artist who goes by Blue Hayden Art, and an older sign painted on a retaining wall. I say relatively – the two Blue Hayden pieces went in about a year ago. Both are part of a trend I’ve noted before, murals very specifically designed for people to stand in front of and get their picture taken. I’ve taken the title for my post from an Instagram post from the artist that shows people doing just that (swipe to the second picture).

This one is related to those paintings of groups of people with cutouts that you can stand behind and stick your face in. Here you stand in front, under one of the hats, grabbing one of the instruments. It’s really designed for a group to participate in, which make sense if you know how things work at Third and Lindsley. Crowds waiting to get into the venue line up in front of this wall, so for a show night, at least before social distancing, groups were already standing in front of this spot anyway!

I’ll feature the other two mural over the next couple of weeks or so. I once said I’d never do series posts again (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, etc.) but some projects really require it.

Part 2

Located at 818 3rd Avenue South, at the corner with, you guessed it, Lindsley Avenue. There is very limited street parking, and a pay lot. During the day on weekends it’s easy to park at neighboring businesses.

September 17, 2020 0

2nd Avenue AT&T Art Wall – Beth Inglish

UPDATE: This and all the murals in this series were destroyed in the Christmas Day Bombing.

Back in the summer of 2018, a group of women artists in Nashville created a series of abstract murals to spruce up the drab exterior of the AT&T building. No, not the Batman Building on Commerce Street, but the giant brick AT&T Central Office on 2nd Avenue. It contains offices as well as phone and cable service infrastructure, and is almost windowless. On an otherwise colorful and lively 2nd Avenue, it is something of massive, dull box. The colorful, playful murals provide a nice contrast to the the more severe building.

The murals are the product of a collaboration between AT&T, the Nashville Downtown Partnership, The DISTRICT, Nashville Metro Arts Commission, and The Studio 208. Specifically, AT&T participated through the Women of AT&T organization, reflecting perhaps that all of the artists for the project are women. Ashley Segroves of The Studio 208 curated the murals. The murals are all abstract, and are meant to display positivity, playfulness, and cheerfulness.

I’m going to post them in a series, running left to right (south to north). The first of these, featured above, is by Beth Inglish, a prolific local artist and founder of the Nashville Creative Group. Like all the murals, it was printed as a series of posters, and placed on what had been empty windows on the ground floor of the AT&T building. (Here’s a gif of it being installed.) It features the dynamic swirling lines and bold colors found in much of the rest of her work.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting the other murals in the series. There are eight in all. Below is a shot that gives you a better idea of the context of these murals. Though it looks like winter, I actually took the photo below in April, 2019. Some of the photos for this series were taken then, others in March, 2020.

UPDATE: I’ve been told by the artist that this is based on a larger work done on canvas that is as of press time still available.

You can see the other murals in this series (once I’ve posted them all, there are eight in all) using the links below.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Located at 185 2nd Avenue North. Inglish’s mural is at the south end of the building, near a parking garage. This is downtown – lots of parking, almost none of it free.

September 14, 2020 8

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