Murals Archives - Page 33 of 91 - nashville public art

Weiss Murals, Part 1 – East Nashville

East Nashville mural street art Nashville

There are two quite distinct murals on the backside of Weiss Liquors. The first one, featured above, is very obviously in the style of Michael Cooper of Murals and More. I have to say a couple of times I passed by and thought people were standing in front of it, but of course, that’s Cooper’s usual trompe-l’oeil style. A banner reading “East Nashville” is being put up on the wall by a couple of Weiss employees, while a dog and a couple of musicians hang out. The other mural, which I will feature in a later post, is in a very different style, and at first, I did not know who did it. But it turns out it’s also by Cooper, as you can see on his website with a series of photos showing the process by which Cooper and his team made the murals. You can also see a Jason Galaz piece in the background which will be on the blog as soon as I get around to writing part two of Crying Wolf, Part 1. And below, you can also see the Weiss sign which I featured in A true Nashville survivor. For that matter you can see above mural number two – I didn’t crop it out completely in order that the featured photo would work right with Facebook shares. It references the Tomato Arts Fest next week, and I’ll feature it then.

Part 2

Located at 824 Main Street. The mural faces the alley on the back of the building. There is of course parking at Weiss, and at the storage center next door, which is a pay lot. The Weiss parking lot can be tricky on weekend evenings.

July 27, 2019 1

Hands of charity

Hands mural street art Nashville

For decades, there’s been a homeless encampment hidden under the Spring Street bridge near the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Main Street. The city knocks it down from time to time, but it always gets rebuilt. And for over 35 years, a church nearby, Holy Name Catholic Church, housed in the building that hosts this mural, has provided meals for the homeless, both from the camp and elsewhere. The Loaves and Fishes program was founded by Father Charles Strobel, who first opened the doors of the church to the homeless in the winter of ’85-’86 when, after a recent round of the city tearing down the camp, some of its residents camped out in the church’s parking lot. This ultimately led to both the founding of Loaves and Fishes and also Room in the Inn, in which a number of Nashville churches cooperate to provide shelter and other services to the homeless. Recently, the parish center building that houses Loaves and Fishes was renamed in Father Strobel’s honor. Strobel, who retired some years ago, also recently received the Joe Kraft Humanitarian Award, one of Nashville’s most prestigious awards. (Seriously, check out the list of honorees on that page.) This mural, by the artist who signs his work “Little Stone,” shows open, giving hands in front of a basket weave, evoking a basket that might hold food, a perfect symbol of the church’s charitable work.

Located at 521 Woodland Street. That’s actually the address of the main church building. The Strobel Building (which is not yet labeled as such) is at the back of a neighboring parking lot. The mural itself faces Main Street, across from the Stacks on Main complex. You can often park in the church parking lot at Sixth and Main, though probably not during mass. There is street parking available on Sixth Street.

July 24, 2019 0

Basquiat on West End

Basquiat mural street art Nashville JamersonSGC

West End is not the kind of territory you find a lot of outdoor art in – too much Vanderbilt, too many chains and high-end businesses. But on the backside of the West End Rite Aid next to the spot that Joy’s Flowers recently vacated (and is now labeled “Gyros Kitchen,” though the restaurant doesn’t seem to have opened yet), there is now this exuberant tribute to Jean-Michael Basquait. Basquait was an American artist of Puerto Rican and Haitian descent who died in 1988. He has been deeply influential in American art, graffiti, and hip hop culture. Ironically for a highly political artist who critiqued American power structures and inequality, one of his works became the most expensive work by an American artist ever sold at auction. “Untitled” (1982) sold for $110.5 million in a 2017 Sotheby’s auction. This portrait by the artist JamersonSGC may be based on an Andy Warhol photo held by the J. Paul Getty Museum. A lot of Jamerson’s work is in the Lafayette/Napier Homes neighborhood, but recently his work has also appeared here on West End, on Jefferson Street, and on Charlotte Avenue.

Located at 2416 West End Avenue. That’s the address of the Rite Aid. The mural is on the east side of the building. This is not an easy neighborhood to park in, though there are a number of nearby businesses whose lots you can use for a short period of time.

July 20, 2019 0

A few words and then who knows

This is an old graffiti mural on Main Street in East Nashville I have passed many times thinking, “I should put that on the blog,” but I never got around to. It was an old reliable I could always do some other day. Well, not anymore. RECORD SCRATCH! Stop! I got this building confused with the one next door, that hosts Holleman Transmission. THAT building is soon to be replaced with a new boutique hotel. But not apparently this one. So the blog post I wrote and have now rewritten about this mural about to be gone, along with the others on the building, was wrong. For the moment. Those murals, by the way, are one by Eastside Murals featured in The cats are loose that is on the back of the building, and an Andee Rudloff piece featured in Or could just watch the video on the opposite side from this graffiti mural. I wrote originally that all would be lost, but not so fast. That said, I wouldn’t count on this property staying quiet for too long in go-go Nashville. This piece has tags for the UH crew, and there are others, such as ICR, Tier, Rasmo, Saeph, and Left, but as usual, some of the tags are a mystery to me. So I’d go ahead and get your photos because you never know.

UPDATE: When Holloman Transmission was torn down, this mural became much more visible. Presumably, it will soon be hidden by new construction.

Located at 914 Main Street. The mural is on the east side of the building, facing an alley. For now, you can park for free in front of the building. Once construction starts next door, that might be complicated.

July 17, 2019 1

“One day I will rescue your brother, too.”

Sometimes I present brand new art on this blog, or things very few people have seen, and sometimes it’s something everyone has long known about. The dog and children mural near 6th and Church downtown is definitely one of those. There are reasons. When I first started this blog (around the time this mural was created in 2016) I found the big murals downtown a little intimidating to write about. Eventually, I got over that, but the dog mural remained an issue. It’s impossible to photograph the entire mural head-on unless you are ten feet tall (I am not) or you own a drone (I don’t), and I was never satisfied with my photos. Even the artists’ photo of it on their Instagram account, clearly taken on a ladder, clips a bit of it off. Who are the artists? Well, there is only one signature on this mural – “Herakut.” That, however, turns out to be a team of two German artists, Hera (Jasmin Siddiqui) and Akut (Falk Lehmann). Animals and children populate a lot of their work, certainly in their murals, often with some kind of commentary. Here in their Nashville mural, a giant dog has rescued a little girl from an addiction to her phone, one that still grips her brother – but the dog will take care of that too in time. Not surprisingly for a giant mural by international artists in Nashville, this mural was sponsored by the Nashville Walls Project. On their site, you can see some images detailing the production of this mural, and even a dog that might have helped inspire it.

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Located at 204 Sixth Avenue North. This is downtown, so lots of parking, little of it free. There is, in fact, some free street parking on this block of Sixth – maybe you’ll get lucky!

July 15, 2019 0

A door of many symbols (Joy’s Flowers)

Recently, Joy’s Flowers, a local florist with a history that goes back to 1877, moved from its long-time location on West End near Vanderbilt University to new digs on Gallatin, in a building that once held Wayne’s Unisex, a beauty salon. To liven up their stone facade, Floral Designer Lori Warren painted the five doors that punctuate that wall, notably the one above. It’s not just a pretty collection of plants and animals, but also a catalogue of sorts of a number of Tennessee state symbols. Naturally, the mural includes the two state flowers, the iris, the state’s cultivated flower (really a group of related flowers) and the state wildflower, the purple passionflower. An eastern box turtle, the state reptile is seen near the bottom, as well as the state amphibian, the Tennessee cave salamander. Along the border of the door, we find the state tree, the tulip poplar (a tree with many other names), in which sits a mockingbird, the state bird. Warren has also included a couple other species that are not state symbols but are found in Tennessee: the blue-tailed slink and the tiger lily (that name is used for a lot of different flowers, but I could not find one specific to Tennesee – however, there are orange and red lilies native to Tennesee, such as this one).

The other doors are decorated more simply. Right to the left of the door above is an abstractly colored door with “East Nashville” emblazoned on the bottom, while the main entrance of the building there are hand painted letters spelling out “JOYS.” (Look close at that door, and you’ll see the mail slot still reads “Wayne’s Unisex.”) The remaining two doors have similar abstract coloring. In the slide show below, the doors go left to right, or west to east.

UPDATE: These have been painted over.

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Located at 400 Gallatin Avenue, between East Nashville Magnet High School and a Firestone. Parking is a little complex – it’s plausible to park in the little alley between Joy’s and the school. Also, you can park on Ordway Place across Gallatin.

July 13, 2019 0

Nation’s Wall – Part 10

Elephant mural street art Nashville

This is the tenth and last in the series on The Nations Wall, a massive set of murals on the west-facing wall of Music City Tents and Events, organized by the Nashville Walls Project. It’s the tenth piece going from left to right (roughly north to south), and thus also the one the far right. This last one is by Emily Elizabeth Miller, an artist known for doing mixed-media murals, where part of the mural is painted, generally the background, while another part, often the central and main theme, is a paper drawing plastered on to the painted backdrop. She also does installations that are just the paper drawing. Naturally, this leads to a gradual decay of the paper as it is exposed to the weather and sunlight, meaning the mural is also inherently dynamic. The picture above was taken when the installation was about a year old. This picture from Miller’s Instagram feed gives you a sense of what it looked like new. While it seems to be fairly resilient, if you want to get your photo with the elephant, you might want to go soon!

Again, this is the last in this series, as there are no more murals to chronicle from this project. Images of the entire wall with all the murals together can be found in Part 1.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Located at 5901 California Ave, Nashville, TN 37209. The murals actually face the 1300 and 1400 block of 60th Avenue North, across from the intersection with Pennsylvania Avenue. Street parking is possible nearby.

July 10, 2019 0

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