There’s a long Pierce mural on the east side of the park. On the southwest side, there are two Pierce murals flanking a railroad underpass, the southernmost of which I’ve already featured. Today being the first day of African-American History Month, it’s a good time to wrap up this series. This third mural lies across the street from the second one. Here we can read a short biography of Pierce’s life and work in the form of a newspaper article, and learn about her campaigns for civil rights and women’s suffrage.
Frankie Pierce Park is a green space that includes a children’s playground that was built as a public-private partnership between Capitol View, a massive multi-block development, and Metro Parks. It lies in a triangle of land between two elevated railroad lines that separate Capitol View from Capitol Hill.
Today, the neighborhood the park is found in is know as Capitol View, after the enormous development project. There are even developers and real-estate agents who like to call it “North Gulch,” which is truly awful. But as the “newspaper article” that makes up the mural notes, when Frankie Pierce was alive, this patch of land was called Hell’s Half-Acre. Founded during Reconstruction, the neighborhood was populated by Blacks and immigrants. As it lay outside of city limits at the time, it was a place where saloons and all kinds of vice flourished, but was also home to a rich African-American culture. It was razed in the 1950s as part of a Capitol Hill Redevelopment plan, and largely remained empty (or used as parking lots) until the Capitol View development project was built. Gentrification, or just outright destruction of neighborhoods, is not a new problem in Nashville.
Here you can see the “newspaper” mural with its companion, looking out of the park towards the Capitol View development.
Located at 130 Lifeway Plaza. That’s the address of the park. The mural is found on the south end of the park, on the southern railroad underpass, right off of Nelson Merry Street. The easiest parking is off of Nelson Merry, which you can see in the bottom image, and at Capitol View.
This colorful mural by Atlanta artist Kevin Bongang is not the first “Do the Dew” mural in Nashville. PepsiCo launched their “Do the Dew” global advertising campaign back in 2015, and as part of that campaign they have sponsored a number of murals. In early 2019, Eastside Murals produced their own “Do the Dew” mural on the old Family Dollar near Five Points. That was one of the many murals destroyed by the March 3, 2020 tornado. Indeed, the building it was on completely collapsed.
Almost exactly two years after that first Nashville “Do the Dew” mural went up, Bongang created this one. This is at the Citgo station at Fifth and Main, an intersection that is something of a gateway to East Nashville. (The other main one would be Woodland and Fifth, near where the giant EAST mural is found.) The bulk of people coming from downtown pass by this spot as they come to the east side. Before this new mural went in, there was a small, rather quirky mural on this wall greeting drivers that focused more on Nashville themes.
Bongang’s mural fills the whole wall and spills around the corners on to the other walls (see below). While highlighting the “Do the Dew” theme, it’s more of a wild pastiche of images, including several birds. The mural faces across the river towards Nissan Stadium, which may explain the football, and the musical notes are likely a nod to Nashville’s status as Music City – or they may just be birdsong. This by the way is not Bongang’s first Nashville mural. He has a few others in town, including one just a few blocks away at Center 615.
Located at 500 Main Street. The mural is on the west wall, facing towards Fifth Street and downtown. There is parking at the Citgo.
This is another “only on Christmas” picture. This mural sits on a storage building in a Premier Parking paid lot attached to Nashville Pedal Tavern. Now if you’re local, that’s quite a pair. Neither one is exactly a favorite of Nashvillians. But hey, everyone’s got to make a living. And because of the bachelorettes and the row of bars along this stretch of Demonbreun, the lot is usually packed with cars, blocking the mural.
Not on Pandemic Christmas! It’s by Music City Murals, business home of AnthonyBillups and Dean Tomasek. It’s a very Nashville mural. It features an enormous guitar, and the Cumberland River, with some folks enjoying a rowboat ride on the water. And the guitar neck leads to the Nashville skyline in front of a glorious sunset as seen from the east side of the river, including our city’s signature, the Batman Building. Just as the Eiffel Tower is all you need to say “Paris,” the Batman Building says “Nashville.”
It’s also interesting in that it can only be fully appreciated by looking at it from the corner. It’s a continuous image that wraps around the south and east sides of the building, forcing you to stand back from the corner to take it all in. Also, one of the dangers of it being in a tight parking lot, it’s been damaged. It’s pretty obvious someone backed into it, right below the word “Tennessee.”
Located at 1504 Demonbreun Street, at the corner with 14th Avenue South. The largest part of the mural faces east towards downtown. There’s obviously parking here, but not much free anywhere nearby. (Pro-tip: If you want to sound like a local, learn to pronounce “Demonbruen.”)
What did you do on Christmas Day, 2020? I photographed murals. This mural has been around since 2012, and there have been cars parked in front of it pretty much every day since. But on pandemic Christmas, I stumbled on it car-free.
It is of course by Andee Rudloff. Anyone who reads this blog should recognize her style immediately. Like a lot of her work, this mural was a product of community collaboration. It was sponsored by Kay-Bob’s Grill and Ale, and sits on the side of their building. If you watch the time-lapse video of the mural’s production (produced by Stacey Irvin), you’ll see how it was made, which is typical of Rudloff’s work. She drew a black-and-white outline of all the figures, and completed all of the parts of the the mural that required a boom lift. Then, community volunteers helped complete the lower part of the mural.
The plaque on the mural, which includes a QR code that leads you to the video, thanks the Hillsboro Village Art Walk, an art and music crawl that used to be a monthly event in Hillsboro Village. Presumably the community volunteers in the video were participants in the Art Walk. It would have been one of the last Hillsboro Art Walks. The mural went up in the summer of 2012, and the last Art Walk was in September of that year.
The mural is a jumble of imagery, but the road at the top leads to green hills in the distance. If you drive down 21st Ave from the mural, yes, you’ll get to the Green Hills neighborhood. But it’s south, not west, and the sun shouldn’t be rising or setting in that direction. Oh well, it’s art! The mural has received a little wear in eight years, but it’s still standing. Hopefully, it will be around for many more.
(Note, Rudloff does not link to her Instagram page on her website, so here it is.)
Located at 1602 21st Avenue South. The mural is on the north side of the building, facing Caper’s Avenue. This is Hillsboro Village, so lots of parking, but not much of it free.
Across the street from the Hillsboro Village dragon mural is a whole cast of animals, thirty one to be exact. No, I didn’t count them, the artists did. This is another of the many Eastside Murals works around town. The playful animals fit the location well, as the mural sits on the side of Arcade, a children’s store that sells clothes and toys aimed primarily at the under-six set.
In contrast to giant, fleshed-out dragon across the street, the Arcade animals are much more simple, built out of abstract digital lines and a poppy but limited color palette. It doesn’t look like anything else Eastside has done, but besides having a certain preschool aesthetic, its fits the style of the company that designed the mural, Fuzzco. (You can get a better idea of their work from their Instagram page.) They are a branding company with offices in Charleston, SC and Seattle, WA. This is hardly the only example of local artists being hired to execute a design by an out-of-town firm. Indeed, on the other side of 21st Avenue is another mural by Eastside that was designed by Donald Robertson, a New York-based artist who has recently moved to Santa Barbara.
The mural went up in the summer of 2019 when Arcade opened in this location. Genie Lockwood, the owner, has noted that “the magical and mysterious childhood world” was an inspiration for the store, and the animals seem designed with that spirit. The mural is also practical. The ruler attached to the tall giraffe on the right of the mural (see below) is intended to be used as a growth chart.
Located at 1721 21st Avenue South, at the corner with Belcourt Avenue. It’s right next to Belcourt Theatre. This is Hillsboro Village, so lots of parking, very little of it free.
For a couple of years, one of the most popular posts on this blog in terms of page views was “Beto Forever,” about a large mural on Gallatin memorializing the graffiti artist Ronald “Ronnie” Bobal, who used the name “Beto” in his work. But no mural lasts forever, and perhaps it was simply time, or the new building owner wanted to go in a new direction, and now that mural has been replaced by this riotous image by Brian Wooden.
Wooden is also known for his images of headless, sharp-dressed men, but here he has given 1767 Designs (a company that makes art and furniture from material recovered from demolished homes) a much more colorful and cartoony work, with a tightly-packed mish-mash of machinery, faces and flowers. If you look on his blog, linked above, or his Instagram page, you’ll see that while he’s worked in this style for a long time, lately he’s been focused on it more.
If you want to know more about how this mural was made, there are a couple of videos on Wooden’s IG page that show him working on it.
Located at 2611 Gallatin Pike. The mural is on the south side of the building. Parking is readily available.
At 6:30 in the morning on Christmas Day, 2020, an RV packed with explosives blew up on 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville. The target was a building owned and operated by AT&T that houses important telecommunications equipment for much of the Southeast. While it is extraordinarily unlikely that the bomber knew or cared, the RV was also parked in front a major art installation that was completely destroyed in the bombing.
I have documented the eight murals that adorned the AT&T building, and you’ll find links for all of those pieces at the bottom of this post. The murals first went up in 2018. The project was curated and organized by Ashley Bergeron, owner of The Studio 208, a gallery that lies a block-and-half from the bombing site and which was damaged in the explosion. The murals were all done by women artists, and were printed on vinyl and pasted onto the building’s first-floor windows.
Back when the project went in, Bergeron had this to say about the murals:
The abstract artwork flows from one set of windows to the next using color, texture, and shape so that you are continually surprised while walking down the block. I want art to be accessible to all, and I get overwhelmed with joy when I see beautification in a public space.
From a press release
Now of course, all of that is gone. A video taken from the body cam of one of the police officers who responded in the minutes before the bombing shows the RV parked in front of the murals. At about the one-minute mark, you can begin to see the murals begin to come in to view on the left. As the officer gets closer to the murals, it’s possible to see exactly where the RV was parked – in front of the murals by Davies and Carter (see Part 5 and Part 6 below). All the murals were destroyed by the explosion, with small pieces of them scattered in the street.
Because they were vinyl murals glued to the windows, they weren’t pulverized, but rather shattered. One observer said what was left looked like colored glass on the ground. John Partipilo, a photographer who was on the scene before it was cleaned up, was able to recognize pieces of Inglish’s mural (which was farthest from the blast) because he’s familiar with the colors she uses. Bergeron herself thought she saw one the murals intact from a distance, but now knows that was impossible, a trick of the mind. Carter told me she has found it hard to put into words what the loss of the murals means.
In this picture by Partipilo, you can see scraps of color that I believe are from Inglish’s mural. (See Part 1 below). The red stripes on the ground appear to be a grid, probably put in place by investigators.
Photo credit John Partipilo
This second shot by Partipilo looks down the face of the AT&T building. It was probably taken right in front of where Inglish’s mural was, and down the sidewalk you can see more colored scraps. Some years ago the AT&T building was reinforced to strengthen it against bombings, and the black area behind the window frames appears to be a reinforced concrete wall.
Photo credit John Partipilo
This is the second time in less than a year I’ve had to report on a large amount of art suddenly and violently destroyed. After the March 3 tornado of 2020, I wrote about the art that was lost and damaged in both East and North Nashville. Now we are here again, this time because of the work of man, not the forces of nature. But the same resilience of the post-tornado era is also visible here. Bergeron would like to replace the murals with new work, with the original artists if possible. That of course depends on many things, including the future of the AT&T building. Inglish told me that the art wall will be missed, but she believes that Bergeron’s determination will “bring beauty to the streets of downtown again soon.” Catron echoed that idea, saying, “I believe, like a Phoenix, we will rise out of the ashes of this calamity to restore and refreshen our world. I would like to paint that.”
Because to the constraints of creating a collage, the murals in the picture at the top of the post are not in the original order. From left-to-right, top to bottom, they are by Inglish, Kendrick, Cole, Leonard, Laughlin, Carter, Wallace, and Davies. On the wall, the original order, left-to-right, was Inglish, Laughlin, Cole, Leonard, Davies, Carter, Wallace, Kendrick.
Located (formerly) at 185 2nd Avenue North. It seems superfluous to talk about parking, but when this site can be visited again, remember that this is downtown – lots of parking, almost none of it free.
