Nashville Walls Project Archives - nashville public art

One Little Dream at Night

Art is made to be experienced, not necessarily to be photographed, and this colorful, delicate, bold mural in Printer’s Alley is very hard to photograph. Most of it is in a dark tunnel with lights, but while the lighting makes it hard to shoot, it also helps to give it an otherworldly character.

A mural like this doesn’t happen without collaboration. The Nashville Walls Project brought internationally renowned Los Angeles graffiti and studio artist RISK (Kelly Graval) to Nashville to bring life to an otherwise drab throughway along Printer’s Alley in October, 2019. On such a massive project, it helps to have many hands, and local artists Chris Zidek, Mobe Oner, and Jon Buko all pitched in.

Alley butterflies mural Nashville Street art

A project like this also doesn’t get done without sponsors. This part of the alley runs through and under the One Nashville Place complex, owned by Unico Properties, which was the primary sponsor of the mural. (Nashville Walls Project also credits Costigan Integrated, but that is a former name of Unico.) The Bobby Hotel, a couple blocks north along the alley, provided food and lodging for the project, and also displayed some of RISK’s studio work in its lobby.

On the Nashville Walls Project Facebook page there are several videos showing some of the steps that brought this mural together. This one shows RISK and Zidek stenciling a butterfly, while this one shows how you get perfect curved lines with spray paint. There are handful of others, so here’s the link to explore.

The title of this blog post comes from the words stenciled on to the mural at both entrances to the tunnel.

One little dream at night /
and I can dream all day

It’s from the Johnny Cash song, “All over Again,” which was released in 1958. It’s not the only mural in town with Cash lyrics on it. The mural featured in As long as the grass shall grow is also based on a Cash song.

One reason I’m only getting around to writing about this mural now is that for several months the tunnel was a construction site. You could walk through it, but you couldn’t really step back and get a good view of the mural. Now that the tunnel is clear, the views are better, particularly in the south section, where there’s an entrance area for One Nashville Place’s parking garage.

Of course, you can’t see the words in that shot, so here’s one with the lyrics.

When standing on that platform, you’ll notice an image of a cyclist, as this is the bike entrance. I do not know who did it.

Finally, a couple of shots of the south entrance, or exit if you are coming from the north.

Located at 158 4th Avenue North. That’s the address of One Nashville Place’s parking garage. The mural of course is in Printer’s Alley, which lies between and is parallel to 4th and 3rd Avenue. Enter the alley from Church Street going south, or Commerce street going north. The north end of the mural is right next to Alley Taps. This is downtown. Lots of parking, almost none of it free.

December 23, 2020 0

The green leaves of the Gulch

It’s a strange time to be writing about outdoor art in Nashville. This mural by California artist Ian Ross and sponsored by the Nashville Walls Project is about three years old. I’ve tried photographing it before, but even early on a Sunday morning, there always seems to be cars in the parking lot in front of it, blocking the mural. It’s a giant pay lot in the heart of the Gulch, a hotspot for Nashville tourism. But this is the time of coronavirus, and most of the tourists are gone, including around noon on a Saturday when I took this. Even at the famous wings mural by Kelsey Montague, only a couple of people were getting their picture made when I drove by and no one was waiting, when usually the line is a block or two long.

Ross’s mural is a riot of green, swirls of paint suggesting leaves and flowers. It’s enormous and even wraps around the building on the top. There’s a video on Vimeo that shows Ross working on the mural, and it seems it was a little brighter when it was first made, though that may just be the light. Interestingly, though this project was sponsored by the Nashville Walls Project, it doesn’t appear on their website. Ross also works on canvas and is represented locally by The Studio 208. If we ever have First Saturday Art Crawl again, currently canceled because of the virus, maybe you can drop by and see some of his work.

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The building the mural is on says “Cummings Signs,” but they are no longer located there.

Located at 200 12th Avenue South. Well, that’s the official address of the building. The main mural faces 11th Avenue South, on the block between Laurel Street and the Demonbreun Street bridge, which sails over 11th. The pieces of the mural that are shown in the second slideshow are found at the corner of 12th Avenue South and Demonbreun. To get to them from the main mural, take the exit at the far left of the second photograph on this page, and turn right on 12th. This is the Gulch, so lots of parking, all of it in pay lots and garages, but most of it is free for an hour or more.

March 21, 2020 0

Elliston Parking Garage – Part 3, Folek

This mural is a slight departure for this blog, as it in some sense inside. But from the lighting, you might notice it’s exposed to sunlight on one side. This piece by Folek Kelof, who signs his work with just “Folek,” is part of the Elliston Parking garage project organized by the Nashville Walls Project. The first two (see below) and the ones on the top floor are fully “outside,” while the rest are “inside” the parking garage, but ae very much exposed to the elements, and you don’t need a key or even to open a door to see them, so I think they fit. The mural seems to be flowers done in a style that implies graffiti. I don’t know any mural in town that looks quite like it.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4

Located at 207 Louise Avenue, just off Elliston Place. This piece is on the bottom floor on the south side of the building. Most of the parking in this area is pay parking. The garage is permit parking, at least on workdays.

August 24, 2019 0

Elliston Parking Garage – Part 2, Zidekahedron

This is probably one of the better-known murals in town, at least for those who follow murals. For part 2 of my series on the Elliston Parking garage, I’m featuring one of two on the outside of the garage, besides the ones on the roof. I do intend to do the interior, which is a little different thing for this blog, but it’s an indoor/outdoor space, so I think it counts as “outdoor art.” This is unmistakably the work of Chris Zidek, even without his usual signature, Zidekahedron. Colorful intertwining geometric forms and plenty of negative space is characteristic of much of his work. This piece, in particular, uses similar themes to that found in another work of his featured in One mural down, one mural up. It makes me a little antsy to have cars in this picture, but a) this is a perfect crop for sharing to Facebook and b) good luck not finding cars there. This is in fact how it usually looks, and the mural is not obscured, so I’ll live with the cars. As noted in Part 1, the Elliston Garage project was organized by the Nashville Walls Project.

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4

Located at 207 Louise Avenue, just off Elliston Place. The mural is on the east side of the building. Most of the parking in this area is pay parking. The garage is permit parking, at least on workdays.

August 14, 2019 0

Elliston Parking Garage – Part 1, Audie Adams

There are a handful of major art installations I haven’t gotten to, like the Berry Hill portraits, or the cartoon murals at Sadler and Grimrose, or this one, the Elliston Parking Garage. Recently, I finally finished the Nations Wall project. I want to fill these obvious gaps because I am thinking of expanding the reach of this blog. Not that I need to for material – I have at least a hundred folders in my “Future Blog Posts” folder. But I’m beginning to think that restricting this blog to just Davidson County is artificial. A visit to Dallas-Ft. Worth, also known as the Metroplex, made me realize that I could never do a “just Dallas” or “just Ft. Worth” blog – they and the other many communities there are too intertwined. And it’s obvious that the art scene in Nashville is deeply connected to the arts in the surrounding counties. Many of the artists featured in this blog have done work in those counties, and the outdoor art scene in Nashville has definitely inspired work in those counties. So, this blog will be expanding – but not before I fill some obvious gaps.

About the mural and the garage – for years, the Elliston Parking Garage on Louise Avenue has been a giant canvas for graffiti taggers. This is a major reason why the owner offered the garage to Nashville Walls Project. Murals do curb graffiti. Taggers tend to be respectful of murals (not the least because there is an overlap between local muralists and local taggers). The installation of murals in this garage, however, has not eliminated tagging, but it there is less than before. This mural here is one of two murals on the outside of the garage (besides the ones on the roof level) – there are several inside. It is by Audie Adams who also goes by Audroc. He’s also part of the Thoughts Manifested collective, responsible for a number of murals in town. The birds and the font used are both common in his work.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Located at 207 Louise Avenue, just off Elliston Place. The mural is on the south side of the building. Most of the parking in this area is pay parking. The garage is permit parking, at least on workdays.

August 5, 2019 0

“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

Nation’s Wall – Part 10

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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