#mural Archives - Page 9 of 93 - nashville public art

2nd Avenue AT&T Art Wall – Elise Kendrick

Note: All of the murals in this series were destroyed in the Christmas Day Bombing in Nashville. I will be doing a write up on the whole series and its loss soon. First, I want to complete the series. This is the final of eight.

Working left to right on what used to be 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 eighth work was by Elise R. Kendrick. This was the right-most window mural, right next to the entranceway.

It was 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 were done by women, and the project was curated by Ashley Segroves of The Studio 208. They were are all on vinyl, and went up in the summer of 2018.

Kendrick is a graduate of Tennessee State University with a degree in Art (where I work as a History professor) and originally focused on jewelry and metals, before moving on to painting. Much of her work is portraiture, particularly of African-Americans. Abstract art is not a common theme, at least based on her Instagram page, and to my knowledge this was her first mural. She described the experience as “pushing me outside my comfort zone.” It’s a beautiful piece and a shame it’s been lost. She also made at least one studio version, but I do not know if it is available. Many of her recent works involve surrounding the portraits she does with a field of words and ideas.

UPDATE: I failed to notice when I first posted that this was the 700th post on this blog.

You can see the other murals in this series using the links below. There’s a bit more information about the project in Part 1. Later this week I plan to write a retrospective of the project and its destruction.

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

This image gives you an idea of the setting, as it was seen with the other two murals at the right (north) end of the series.

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.

December 30, 2020 2

2nd Avenue AT&T Art Wall – Catron Wallace

Working left to right on what used to be 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 seventh work was by Catron Wallace. This is the one that wrapped around a door.

Wallace is a successful and prolific Nashville abstract artist and art instructor. Nashville Lifestyles named her Art Creator of the Year for 2020. If you look through her Instagram page, you’ll see that the lost AT&T mural was very much a part of her style. To my knowledge, it was her only mural. Because it was under a large overhang, photographing it was a little difficult. The colors came out a little differently on the picture she has on her website of it, but that is also what it looked like two years ago. (I took the photo above just a couple of weeks ago, unhappy with something I shot several moths ago.)

You can see the other murals in this series (once I’ve posted them all, there were a total of 8) using the links below. There’s a bit more information about the project in Part 1.

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

This image gives you an idea of the setting, as it was seen with the other two murals at the right (north) end of the series.

December 28, 2020 3

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

Gone but not forgotten

A little over a year ago, this mural appeared on the Citgo at Fifth and Main. It generated some discussion, mostly not favorable. That Citgo does sit on what amounts to the main entrance to East Nashville from downtown. (The other one would be Woodland and Fifth, near where the giant EAST mural is found.)

I don’t think it was the technical execution so much as the color palate that bothered some people. The Titans and Predators symbols are done well, as is the sleeping yet playing cowboy. But the green, yellow, black, blue and red clash, and it fells incomplete. Still, I had every intention of putting it on the blog. The motto here is “No art left behind,” after all. But I was unable to determine who the artist or artists were. It’s signed Yung King and ALRW, but I’m not even sure if those are one or two people.

I’m putting it up today because it’s gone. I saw yesterday that a new mural is going up in its place. I’m memorializing it both because I do try to keep a record of lost art, but also out of respect to the artist(s). It takes courage to put your art out there, particularly in such a well-trafficked spot where thousands of drivers pass by every day. Art doesn’t happen if someone doesn’t take chance. So remember East’s loud-and-proud greeter, even if it was only around for a year.

Formerly located at 500 Main Street. The mural was on the west wall, facing towards Fifth Street and downtown. A new mural is in preparation on that wall and I will report on it in the next few weeks. There is parking at the Citgo.

December 19, 2020 0

Frankie Pierce Park, Part 2

Back in August, Anthony Billups of Music City Murals and Olasubomi Aka-Bashorun did a series of murals in the new Frankie Pierce Park. I wrote about the main one in Frankie Pierce Park, Part 1. That mural is on a long wall on the east side of the park, while this is one of two along a railroad underpass on the southwest side of the park.

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.

It honors one of Nashville’s most important Black activists, J. Frankie Pierce. Pierce was a civil rights activist who played an important part in the women’s suffrage movement in Nashville, and who opened the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls in 1923, which remained open until 1979.

It is her key role in the votes for women campaign in Nashville that is the subject of this mural. A parade of women in the long, white dresses of suffragettes dominates the scene. One of them carries a sign that reads, “August 18, 1920.” That was the day Tennessee became the crucial 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote. Of course, Pierce, as a Black woman in the Jim Crow South, was not able to fully exercise that right even after the amendment passed.

The mural includes a quote from Pierce: “We asking only one thing – a square deal.” (May 1920)

Below you can see it in context with the other underpass mural. If you were standing where this picture was taken, the main mural would be behind you and to your right. The park is to your right in this photo. You can see some of the Capitol View development on the other side of the railroad bridge.

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.

Part 1 Part 3

December 17, 2020 1

2nd Avenue AT&T Art Wall – Jade Carter

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 sixth work is by Jade Carter. This is the one to the left of the door.

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 particular piece closely resembles a studio painting that Carter did called “VIDA,” which is square and contains a nautilus peeking out at the bottom. It was for sale but has long since been sold. In that work you can see more clearly the layers and texture that are common features in Carter’s work, but are lost in this vinyl print. This particular mural is hard to photograph as it is half under an awning, which creates a strong shadow. I had to go back and shoot it with flash.

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

This is how it looks along with the the other two murals in the this set. Carter’s is at the far right next to the door in this image.

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

December 14, 2020 16

Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum

Musicians HOF Mural Nashville street art

Tucked away underneath the Nashville Municipal Auditorium is the Nashville Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. It hasn’t always been there, having once been down on 6th Avenue. But they had to give that site up to make room for the Music City Center in 2010, reopening in 2013 in what was once the Municipal Auditorium’s convention exhibit space.

Being a little tucked away, all the visual bling they can get to help people find them is useful. Enter Steve Mellgren, CEO of Dimensions in Screen Printing, who designed and donated the mural to the museum in 2019. (Dimensions is a small screen printing company in Irvine, California and does not appear to have an internet presence.) The mural makes a nice logo, and in fact, you can get it on a T-shirt, in teal and black (my preference).

This part of downtown doesn’t have a lot of outdoor art, though the main entrance to the auditorium does have a giant mural of concert tickets. I see the Musician Hall of Fame mural as another data point in the evidence that Nashville businesses increasingly understand that art is an essential part of any commercial enterprise. Maybe it will inspire more art in the neighborhood.

Located at 401 Gay Street. The mural is behind a gated area (facing towards James Robertson Parkway), so if the museum is closed, you can see it, but not up close. This is downtown, so lots of parking, none of it free. There are metered spaces across Gay Street.

December 12, 2020 0

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