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Red, white and blue barber

ReedWest

When your business sits on a street named after your competitor, who is less than a block away, and when that competitor gets business in part because of his very famous daughter, it helps to have a bright colorful sign to help you stand out. Not that Reed and Sons Barbershop needs to worry too much about the competition from Vernon Winfrey’s Barber Shop. Both have been around for quite awhile and have loyal clienteles that have in some cases been coming for decades. Founded by Carl Reed fifty-eight years ago, it is now run by his grandson Tony D. Reed. Both Carl and Tony A. Reed (Tony D.’s father) can still be found cutting hair from time to time. A 2015 photo found in the Tennesee Ledger story linked above shows the facade as being orange, so this more colorful version is recent. In a rapidly gentrifying Nashville, it’s good to see such an important local institution continuing to thrive.

Located at 410 Vernon Winfrey Avenue. The facade above faces Lischey Avenue. Free street parking is readily available. Get a trim and enjoy the art!

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Dutch Maid

DutchMaidWest

Large, three-dimensional signs like this one used to be common in America, but they’ve been out of style for decades. There are persistent survivors in Nashville, like the Weiss Liquor sign featured in A true Nashville survivor or the Ernest Tubb sign and others on Lower Broad. There are even some new ones on Broadway, given its place in local tourism. Other survivors are scattered around town, mostly on the Pikes. This one is located in the rapidly gentrifying The Nations neighborhood, and its fate is uncertain. The laundromat it advertises has long since closed its doors, and the windows are boarded up. It’s hard to imagine any developer tearing this wonderful icon down, but in go-go Nashville, it’s always a possibility. Call it endangered art.

DutchMaidEast

Located at 6227 Roberston Avenue, near the corner with Croley Drive. Plenty of parking on site.

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Athens of the South

ElGreko

Last summer this mural went up on a new restaurant that wasn’t even open at the time. Usually, you get the business first and the art later, but art seems to be a key element of Greko Greek Street Food, as the interior walls are heavily decorated as well. It makes some sense that Mobe Oner (nome de paintbrush of Eric Bass) would feature Athens as part of a mural for a Greek restaurant, but “Athens of the South” is a nickname for Nashville that rests on the presence of Vanderbilt and later many other universities. (Your intrepid blogger, as both a Vandy and a UGA grad, is torn about this, as there is another southern university town actually named “Athens.”) This is one of the reasons that Nashville sports a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in the original Athens. The Nashville Parthenon is seen in the “H,” while “A” recognizes the Predators and the Titans, “T” the restaurant itself, “E” The Stage on Broadway, and “N” the Nashville skyline. “S” contains one of the best known though not best-loved pieces of outdoor art in Nashville, the Musica statue. I have yet to blog about it. Someday.

Athens

Located at 704 Main Street. The mural is on the east side of the building, facing the parking lot of the Mapco Mart next door. Greko has parking, and there is some free parking on 7th street. Grab you some skewered grilled meat and enjoy the art!

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Porcine Angels

HogHeaven

Get the white sauce. White sauce barbeque you ask? Trust me on this. Get the white sauce. I first started going to Hog Heaven in my graduate years at Vanderbilt, just a few years after it opened, and I remain a fan. The sign/mural is signed “Atrau Palin 2010.” That name leads to a MySpace page that doesn’t seem to have any art on it. There is also a page entitled “Art by Atrau Palin” that also has no art on it. But this sign at least is fun, and perhaps someday Palin will come out of the woodwork to do more work in the future.

Get the white sauce.

Located at 115 27th Avenue South. The mural is on the south side of the building. Hog Heaven is right off of the 2700 block of West End behind the McDonalds and next to the world famous (well, it ought to be) dive bar Springwater. Hog Heaven faces Centennial Park. There is some street parking nearby and some in the park, so get you a BBQ picnic and enjoy the art!

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We build Nashville

HartetRussell

This blog is not the only database of outdoor art in Nashville. Metro Arts Commision has both an actual dataset and the Explore Nashville Art website. They seem like they might have more listings than I do, but it’s hard to tell. (Ok, I’m biased, but they don’t seem very user-friendly.) I’m pretty sure though that they don’t have this because this isn’t what they do. This blog (nashvillepublicart.com) is not just a blog about pretty pictures – though don’t get me wrong, I think there is both a beautiful symmetry and a wonderful simplicity to the sign/mural above. It isn’t though what most people think of first when they think “art.” However, this blog is strongly ecumenical about that word, and the slogan around here is “No Art Left Behind.” The work here is signed with a Facebook symbol and “Artist Contact Mural Ruben Torres.” That doesn’t lead anywhere but I’m pretty sure this is the Ruben Torres of Frutas! and And another market. Torres is one of the artists who decorates Latino markets and other businesses. His website, Facebook page, and Instagram only advertise some of his work. He updated the murals featured in Frutas! dramatically a few months ago to include a map of The Nations. Maybe someday when what is obviously some employee’s car isn’t parked in front of it I’ll update the post. As for how Torres’s work wound up on the front of Hartert-Russell, HR is a building firm, so I’d hazard a guess that the connection was made through some of the many Latino construction workers in town.

Located at 2221 Bransford Avenue. There’s no street parking, but there is some parking in back and at Santa’s Pub next door, which has much more exuberant murals.

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A noble brew

NoblesMain

It wasn’t that long ago when Hunter’s Custom Automotive used to be on the bend in the road where Main Street becomes Gallatin Pike (they moved to Trinity Lane). And for years they owned a small concrete building they used for storage that lay across the street. And until just before they moved, there was no light. So you would see Hunter’s guys racing across a busy four-lane road with whatever they needed for the current job. Well, a light went in and Hunter’s decamped, and the little concrete block building was transformed into something much larger – Noble’s Kitchen and Beer Hall. Back in January, Noble’s acquired this Eric Bass mural (who signs his work “Mobe Oner”). Bass/Oner has done a number of murals, including one just down the street I haven’t featured yet at Greko Greek Street Food. (And more art inside.) I asked at Noble’s and no one knew who the gentleman in the mural is – he may just be from Bass’s imagination. I like the clever use of the fire hydrant in the mural – see below.

Located at 974 Main Street. The mural is on the east side of the building, facing 10th Street. There is a fair amount of parking at Noble’s. Unfortunately, a lot of it is right in front of the mural, so if you want to get a clear view of it, go early in the morning before Noble’s opens.

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Attaboy

Attaboy

For many years, when I talked about food in Nashville, I would say, “we’re ten years behind Atlanta.” But then the “It City” phenomenon took hold, gentrification went wild, and chefs from around the country began to establish themselves in Nashville. The bar scene quickly followed, including the decision of the much–ballyhooed New York City bar Attaboy to establish a branch in Nashville. Attaboy is different from most bars. They don’t take your drink order. Instead, they ask you what you like, and the bartender creates a concoction for you. The hard to miss sign is a product of Philadelphia artist Eric Kenney, who also goes by Heavy Slime. Kenney mostly does posters and t-shirts and does his own screen printing. Looking through his work, the Attaboy sign is sunnier than a lot of it. As for the chicken on the bike, while Kenney’s work features Death, Angry Snoopy, and a crazed Mickey Mouse, this is the only chicken I can find. I imagine it’s a nod to East Nashville’s most famous culinary export. And how does a Philly artist wind up doing a sign in Nashville? Because one the partners, Brandon Bramhall, is Kenney’s cousin (and a former bartender at the New York Attaboy).

Located at 8 McFerrin Avenue. The mural faces south, across from the alley that is halfway between Woodland and Main. There is limited street parking, and Attaboy has just a few spaces, so maybe you should just take a late night rideshare to get some cocktails and enjoy the art!

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