Best Mural '95

Best Mural

Truly Nolan building
3620 E. Speedway

READERS' PICK: You don't have to risk injury while blasting down Speedway to see the mural on the Truly Nolen offices. Every inch of facade visible to cruisers and commuters is saturated with brilliant green, blue, yellow, black and other colors--mostly depicting huge sunflowers and bee hives. Makes you want to stop for some pollen, get out of the rush in the fast lane. The backdrop for the wild paintings is a parking lot where they store the fleet of insecticide-related company cars--ears and tails attached. Hmmmmm, could there be a connection here? The mural project was started in 1994 by the Nolen pest control company as a way to brighten up Speedway. It worked. While the baby heads and other murals have since disappeared as the construction project wrapped up, the sunflowers are here to stay.

READERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: The new tilework at Miracle Mile interchange on Interstate 10 is promptly gaining acceptance. The project, which includes both the tile-mural hardscape and xeriscape, is nearly complete. (The landscaping went out for bid in late August.) Now we have a freeway that doesn't look like we're trying to become a mini-L.A. Our misguided growth-industry neighbor to the north, Phoenix, tried at freeway art, but failed miserably as commuters racing up the cement troughs would require a damn fast shutter-speed on their eyeballs to catch a glimpse of the dopey, minisucle pots set on various concrete sites. Let's hope our Miracle Mile interchange sets a precedent for commuter-friendly roadways in Tucson.

STAFF PICK: On the walls of the former Downtown Performance Center (now the fledgling Institute for Creative Studies), 530 N. Stone Ave., you'll see a fanciful, grimacing horse of a different color, space critters, the woman with the jailhouse eyes and Lady Liberty taking on thought control. While we cherish the roots of murals in our city, the wall art (and about everything else) at the DPC diverges from the traditional Hispanic/Aztec images more familiar around town. What's described above covers only about one-fourth of the wall, as more depictions overlap and blend into one another, some expertly rendered, others more crude, with numerous circled-A anarchy symbols, like exclamation points, on the work. This seems a fitting legacy of the all-walks-of-life-welcome spirit that was the DPC. The murals remain; the heady music, sweltering summer nights of dancing, and the righteous social experiment now only fond memories.

1998 Winner: Truly Nolen
1997 Winner: Truly Nolen
1996 Winner: Truly Nolen