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April 29, 2023 · 7:58 am

Urban Art – Minneapolis

This is another thing I have wanted to do for quite a while. I have a list on my phone that I’ve been accumulating over a number of years of locations where I happened upon urban art. I created a route in Mapquest and hubby agreed to drive me around to them all then let me out so that I could take a photo or two or three so that I didn’t have to park. Some of these locations are very busy and it might be hard to find a place to put the car. So, thank you darling hubby for agreeing to this!

We planned to leave before 10 a.m. on a weekday to avoid the busy traffic times. When hubby looked at my route he figured it would take about 2 hours and he was right! We even added many more as he drove from point to point on my map. Oh wait! That’s cool! Can you turn around please? I’d say about a third of these photos were not on my list. Urban art is so popular and I’ve enjoyed seeing the many works of art throughout the city. So many beautiful images and vibrant colors!

Without further ado, please enjoy some urban art in Minneapolis. In all galleries, click on any photo to see a larger photo and the captions which contain the locations of each mural.

First up, how about some Prince murals? I had two on my list for a long time, one I think might have been the first Prince mural created shortly after he died. It’s the third photo with the dove in his hair. Another I noticed when I was searching online for something else “Oh! I need to capture that one too!” and added it to my route. And yet another was a surprise Prince mural in two pieces.

We saw this en route to another point on my mural map. A bonus Prince mural with a message. These were taken the last week of April and you get an inkling of how much snow we had this winter. This empty parking lot must have been a repository for the streets surrounding it and there are some snow piles still melting! I love how part of the mural is being reflected in the water from melted snow in the first photo.

The next set was this cute little house in front of a fire station. Every side is covered in mosaics and each has a different scene of the four seasons. So cool! And pooey, I cut off the top of the first side of the tiny house. It was a rare sunny day which made it kind of hard to see what I was doing. You can see a fire truck just coming out of the garage in that first photo because as I was taking photos it left the building with its siren blaring.

Next are the many murals on Lyndale Avenue between 31st and Franklin. And this isn’t all of them! Lyndale is a very busy street and a couple murals weren’t terribly accessible. I was happy with what I was able to photograph and we moved on to the next point in the route.

Here are the other murals we happened upon en route from point to point.

These are at the Seward Coop on Franklin. One mural is in English and another language I am not familiar with. I think it’s probably Arabic. The Seward neighborhood where this store resides has a large Somali population so Arabic is a good guess. (Editing to add: one of my followers commented that it might be Somali and that’s probably it.) The other two are mosaics on the poles outside the store with fruits and veggies as the themes. Very creative!

And of course there are Bob Dylan murals. We love our native sons!

Here are the others that were on my original list.

I have a list for St. Paul as well so stay tuned for a post of those photos at some point. Do you have a favorite from this group of mural photos? There are so many good ones!

Here’s one that I took in 2014 of the Schmitt Music mural at 10th and Marquette. The music is from a piano piece written by French composer Maurice Ravel called “Gaspard de la Nuit.” Check out an interesting story about how the mural came about at this link. I didn’t get the entire wall but if you google Schmitt music mural you can see it easily if you so desire.

My featured image is also in Minneapolis but I took that photo some time in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Here’s another photo that I took in 2020. I had hoped to find it the day of our “field trip” and take another photo without a person in it but I think it was north on Hennepin when we went south and we didn’t travel that way again. Or it could be that it’s no longer there. I do like the photo as it tells the tale of a day in Minneapolis. The woman might be waiting for a bus.

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Tagged as Minneapolis, Minneapolis urban art, photography, urban art

May 20, 2016 · 5:11 am

Bloggers unite in Málaga!

Or: an afternoon in Málaga, España. But I just named my previous post beginning with “an afternoon in” and didn’t want to be repetitious don’t you know. For this week’s post I want to share with you what Marianne from East of Málaga showed us our second day of our most recent trip to Spain. I’ve been following Marianne’s blog for several years and we always talked about meeting up when I was next in Spain. And so we did!! And it was such fun.

Marianne and her husband met us in the lobby of our hotel and we headed out on a walking tour of the center of old town Málaga. I mentioned to her that I was interested in seeing the street art that I had read about and seen photos of, something that was new to us since visiting 5 years ago, so we did that first. She gave me a brochure entitled MAUS: Málaga Arte Urbano Soho (Málaga Urban Art in Soho). The brochure contains a map of the locations of all the urban art as well as a bio about each of the artists. This project hopes to convert Málaga into an internationally renowned city in the art scene, the brochure says. These pieces of art are really something to behold, each very different than the others. Some of the artists come from Spain but a few others come from South Africa, Belgium and China. There is also a work by Shepard Fairey (Obey) who is known in the U.S. for his Barack Obama “Hope” poster during the 2008 election. Neither my daughter nor myself have photos of it and I can only think that we were so overwhelmed by the fabulous art that we forgot to take a photo of Obey’s piece? I wish we had had time to go back and see more of these. They are spread out over several blocks near the Contemporary Art Museum and we had just enough time to see a handful of them before we stopped for refreshment at Cafe Central. Come have a look at the urban art that is changing this neighborhood in Málaga. Some of the photos were taken by my daughter and I just realized that for many of these we each took a different type of photo: she took the far away stance whereas I focused more on the details.

photo courtesy Miss M

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Charlie Chaplin, photo courtesy Miss M

photo courtesy Miss M

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photo courtesy Miss M

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photo courtesy Miss M

urban art, Málaga

I found several stories about this urban art project and I’m sharing them here in case anyone wants more information. Marianne’s blog post is great and has lots of wonderful photos of the art. Málaga’s urban street art – MAUS from 2014 has a good photo of the Obey piece. Another article about the Soho Art District is written by the author (Fiona Flores Watson) of another blog that I follow, Scribbler in Seville. Within this post Fiona provides the link to the MAUS website which I am doing here as well. One last link to another article with more photos of the art. This is such fascinating art and I highly recommend taking the time to walk these streets to view the various pieces. I can’t wait to go back to see the ones I missed. By the time I go back I’m sure there will be more.

After having a drink a Cafe Central we continued our tour and walked up to Plaza de la Merced to get a photo with one of my favorite Spanish artists: Picasso. I didn’t see this statue on our last trip because the plaza was being renovated. At the corner of the square is Picasso’s birthplace and museum. We checked out Mercado Merced, the new market just beyond the north end of the plaza and hubby and I went back there that evening to have a sweet wine at the branch of Antigua Casa de Guardia. I’m sad that we never made it to the original bar this time but the wine is still fantabulous!

We had lunch at El Pimpi and chose tapas plates that we shared amongst all of us. I learned about a fish called rosada from Marianne and her husband, a very tasty fish that was given this name because of its pink tint. Rosada means pink in Spanish. We had a great meal but unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of the food, again!! Here are some other photos from the afternoon including one of the two bloggers in front of the alcazaba and one of me drinking that lovely sweet wine later that evening. Pure heaven :)

Cafe Central

Miss M gave him a coin and he made her balloon glasses

with one of our favorite Spanish artists: PIcasso

bloggers

Antigua Casa de Guardia at Mercado Merced

oh that delicious sweet wine!!

It was such a lovely afternoon and I learned so much more about this wonderful city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. I can’t wait to go back again! I’ll leave you with a photo of the cathedral at night.