Tag: Murals

Downtown
03/22/17 4:30pm

Craning To See The First Member of Capitol Tower’s Crane Flock

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Highrises, New Construction
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Crane at under-construction Capitol Tower, Capitol St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

Another shot of that crane that took to the air this weekend by the economy-stalled stub of Skanska’s Capitol Tower comes from a reader peering over the site’s parking structure from Rusk St. yesterday. (That’s the neighboring Chase Tower looming over the scene in the background.) Bank of America was outed as being in talks with Skanska about leasing space in the tower (which might add the bank’s current home in Bank of America Center to the list of recent abandonments of Downtown office towers by their namesake tenants). The other sign of life on the site this year was the addition of a street-level mural to the parking garage’s corner, which was dry in time for the Super Bowl last month:

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Sprouting Downtown
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Demolitions
01/20/17 11:00am

Creation, Destruction at Fannin and Tuam

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Midtown
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Demo of former MHMRA building, 2850 Fannin St., Midtown, Houston, 77003

The former Mental Health and Mental Retardation Association building at 2850 Fannin St. and its many murals are now rubble, a reader notes. The shot above catches the destroyed structure next to Sebastien Boileau’s Preservons la Creation mural across the street on the back of 2800 San Jacinto St., juxtaposed with what appears to be some carefully timed oncoming traffic to add that dramatic glow to the painted figure’s outstretched spray paint can. The reader also caught one of the excavators climbing atop its defeated adversary earlier in the day, beneath the giant cross of the St. Joseph Professional Building:

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Cycles of Midtown
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Demolitions
01/17/17 4:45pm

Multiple Excavators Divide and Conquer Former Midtown Mural Hub

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Midtown
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Demo of 2850 Fannin St., Midtown, Houston, 77003

The building at 2850 Fannin St. (seen here across the Main St. light-rail tracks next to the recently gassed Art Supply building) has been split into pieces as of this morning. A reader on the scene caught sight (and footage, above) of several excavators simultaneously scraping away at the scene, with aid from a small bulldozer. Here’s a few more views of what was left of the structure and its extensive paint job:

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Parting Shots
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Demolitions
01/12/17 3:45pm

Mural-Slathered Former MHMRA Building Readies For The End

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Highrises, Midtown
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Murals at former MHMRA building, 2850 Fannin St., Midtown, Houston, 77003Demolition setup at 2850 Fannin St., Midtown, Houston, 77003

The colorful faces behind the chain-link fencing surrounding the former Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority building at 2850 Fannin St. have been joined this week by a few pieces of bright yellow knock-down equipment. Permits came through last week clearing the site for clearance in advance of a planned 27-story apartment highrise going by the name Main Midtown. The tower was okayed for a parking variance in late October, as part of which Australian developer Caydon Properties agreed to install over 200 bike spaces. 

The long-empty MHMRA structure got its last hurrah this fall when much of the street-level wallspace was painted over in tan, making way for new muralage. A nearby resident buzzed around the site recently taking some final snaps of the paintings (like the one featured at the top of the page) before the demo gets going in earnest — here’s a sampling below:

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Midtown Breakdown
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Featured Posts
09/13/16 1:15pm

Your Guide To Being Seen In Front of Houston’s Artsiest Walls

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Maps
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Some of the bloggers and photographers at clothing and trendy-places-to-go blog Wear+Where+Well (based in but not exclusively on Houston) have pulled together a long list of the mural walls found around town, complete with titles, artist names, photos, and the interactive map above. The list is annotated with an eye for photography conditions, as well as info on parking and on the likelihood of “indigents asking for spare change” nearby. The authors say the list will be updated frequently; info on how to submit new spots you think should be included can be found at the bottom of the document.

Map of Houston murals: Wear+Where+Well

Mural Mapping
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Featured Posts
07/27/16 11:00am

Your Chance To Read Into the New Rice Village Mural on Morningside

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Rice Village
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Rice Village, Morningside Dr. north of University Blvd., Rice Village, Houston, 77005

Rice Village, Morningside Dr. north of University Blvd., Rice Village, Houston, 77005The latest work by sanctioned graffiti artist Gonzo247 is dry this rainy morning, hanging back from Morningside Dr. on the sheltered stretch of shopping center wall between Black Walnut Cafe and New York & Company. (That’s along the eastern edge of the Rice Village building group currently being rebranded away from its long-running gig as the Village Arcade.) The new piece is a little more coy in its messaging than some of the artist’s previous work (which includes the edited Houston Is Inspired Hip Tasty Funky Savvy mural commissioned by the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau near Market Square in 2013) — though it does include a lot of letters. Take your own shot at deciphering the close ups below of the piece, around the corner from the space on University recently vacated by the theater-hearkening Village Arcade sign:

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Spelling It Out
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Downtown
05/26/16 5:15pm

Entire Building Now Serving as Texas Direct Auto Billboard Downtown

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1301 Leeland St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

1301 Leeland St., Downtown, Houston, 77002From a largely-barren expanse of surface lot west of Toyota Center, a reader sends a few fresh images snapped during a street-level fly-by of the 1930s office building at the corner of Leeland and Caroline streets, where Texas Direct Auto has recently taken up both residence and a new advertising tack. Following in the wake of a previous foray into Downtown real-estate-billboard crossover, the company’s newest mural encompasses 3 of the 4 sides of the building (including the dog in an astronaut suit on the side opposite Leeland). Painting started in January, and a we’re-done-now party was thrown in early April. 

As was the case for the company’s red-tagged Main St. doggie-in-the-window signage, the newer mural incorporates some of the structure’s actual windows into the design — this time as a set of questionable-utility solar panel arrays on an artificial astronaut habitat:

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Leeland at Caroline
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Avondale
05/12/16 12:30pm

Former Tattoo Studio Gets Inked Again in Avondale

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Lower Westheimer
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604 Westheimer Rd., Lower Westheimer, Houston, 77006

The previously white house at the northwest corner of Westheimer Rd. and Stanford St. now has an edgy new look, along with some some city permits issued to an entity called Beijing Assassin Tattoos in April. The permits mention a tattoo parlor and retail setup in the building, which was bought in 2014 by a legal entity of the Katz family (of never-closes deli fame 2 doors down to the west of Vinoteca Poscol).

A previous set of permits was issued to Beijing Assassin back in early 2015, after which the space opened for a few months as Gods and Monsters e-cigarette supply store. Then a coat of whitewash blotted out the building’s pretty-new-at-the-time murals, shown in part below:

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Filling In On Lower Westheimer
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Aldine
04/25/16 12:30pm

Red Sun Rises on Cavalcade Utilities Box

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Near Northside, Public Art
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Fulton at Cavalcade streets, Northside, Houston ,77009

Stare directly into the snapshot above from the corner of Fulton and Cavalcade streets, which now bears a sun-saluting mural echoing a loteria card. The painting is part of the mini mural series that began appearing on utility boxes across the southwest side of town last summer, at which time only 31 of the boxes were slated for colorful fates. The current count is closer to 60 murals (per the photo-laden interactive map available here); additional artists were recruited last fall.

While the majority of the completed projects are still concentrated between 59 and 288 inside Beltway 8, more than a dozen are now scattered north and east throughout the rest of the Inner Loop — with a few further north around Greenspoint, 1 beyond the Beltway to the west in Westchase, and another as far southwest as Missouri City. Here’s another recent addition to the collection in Aldine, next to the Shipley’s Donuts at the southwest corner of Airline and W. Dyna drives:

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Blazing in Near Northside
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