City of Tucson midtown mailbox

A sunny welcome to Tucson's Ward 6 Midtown Council Office:

The bottom of the other side has part of a bumper sticker, and the top of the box seems to say ART ART:

This box brightened an otherwise cloudy Sunday afternoon, October 18th.

2013 North Swan Road

If you're moving like a snail today after a big Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, this mailbox is for you:

I actually found the mailbox on October 18th. It's just north of the mailboxes we saw last time.

Update (March 8, 2021): The mailbox has been repainted.

Dimelo's Story Mailboxes (and more)

Here's a entry from the Limón y Sal blog that's partly about a story mailbox project. Click the “this one” link, underneath the photo of artist Rudy Flores, to see one of the wild mailboxes he's planning. There are more mailbox photos at the left side near the bottom of the page — though none as wild as the story mailbox.

Here's the blog entry: Downtown: Old Pueblo Studios.

2005 and 2007 North Swan Road

As you're headed southbound on Swan past Grant, just to your right — or headed northbound past Pima, across the road on your left — is this double-headed set of mailboxes. Behind is (what I think is a) kachina dancer.

[By the way, the website kachina.us says “The word kachina (kah-chee-nah) has long been used by outsiders to refer to any of the hundreds of spiritual beings central to Hopi religious life as well as to the dolls that depict them. However, according to the Hopi, katsina (kahts-ee-nah) is more correct and preferred. In English, the plural of kachina is kachinas, but in the Hopi language the plural of katsina is katsinam.”]

I rolled by — and stopped! — on October 18th.

Update (March 15, 2021): Today's entry What's behind 2005 and 2007 North Swan has the story of the mailboxes and people who lived in the building behind.

4401 East Glenn Street

What happened to this mailbox? Is that duct tape around it? I didn't make a note about it when I stopped by on October 17th.

The big attraction, anyway, is the post covered with multicolored rocks.

4349 East Glenn Street

We've got bountiful boxes now, so I'll start posting two a week.

I think this might be a ladybug mailbox: red with black spots and two antennae!?

I buzzed by (do ladybugs buzz?) on October 17th.

12550 West Manville Road

This flag-covered mailbox is just in time for Veterans Day. Although the address is on Manville Road, I spotted it a bit farther north on Sanders Road, October 25th.

The door is held (mostly) closed with a thick rubber band. You can see that better in the photo of the other side, below. It faces south and has probably been blasted by the Sun for years.

1821 North Calle El Trigo

Here's another of Emily Mann's creative custom-made mailboxes. She just sent a photo and wrote:

It is over in La Cebadilla at the end of Tanque Verde/Reddington. ... I wish it had its own post. The other boring boxes either steal from or add to its ownership of the perch.

I am putting ceramic “eggs” with the street address in the nest [after they are fired] later this week.

If you'd like to see more of her work, she's the owner of Solaz Designs Metalworks. They'll be one of the stops along TPAC's Fall Open Studio Tour November 14-15. Here's their tour web page. This mailbox isn't far away, so you could also stop by and see the “eggs.”

(By the way, in case you haven't been keeping track of all the studio tours this fall, there's another one this coming weekend: Heart of Tucson Art. It showcases artists in central Tucson.)

Mystery mailbox #2

Unlike the first mailbox in this series, whose artist will remain anonymous (for now, at least), this wild box is by Emily Mann of solaz.biz. The owner would like the location kept private… but we can tell you that it's somewhere in the Tucson Mountains.

The photos above came from Emily's Instagram feed — which shows a lot more of her creative metalwork.

Mailbox fronts wild sculptures (in Kansas)

OK, so I keep insisting that this is the Tucson Murals Project, but I've also been showing a few out-of-state mailboxes in the last few months. What's up? Well, I've been traveling a lot — and I'm also almost out of mailbox photos. I'll get out on my bike and snap more photos as soon as I'm back in Tucson! In the meantime…

In the middle of nowhere in southeast Kansas — or almost anywhere in the US — the website Roadside America (and some others like it) will lead you to out-of-the-ordinary sights. (If you like mailbox art, I bet you'll like Roadside America.) That's part of what led me to drive down lonely Kansas highway 99 through the town of Howard. It's the site of…

…Hubbell's Rubble. If you park on the north side, the first thing you'll see is that mailbox. It's actually for donations, not mail; there's a slot in the door. (It looks like you can open the mailbox to take out the donations, but disturbing the mail is a federal offense. :) Behind the mailbox is a grassy street block filled with all kinds of welded sculpture. Here are two examples:

Next week? It's back to our regularly scheduled mailboxes.

1201 South Palo Verde Avenue

That's the second of two mailboxes that aren't (yet) permanent. Last week's box was on a stack of blocks. This week's rusted black mailbox is standing on the spike at the bottom of its pole, next to a gate, leaning on the wall.

The gate also looks like it's seen better times. (And the house number on the other side of the gate is missing some numerals.) Hmmm: I wonder what happened here?

I spotted this scene, just south of Reid Park, September 24th.

3321 East 23rd Street

This week and next, we'll check on the progress of two under-construction mailboxes. This plain black one is mounted (or just set? :) on a stack of cinder blocks with rocks inside.

It was August 13th when I saw it standing there.

5176 East Alberta Drive

It looks like this home gets a lot of mail! Their mailbox is a regular US Postal Service mail-deposit box, with peeling brown paint.

I wonder if they ever get mail from passersby?

I passed by on July 2nd.

5235 East Alberta Drive

Two sunny scenes on July 1st:

The mailbox is mostly green, with a pond with fish, the sun and cattails on one side — and, on the other, a bird in a tree, a butterfly, and some flowers.

Good mornin' from Vermont!

Once in a while, I like to post a mailbox from somewhere outside Tucson. This is one of those times...

This happy pair was at 155-156 River Road near Quechee, Vermont, in September, 1978. (The box on the right even has a smiling face on its flag.)

Mystery mailbox #1

This plain black mailbox is mounted on a not! plain steel sculpture of a horse that the artist told me is “a bucking Sicilian Donkey! Just the right height for a mail box.”

As you can tell from the photo, the mailbox hadn't been installed yet. The artist asked me to keep the location anonymous, and I'm glad to. I might find more like that sometime — say, really exquisite mailboxes on dirt roads on the edge of town, where I'd ask the owner's permission before posting a photo. So I'm starting a series of “mystery mailboxes.”

240 North Cloverland Avenue

A white mailbox with floral designs in (mostly) reds, oranges and browns:

The other side has some of what looks like peeling:

I spotted the box on July 1st.

6142 East Beverly Street

This udderly fun mailbox shows a cow with its back left leg (and udder!) half-falling-off:

I moooved by on July 1st.

(Sad) Mailbox news from Michigan

This article is from the Arizona Daily Star on August 5th:

Community mourns Michigan man who waved at passers-by

Mailboxes are more than the kind of art we show here. Like (the slowly disappearing) post offices, they can be places for people to stay in touch with each other.

Air mail in Idaho

I used to do a lot of road trips. Back then, in the days when folks could pay extra to send a letter by Air Mail, quite a few families put Air Mail boxes sky-high as a joke. Here's one east of Filer, Idaho. I didn't get an exact address, but it's on US Highway 30 near the junction with US 93.

I was cruising by on May 14, 1976.

2514-2516 North Orchard Avenue

An artistic mailbox on an artistic post, from April 25th...

Closer on both sides:

2501 North Orchard Avenue

That's the second box I found along my April 25th trip up this part of Orchard Avenue past Grant. It's purple with white topped by a candy-striped flag.

2444 North Orchard Avenue

The next three mailboxes are in two blocks of Orchard Avenue between Grant and Glenn.

This is one side of the box at 2444. It's painted green, blue and white, and mounted on a piece of wood over a steel plate. The post is a brighter, more saturated blue.

But that's not all. The mailbox is painted in the style of the walls that run between the home's front yard and the street:

I took photos of the mailboxes on April 25th. We'll see the next one, a bit north, next week.

2102 North Madelyn Avenue

This mailbox has scenery (a Native American pueblo, maybe?, at the left side, with hoodoos at the right side and a flag that's a US flag:

Here's a closeup of the box:

And the other side:

The photos are from April 18th.

2851 North Beverly Avenue (Uncle Sam)

Here's our Independence Day special edition: a mailbox with Uncle Sam along the post. I found it on my April 18th Mailbox Mission.

By the way, last week Monica Surfaro tweeted about a story on Uncle Sam.

1837 or 1857 North Arcadia Avenue

I'm guessing that this mailbox is a tractor. (Any other ideas? Please leave a comment below.) The box, the house and the curb didn't show an address. It's just north of 1823, though, so I'm guessing...

My seeds of doubt were planted :) on April 18th.

Santa Fe double-header

I'm on the road for much of June. At one campsite, one of the few radio stations I could get was a sports station with lots of baseball games. When I got to Santa Fe — a city full of art — on Sunday, I started to see lots of artistic mailboxes. The two-headed mailbox below made me think of a two-game series with the same team… a double-header:

OK, that analogy is stretching things. :)

By the way: Last week's entry showed two mailboxes, too.

Next week, we (this blog and I) will be back to Tucson mailboxes.

4441 & 4449 East Patricia Street

Here are two mailboxes mounted on a spoked wheel:

I rolled by on April 18th.

4441 East Monte Vista Drive

The homeowner probably does some traveling, or moving, or something...

It's a mailbox covered with license plates. I spotted it, or them, from my car on April 18th.

9201 East Indio Place

I'm trying to imagine what a new letter carrier might think upon seeing this bewilderingly fun mailbox for the first time. Rube Goldberg, maybe?

John Benedict made it. The photos are his, too. Thanks!

3609 East Kleindale Road

Here's a rusted steel mailbox with a white hand as its flag.

Next, a photo from another corner:

I found the box on April 18th.

4526 East Duncan Street

When I photograph mailboxes, I don't ring the owner's doorbell or do anything else to get the story of the box — unless I see a resident, or they see me. (As you'd guess, people who see me taking photos of their mailbox tend to walk over and ask what the heck I'm doing.)

On April 18th, I was visiting artists' open studios on the twice-yearly tour. On my way to one of the studios, I passed by a mailbox with plants in front of mountains topped by clouds:

The gate next to the mailbox was open and a man walked out. So I went over to chat and ask if I could photograph the mailbox. He was glad to talk; he told me some of the story. It was painted by an artist named Jessica Lemar who now lives in Colorado. Cars have run into the mailbox a couple of times, but he's kept putting it back up. He put me in touch with Jessica, and she told me about her Facebook page named ArtOrBust. She does a lot of nice work!

Some day I'd like to send postcards to mailbox owners, with my photo of their box, to ask the story of the mailbox and who made it. It's nice when happenstance lets me get the story as I take the photo.

2241 East Hawthorne Street

This tan-colored mailbox sprouts a couple of long leaves from the bottom of its post.

I couldn't find a good angle to show both leaves when I stopped by on April 18th.

4125 East 27th Street

That's a white mailbox with the family's name and handprints in blue. I found it on April 14th.