Tuesday, November 17, 2015

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.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

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.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

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.)

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

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.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

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.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

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.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

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.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

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.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

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.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

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.)

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

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.”

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

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.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

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.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

(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.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

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.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

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.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

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.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

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.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

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.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

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.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

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.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

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.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

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!

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

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.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

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.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

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.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

4125 East 27th Street


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

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

802 South 8th Avenue?



Last week, David Aber sent me a photo of a mailbox he'd photographed (according to the datestamp imbedded in the photo file) June 9, 2012, at the corner of 18th Street & 8th Avenue. Since that's a while ago, and because there wasn't an exact street address, I drove over to find the box and look for an address.

I found the box, and it's just as in Dave's photo. I didn't find a street address. But the next home south was at 806 South 8th. So I tried both 800 and 802 in Google Maps. The Location box here in Blogger couldn't find either street address, or even the corner of 18th & 8th.
But here's a map link from Bing Maps.

And what is on top of the box?


If you know, please leave a comment below.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

4458 East 27th Street


A plain-vanilla (actually, black) mailbox embedded in a post made of stones:

I snapped the photo a week ago, April 14.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Tuesday, April 7, 2015