A nearly 50-year-old Austin mural gets restored
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Artists Rick Turner, left, and Kerry Awn admire their Austin mural. (A third artist, Tommy B., is not present.) Photo: Asher Price/Axios
A nearly half-century-old mural that depicts Austin in all its funky glory, on 23rd Street near the University of Texas, has been updated with a fresh set of characters.
The very big picture: The packed painting shows Stephen F. Austin centrally situated as a kind of patron saint and now includes a soccer ball with the Austin FC oak tree logo and the Jenga Tower and Google buildings downtown — as well as Earl Campbell, Lady Bird Johnson, Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan.
- Plus, some random dude peeping out from a cactus now sports a pandemic mask.
What they're saying: "It's an ode to counter culture — though over the years we've realized it now has much wider appeal for all of Austin," Rick Turner, one of the three Austintatious Artists who first got to work on the mural in 1973, tells Axios.
Between the brush strokes: The mural revival — as well the restoration of a glorious panoramic painting of Texas from 2002 on an opposite wall — was underwritten by the city of Austin and the Phogg Foundation.
What's next: Phoebe Allen, a friend of the artists, tells Axios she's trying to get a historical marker for the murals, to preserve them in perpetuity.