Children's Bouquet at Palo Verde Park

Help us create a little mural magic in the children’s playground area at Palo Verde Park!

The pony wall framing the playground area is in disrepair, with peeling paint and crumbling cement.

Our kids, our neighborhood, and our park deserve better.

The Palo Verde Park Neighborhood Association has received permission from the City of Tucson Parks & Recreation Department to repair the wall and install a public art mural.

We’ve commissioned local artist and Palo Verde Park neighbor Angela Pittenger, who uses oils and watercolors to create movement and emotion in her pieces.

We are raising $1,000 for the commission, as well as for supplies.

You know her work from the Little Free Library by the dog park, where a wise owl encourages readers, and may have seen her chalk art florals bursting from the sidewalk in the thick of the pandemic, or in several pieces that she donated for our online art auction in 2020 to finish our perimeter sign drive.

Angela is known for her exuberant florals, and she has envisioned a wall of vibrant, playful sunflowers, their faces to the sun, as clouds pass overhead in a blue sky.

The power of outdoor art lies in its storytelling about a place, and the ability to build community. The concept speaks to our neighborhood’s appreciation of nature, but also symbolizes growth, regeneration, hope and perseverance in a time when they’ve been needed more than ever.

The mural will also honor our past. While the wall is in such disrepair that we cannot save the original palm prints, but we can recreate them. We will be working with the Kellond PTA to invite children to help us with our Hands of Friendship mural, which will be on the back side of the wall, facing the pool area.

This will be Palo Verde Park’s second public art mural. In 2019, five talented high school students from Palo Verde High School braved the July heat to share their gifts with our neighborhood. After soliciting feedback from the neighborhood about themes that were important to local residents, lead artist and muralist Isaac Caruso and the students incorporated history and nature into their final design. This project was made possible by Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona and the Pima Association of Governments.

We realize that the past year has been incredibly hard on many of us.

If you have the capacity to help financially, any amount will get us closer than we are today.

If you don’t have the ability to donate, know that you’re doing your part to strengthen our community just by caring about your neighbors and your area. We’re always looking for volunteers as well.

The City of Tucson’s Environmental Services Department is also donating paint to help us freshen up the colorful concrete on the ground by the mural.