From the moment Camila Ibarra painted a mural in her high school cafeteria, she knew she wanted to be an artist.
The Sahuaro High School alum didn’t think it was possible to make a career of it. It just wasn’t realistic, she said. Ibarra attended ASU to earn a degree in engineering, something she thought was more steady, and did art on the side.
“I started to actually do (murals), more career focused, about five years ago,” she said.
One of Ibarra’s first public murals downtown was the Black Lives Matter mural that went on the side of Hotel Congress in 2020. Since then, she said her artistic work has gotten more consistent.
“In 2024, I was just overworking myself because I was doing engineering full time, and then on weekends I was doing murals,” Ibarra said.
She decided it was time to take a shot at being an artist full-time and quit her job as an engineer in January of this year.
“It’s just been really nice,” Ibarra said.
Now, after 10 years of developing her artistic skills, Ibarra is crafting her first city-sponsored mural, downtown in celebration of Tucson’s official 250th birthday.
Camila Ibarra paints a portion of her new mural in honor of Tucson’s 250th birthday.
The Rio Nuevo District is collaborating with the Mayor’s Office, Visit Tucson, Downtown Tucson Partnership and the Presidio Museum to commission four new murals throughout the downtown area.
The public art project celebrates Tucson’s upcoming 250th birthday in August and honors over two millennia of cultural history. Every mural displays each of the four artists’ interpretations of the city’s history, from the early Hohokam people before the year 1000 to modern-day Tucson.
“The Spanish built the Presidio in 1775,” said Rio Nuevo Board Member Jannie Cox. “As part of Rio Nuevo, we have a fund that we use to have murals created to beautify our district. These four murals will do exactly that.”
Cox said the artists were given almost complete creative freedom to paint whatever 250 years means to them. The only requirements were that they incorporate the mayor’s 250 logo and the linguistic history of the city’s name: S-cukSon, Tucsón and Tucson.
“Those four items will bring the murals all together,” Cox said.
The project is guided by the ¡Somos Uno! Cultural Heritage Strategy for Tucson, which was earlier this year by the mayor and City Council.
“These murals are a beautiful way for people to understand the history of Tucson, but they are also drivers of our creative economy,” wrote Tucson Mayor Regina Romero in an emailed statement. “Since I was a Council Member in Ward 1, I knew how important our art, history and culture were, and that we needed a way to document it. That is why as Mayor, I pushed for the creation of our ¡Somos Uno! Cultural Heritage Strategy for Tucson.
“One of the things that Tucsonans told us through ¡Somos Uno! is how important it is to support local artists and our creative ecosystem,” she said.
Rio Nuevo is paying for artists Pen Macias, Ignacio Garcia, Joe Pagac and Ibarra to create the murals. The project cost a total of $108,000.
Pen Macias works on a new downtown mural, “Tucson250+,” at the northeast corner of West Congress Street and North Church Avenue.
Macias’s piece features three vignettes that focus on three different periods of Tucson’s history. The first focuses on the Hohokam settlement before Tucson was developed, the second on the Spanish creation of the Presidio, and the third on Tucson’s more modern downtown development over the last century.
“The foreground kind of represents the beginning of Tucson as a metropolitan city, and then as the car drives into the distance, in the background you see modern Tucson with Joe (Pagac’s) saguaro mural in the distance,” she said. “It’s sort of driving into what Tucson is now.”
Pen Macias’ mural is one of four planned to help celebrate Tucson’s 250th birthday. The murals will be officially unveiled in July.
Garcia’s mural focuses more on Tucson’s Indigenous people, featuring members of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui tribes.
“It kind of shows the root of downtown, where it all started,” he said. “It’s my first time getting permission to paint a deer dancer or anything with the Pascua Yaqui. Also getting permission to paint the ‘ono Native American is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. To have a piece of work like that downtown is one of the coolest things that I’m honored to do.”
Three Tohono Oʼodham people are depicted in a new mural by local artist, Ignacio Garcia, along Arizona Ave. near Congress Street in downtown Tucson. The mural is one of four that were commissioned by Rio Nuevo to celebrate Tucson’s 250th birthday, according to Jannie Cox, of Rio Nuevo.
Pagac’s piece covers the 10-foot-high south-facing wall of La Placita Garage spanning 240 feet wide. The piece illustrates a Gila monster with a birthday hat and a candle in a cupcake along with historical symbols of Native American pots, a Mexican blanket, a spur with a cowboy hat and the mountain ranges that surround the city.
“As a Tucsonan who has lived here his whole life and spends all his time doing art, it’s a huge honor to be among the four amazing muralists selected by the mayor and Rio Nuevo to represent the city for its quarter millennium birthday celebration,” Pagac said.
A mockup of Joe Pagac's mural covers the 10-foot-high south-facing wall of La Placita Garage spanning 240 feet wide. The piece illustrates a Gila monster with a birthday hat and a candle in a cupcake along with historical symbols of Native American pots, a Mexican blanket, a spur with a cowboy hat and the mountain ranges that surround the city.
Ibarra stuck with a theme of honoring the past while moving into a more modern Tucson, featuring a Tohono O’odham woman weaving a basket, the San Xavier Mission, the Presidio, Father Kino on horseback, and the arrival of the railroad.
“I went through a really long process to get my design together, and I just wanted to make sure that I was capturing everything correctly and as beautifully as I can,” Ibarra said. “I think the community aspect of this has been my favorite part, and just getting to include different people.”
All four murals are set to be complete by June 30.
An unveiling celebration will be held at HighWire, 30 W. Arizona Alley, on July 25 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Some event highlights include meet and greets with the muralists, walking and trolley tours, and refreshments. The event is free with .