Joe Pagac has created countless murals on Tucson walls. These are his 3 favorites.

Being a muralist was never part of the plan for Joe Pagac.

On the contrary, he didn't decide to study art until he was pulled aside by an art professor during his sophomore year at the University of Arizona who said he should change his major from film to art.

"I've always been creative and good at art," Pagac said. "I wasn't expecting to make a living at it or anything, but just didn't really know what to do with life. So once I got out, I put an ad in the paper, 'artist for hire,' and just kind of took any job that I could get."

Within a few months, Pagac was able to make a living painting trompe l'oeil and impressionistic murals in restaurants and private homes.

"I just started getting more and more mural work as I did more of them and then ended up doing murals all over the country," he said.

Pagac used to do rotating murals promoting upcoming shows at the Rialto Theatre and created seasonal murals and installations for Hotel Congress downtown.

"The great thing about Joe is that I could come up with pretty much any crazy idea and Joe going, 'Yeah, I can do that,'" said former Hotel Congress entertainment director David Slutes. "And some of the things we did were just hilarious. He's remarkable, frankly."

Pagac says his passion outside of art is being outside and traveling. When he isn't creating art in Tucson, chances are he's exploring different parts of the world.

"I kind of just work until I have enough money to leave and then travel," Pagac said. He believes that immersing himself in a community through volunteering and working helps shift away from a tourist's point of view, also contributing to his work.

"So much of my art is tied to the outdoors and to nature and to adventure," Pagac said. "I think it really helps just inform it to bounce back and forth, and it creates this really good, positive feedback loop."

A lot of Pagac's most popular work in Tucson focuses on desert animals doing fun, goofy activities. The artist says his goal is to create murals that make people smile and give them warm, nostalgic feelings.

"But also hopefully, (people) want to go out and see more of the desert around them and make it a little less scary," Pagac said.

Those also wind up being some of his most treasured pieces. Here are three of his favorites:

Epic Rides, where a woman's dress turns into a sunset

The side of Epic Rides at 534 N. Stone Ave. displays a 4,000-square-foot bicycle mural that cost about $18,000 to make a reality.

This was one of the first pieces Pagac did without any oversight, he says, and was funded by 300 people from a Kickstarter he created.

"I talked to my cousin in LA, who's an artist, and I was like, 'Dude, how do I get into painting these big public murals?'" Pagac said. "And he said, 'Just paint one, and then you're the guy who paints big public murals, and people will call you.'"

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Pagac got approval from the owner of the building after saying he'd fully pay for it. He completed it in 2017, where it has remained ever since.

"It was just so cool to have my own work actually huge in the city," Pagac said.

The colorful whales swimming into the sunset

The 6,000-foot whale mural can be found off Campbell Avenue and Grant Road, now slightly behind a Starbucks drive-thru that was built last year.

The piece has become a Tucson icon since it was created in 2019, and the construction of the Starbucks caused quite an uproar in the Tucson community last fall.

"I saw it all the time on like Reddit, Facebook and stuff like that, and then I got a ton of calls and emails from people as well," Pagac said. "One person was trying to organize a Save the Whales rally, and they were gonna go down and protest, like it was super cool."

He says that while he loved seeing the Tucson community rally behind him, he also understood that the possibility of having his work covered up came with the territory. Compared to the possibility of the mural-clad building being bulldozed entirely, this was the best-case scenario, he says.

"My fear is if a person who owns a building gets a mural, and then knows there's a possibility that a change in the future could cause protests or hurt their business, it might stop them from doing murals," Pagac said. "And so, I don't want that to be the case."

The mural can still be seen as Tucsonans drive along Grant Road by the old Catalina Theater.

Desert critters dining in cactus-shaped hot air balloons

Pagac's mural at the new Ari on Fourth apartments, 211 N. Fourth Ave., features desert animals drinking and dining in cactus-shaped hot air balloons. The apartments sit in the space formerly home to Maloney's, the bar where Pagac had his first drink when he turned 21.

The owners of the apartments gave him free rein on the design, asking him to simply make it "something Tucson."

"I did that design and they called me back and they were like, 'You know, we're looking at this, and it just doesn't feel very Tucson,'" Pagac said. "I grew up in Tucson. I spent my whole college years partying in that apartment building (when it was Maloney's), I designed this mural to exactly fit that location and this neighborhood ... I go, 'You just have to trust me.'" 

Pagac says the apartment owners decided to go with it, and were more than pleased with the final result.

"They loved it," Pagac said. "It's probably one of my favorites that I've done."