54Cactus at the Tortilla Factory
Painter not on record · prickly pear, agave, barrel cactus and a palm painted up the corners of Jesse’s Tortilla Factory, 1226 Webster Ave at S 13th St · know who painted it, or when? Tell us.MURAL
A white stucco tortilla factory on Webster with a whole desert painted up its walls — prickly pear, agave, a barrel cactus in bloom and a palm that climbs to the roof.
Jesse’s Tortilla Factory is a plain two-story stucco building at Webster and South 13th, white walls, red-framed windows with bars on them, green transoms above, and a sign along the eave with a little sombrero-wearing figure and the menu: tamales, taco shells, masa, salsa, tortillas, chips. What makes you stop is that the building is growing things. Big prickly pear pads sprawl up both sides of the front door, dotted with red fruit. A spiky agave sits at the base of each window. A round barrel cactus with pink blooms on top waits by the steps, painted so its shadow falls on the rocks beneath it. And on the corner, a yucca-topped palm runs straight up past the second-floor windows to the roofline, its dead brown fronds hanging under the green ones the way they do on a real one.
Go around the side and the name is painted in red script across the wall — Jesse’s TORTILLA FACTORY — with more prickly pear at the corner. Then keep going. On the back, by the gas meter, the style changes: flat, dark-green cut-out shapes of saguaro, barrel cactus and prickly pear with no shading at all, like a shadow-puppet version of the garden out front. Two painters, or one painter in two moods; we do not know.
We could not find a name or a year for any of it. Jesse’s has been making tortillas here a long time, and if you know who put the desert on the walls, tell us.
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