Sixto Rodriguez mural, Vernor Highway

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Muralist Elton Monroy Durán painted this large-scale portrait of singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez on a building at West Vernor Highway and Sharon Street in Southwest Detroit, timing its completion to Rodriguez's birthday in 2020. Rodriguez, born in Detroit in 1942 to Mexican immigrant parents, grew up in and around this part of the city before recording the albums Cold Fact and Coming from Reality in the early 1970s; largely ignored in the United States, the records became a cultural phenomenon in South Africa, a story later told in the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. Placing the mural in the heavily Mexican-American neighborhood of Southwest Detroit connected Rodriguez's rediscovered fame to his own immigrant family roots. The building-sized portrait remains one of the most prominent public tributes to Rodriguez in the city, visible to traffic along Vernor Highway.

1. Painted by Mexican muralist Elton Monroy Durán
2. Completed in 2020, timed to Rodriguez's birthday
3. In Southwest Detroit, near Rodriguez's own family roots
4. Building-high portrait visible from West Vernor Highway