Tucson artist Eve Bigaj is accustomed to looking up at saguaros. With her latest work, she wants viewers to experience that same sense of scale and wonder.
Bigaj recently unveiled a 27-foot-long pastel mural inspired by the towering cacti of the Sonoran Desert as part of the “Saguaro-Sized” exhibition at Untitled Gallery in downtown Tucson.
The 5-foot-tall work depicts saguaros stretching toward the sky as its colors gradually shift through vivid rainbow hues. The mural is displayed horizontally, although Bigaj said she eventually hopes to hang it vertically — 27 feet tall and 5 feet wide.
“There’s a little moment of disorientation where you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at,” Bigaj said. “But you’re seeing a couple of saguaros reaching up all the way into the sky with the colors slowly shifting into all these different rainbow hues as you walk along it.”
The idea grew from Bigaj’s experience drawing saguaros outdoors for roughly two years. When she first came to Arizona, Bigaj said she was struck by their enormous size. Over time, however, that feeling became familiar.
She wanted the mural to bring it back.
“I’ve been wanting to recreate that sense of scale for myself, and then for my audience,” Bigaj said.
Bigaj completed the mural over about a week, spending several hours each morning working in the desert. Because the paper was so large, she worked directly on the sand, unrolling roughly 5 feet at a time and moving from one side of the drawing to the other.
The process created challenges rarely encountered with smaller pastel works. Sand could land on the paper and smudge the pastel, while Bigaj had to move around the piece without leaving footprints. She also needed to ensure the perspective remained consistent despite repeatedly changing positions.
“I was out of breath for some of it, actually,” Bigaj said. “Running around and grabbing the different colors, and yeah, I was on it from both sides.”
Working directly on the desert floor also became part of the finished piece. The texture underneath the paper created a rubbing effect that Bigaj said gives viewers another connection to the environment where it was created.
The desert changed the artwork in another, unexpected way.
Bigaj created the piece in Sabino Canyon, where a major storm arrived during the week she was working. The strom knocked an arm from one of the saguaros she was drawing. Rather than ignore the change, Bigaj incorporated it into the mural.
“I was kind of excited to be able to put in this aspect of time, something that had unplanned that had changed while I was working on it,” she said.
The Sonoran Desert has become central to Bigaj’s work since she moved to Tucson in early 2025. She lives near Sabino Canyon and said she goes into the area almost daily to draw.
Saguaros particularly fascinate her because of their almost human qualities.
“They are anthropomorphic, or at least I think of them as kind of human-like,” Bigaj said. “It’s the closest I get to drawing a person while drawing nature.”
Their variations also provide an almost endless supply of subjects. Some have arms extending in unusual directions, while others take forms far removed from the familiar cactus silhouette.
“They make me feel small in a way, which I appreciate — that feeling of being a part of something larger,” Bigaj said. “And I think in that mural, I hoped to capture that.”
Bigaj’s path to becoming an artist included an academic exploration of the same subject that now drives much of her artwork: beauty.
She earned a doctorate from Harvard University, where her dissertation explored the internal experience of beauty. Bigaj was already making art while studying philosophy, taking classes and creating figurative works and oil paintings.
Eventually, creating art became more compelling than theorizing about it.
“It felt a little bit like a shame to spend my life doing theory about the thing that I really ultimately loved,” Bigaj said.
Her artistic development also took her to Boston and Senegal before Arizona. Bigaj said her time in Senegal helped deepen her appreciation for vibrant colors and desert light, influences that remain visible in her work today.
Her pastel “Today, Only Beauty” received first prize in the advanced pastel category at the Tombstone Art Gallery’s 2025 annual art show. Bigaj said the recognition helped reinforce her belief that closely observing and depicting saguaros was worth pursuing.
“Saguaro-Sized” paired Bigaj’s work with mixed-media pieces by artist Alan Tasky. The two shared studio space near Untitled Gallery over the summer and collaborated on the exhibition’s curation and installation.
Tasky also helped develop a frame from repurposed wood for Bigaj’s mural, which prevented air from the gallery’s swamp cooler from moving the massive sheet of paper.
Since the work went on public display, Bigaj said some visitors have stopped in front of it with smiles or simply responded, “Wow.”
For Bigaj, those reactions suggest the experiment with scale accomplished what she hoped it would.
“My hope is that they were seeing something of what I see in the desert,” Bigaj said, “and that they were inspired to maybe take more time to appreciate their environment and the beauty of nature around them.”
The project has also expanded Bigaj’s ideas about where her work can go next. She plans to continue working with pastels but is interested in creating traditional murals and experimenting with other media on a similarly ambitious scale.
“All of my other work kind of feels small in comparison,” Bigaj said.
