Red Medusa turns out to be "La Madre Tonantsin"

 To see a larger View

Anyone familiar with the beauty that is San Francisco will know that there is a wealth of ART for all to see, right along the city's streets and sidewalks, which is especially true in San Francisco's Mission District.  This particularly stunning  mural (or would you call it grafitti?) is situated between the Castro and Mission Districts, at the corners of 16th and Sanchez Streets, and it just took my breath away!
For those of you who would see it just a little better, I have put larger, high resolution photos of it on my PhotoBucket site, and provided links beneath each image in this article.

(Once you open the photo in PhotoBucket, clicking on the image gives 100% view)

Center (larger view)

Left Detail (larger vew)

Right Detail (larger view)

This is one city wall that seems to be "grafitti resistant"!

Since I posted this,  my friend Gayle was able to do some research and discovered that she is called  "La Madre Tonantsin", and was done by Colette Crutcher in 1991, restored in 1998.  Below is a quote from Ms. Crutcher:

"This mural is a renovation of La Madre Tonantsin, a similar mural I painted there in 1991. The original fence was rotting, and along with it the mural. A grassroots fundraising campaign, helped by a grant from Precita Eyes, enabled me to create this new version. Rather than sticking to paint alone, I incorporated a variety of semi-sculptural media.
The piece was made for the headquarters of the Instituto Pro Musica, an organization dedicated to the performance of music old and new from Spain and Latin America. I sing with their choral group, Coro Hispano de San Francisco, and used my artwork to express feelings evoked by this powerful musical heritage. The goddess represented is Tonantsin, the mother of the Aztec gods. I am not particularly well-versed in pre-Columbian religious practices; I just used the theme as a springboard for my imagination."

For more about the artist,  here is a link to her website describing it:  La Madre Tonantsin

For other of Ms. Crutcher's works:  Colette Crutcher

I would like to point out that I in no way want to promote this or any other image as a "RELIGIOUS" icon.  I know what ALL religions can lead to, and brutal as the religious practices of the Aztecs and their human sacrifices became, Christianity, which is based on the gentle teachings of Jesus of Nazareth somehow scares me even more,  as history can illustrate.  I prefer to keep the way I worship my GOD between ME and my GOD, and join no groups in order to do so, and my "church" is the most obvious one, the one HE/SHE created for that purpose.