## Nine buildings and a ship that refuse to stand the normal way A house front sits down on a London lawn, a ship is cut in half in the Thames and a cottage tips off the roof of a San Diego engineering building. Some of these are sculptures, some are murals and two are real buildings you can walk into. More: Buildings That Look Like They’re From a Dream (8 Photos) * * * ### 🪞 “Dalston House” — By Leandro Erlich in London, UK 🇬🇧 The front of a three-story terraced house lay flat on the ground on Ashwin Street in Dalston, under a huge mirror set at 45 degrees. Visitors lay down on it, and in the mirror they seemed to hang from window ledges and climb the walls. 📷 Photo: Cmglee / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) **💡 Nerd Fact:** The Barbican commissioned it for the London Festival of Architecture 2013, presented with OTO Projects. It stood on an empty lot at 1–7 Ashwin Street and was only up from June 26 to August 4 that year. * * * ### 🏠 “A Week at the Knees” — By Alex Chinneck in London, UK 🇬🇧 A Georgian-style house front, green door and drainpipe included, bends at the knees and sits down on the grass of Charterhouse Square. Chinneck built it for Clerkenwell Design Week in May 2025. 📷 Photo: Matt Brown / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) **💡 Artist Fact:** Behind the bricks is a frame of about 320 meters of repurposed steel, and the whole piece weighs about 12 tons. Chinneck first made a brick facade slide off a house in 2013 in Margate, with From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes, which stayed up for about a year. More: Alex Chinneck’s Architectural Illusions (8 Photos) 🔗 Follow Alex Chinneck on Instagram * * * ### 🚢 “A Slice of Reality” — By Richard Wilson in London, UK 🇬🇧 Off the Greenwich Peninsula, a vertical slice of the sand dredger _Arco Trent_ stands in the Thames, commissioned for the Millennium. The rest of the ship was scrapped. The piece is now part of The Line, London’s public art walk. 📷 Photo: It’s No Game / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) **💡 Nerd Fact:** The cut leaves parts of the crew’s living quarters exposed, down to a pool table. * * * ### 🔄 “Turning the Place Over” — By Richard Wilson in Liverpool, UK 🇬🇧 Wilson cut an oval about 8 meters (26 feet) across out of the front of the former Yates’s Wine Lodge on Moorfields and set it turning, so the wall kept rolling out of the building and back in. It ran from June 2007 to January 2011, in the lead-up to Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture. 📷 Photo: John Bradley / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) * * * ### ⭐ “Fallen Star” — By Do Ho Suh in San Diego, USA 🇺🇸 A small blue house hangs off the roof of Jacobs Hall at UC San Diego, seven stories up, as if it had dropped from the sky and landed askew. It was lifted into place in November 2011 and opened in June 2012 as part of the Stuart Collection. 📷 Photo: Doglover41 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) **💡 Nerd Fact:** The house is furnished inside, and its floor slopes about 5 degrees. Suh based it on a New England cottage he knew from his neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island, at about 75 percent of its size. * * * ### 🧷 “Rock and Roll” — By Alex Chinneck in Milan, Italy 🇮🇹 A giant zipper runs down the corner of an old Milanese facade, and the top of the wall has been unzipped and folded back like fabric. Chinneck built it at Opificio 31 for Milan Design Week 2019. The facade was a false front, made to look old. It was commissioned by Philip Morris International for its IQOS installation, and the unzipped front ran about 17 meters across two buildings. More: Alex Chinneck’s Architectural Illusions (8 Photos) 🔗 Follow Alex Chinneck on Instagram * * * ### 🙃 “Upside-Down House” — By Daniel Czapiewski in Szymbark, Poland 🇵🇱 This wooden house stands on its roof, with its foundations in the air. The businessman Daniel Czapiewski designed it, and it was finished in 2007 as a statement about the uncertainty of life in post-communist Poland. 📷 Photo: Polimerek / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) **💡 History Fact:** Czapiewski’s company usually builds a house in about three weeks, but this one took 114 days because the workers were disoriented by the angles of the walls. Inside, it is furnished as a home would have been in the communist era. More: 6 Real Buildings That Look Impossible * * * ### 〰️ “Krzywy Domek (Crooked House)” — By Szotyńscy & Zaleski in Sopot, Poland 🇵🇱 On Monte Cassino Street, the front of a shopping center bends and sags as if the whole building had melted a little. It was built in 2004 to a design by Szotyńscy & Zaleski, inspired by the fairy-tale illustrations of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg. It holds about 4,000 square meters of shops, restaurants, bars and offices. 📷 Photo: Аимаина хикари / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) More: 6 Real Buildings That Look Impossible * * * ### 🏘️ “Stacking Houses” — By Francisco Fonseca in Ôlas, Portugal 🇵🇹 One building, painted to look like a whole village stacked on top of itself: tiled roofs, balconies, doors and little windows, floor after floor. Fonseca painted it for the 2025 Douro Street Art Festival, held that year in the municipality of São João da Pesqueira. More: A Reason To Smile (8 Photos) 🔗 Follow Francisco Fonseca on Instagram * * * ### 📦 “Home Sweet Home” — By Nego in Torrellas, Spain 🇪🇸 Nego painted the end wall of a house as a cardboard box, with a ginger cat tearing its way out through the side. It won second prize in the village’s 2017 street art contest, the II Concurso Arte en la Calle de Torrellas, and Heraldo de Aragón reported it under the title _Home Sweet Home_. More: The Walls Belong to Cats Now (8 Photos) 🔗 Visit Nego’s official website

## Figures made of plants Willow, moss, grass, rice, straw and one patiently trained tree: ten figures built from plants. Some were woven, some were planted, and a few are still growing. * * * ### 🏹 Spirit of the Medieval Huntress — By Anna & The Willow at Skipton Castle Woods, England 🇬🇧 Anna Cross’s nine-foot willow archer draws her bow beside the path through Skipton Castle Woods. The Woodland Trust commissioned her and The Stalking Horse in 2018 to recall the wood’s past as a larder and hunting ground for Skipton Castle. **💡 Frame Fact:** The willow is woven over a hand-forged steel frame made by local blacksmith Adam Crane. Willow does not last forever outdoors, and in 2024 Sylvan Skills rebuilt the frames and rewove both sculptures; this photo shows the original weave. 🔗 Follow **Anna & The Willow on Instagram** * * * ### 🌿 Mud Maid — By Sue and Pete Hill at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, England 🇬🇧 The Mud Maid sleeps on the floor of Heligan’s Woodland Walk, her body covered in ivy, with moss creeping over her face. Sister and brother Sue and Pete Hill made her in 1997, and grass, ivy and moss grow and wither on her through the year. The two photos show her in summer and under snow. **💡 Name Fact:** She was first planned as a mermaid. According to My Modern Met, the tail was dropped after a member of the restoration team called her a “mud maid.” More: **Mud Maid – Living sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill** 🔗 Visit **the Lost Gardens of Heligan** * * * ### 🌺 Earth Goddess — By Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Georgia, USA 🇺🇸 About 25 feet tall and covered in roughly 17,000 plants, the Earth Goddess rises from the Cascades Garden and lets water run from her hand. She arrived in May 2013 from Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal in 23 fully planted pieces for the Imaginary Worlds exhibition, and the garden kept her in its permanent collection. **💡 Garden Fact:** Her hollow body holds the irrigation system, split into 13 zones so the gardeners can water different parts, such as the fingertips, separately. She is sheared about every two weeks to keep her shape defined. 📷 Photo: Eric Yarnell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🚶 Willow Man — By Serena de la Hey near Bridgwater, England 🇬🇧 Drivers on the M5 in Somerset have passed this 40-foot striding man of black willow, standing in a field just south of junction 23, since 2000; this photo shows him in 2011. The first one burned down in an arson attack in May 2001; Serena de la Hey rebuilt him that October, and a moat was dug around him. **💡 Update:** By late 2023, Somerset Council described the sculpture as “barely recognisable” and started a feasibility study, funded by National Highways, into repairing him and possibly moving him to a new site. By 2024, little more than his steel frame was left. 📷 Photo: Anthony Parkes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) * * * ### 🌾 Ebisu and Daikokuten — Rice Paddy Art in Inakadate, Japan 🇯🇵 Every line here is a growing rice plant. In 2008 the village of Inakadate planted Ebisu and Daikokuten, two of Japan’s Seven Lucky Gods, using rice varieties whose leaves come up in different colors. Ebisu holds his fish; the house at the edge of the field shows the scale. **💡 Village Fact:** Inakadate began its rice paddy art in 1993 to bring the village back to life. The designs are planned on computers, and a 22-meter mock castle tower at the village office lets visitors see the whole picture. 📷 Photo: yawning hunter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🧚 Windfee — By Barbara Jamin Sassmannshausen in Bingen, Germany 🇩🇪 A life-size “wind fairy” woven from willow rods stands by the river in Bingen. The loose ends of her hair and skirt are left sticking out behind her, so she looks as if she is walking into a strong gust. More: **Windfee by Barbara Jamin Sassmannshausen** * * * ### 🗿 Giant’s Head — By Sue and Pete Hill at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, England 🇬🇧 The Hills’ second figure at Heligan is only a head, half sunk into the woodland with grass for skin and plants for hair. It was built around the root stock of old oaks that were uprooted in the Great Storm of 1990. **💡 Repair Fact:** The roots inside eventually rotted, and according to My Modern Met a 2012 renovation gave the head a steel frame. Its hair is crocosmia, which turns it red-haired in summer. 📷 Photo: Daderot / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) * * * ### 🌳 A Tree Grown Into a Person — By Pooktre (Peter Cook and Becky Northey) Nothing here was carved. The tree was shaped as it grew into two legs and two raised arms, and the branches above became the hair. According to the photo’s description, the tree was planted in 1998 and photographed in 2009. **💡 Tree Shaping Fact:** In Australia, Peter Cook and Becky Northey refined their own techniques for shaping trees into figures of people, chairs and mirror frames. 📷 Photo: Pooktre (uploaded by Blackash) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) 🔗 Visit **Pooktre’s website** * * * ### 👑 A Straw King and Queen — Dülmen, Germany 🇩🇪 Round straw bales for heads and bodies, a red top and a white shirt, a crown and a top hat. This couple stood in a field in Daldrup, part of Dülmen’s Kirchspiel district, in May 2015. The sign beside them names them as the “Königspaar,” Daniela and Thomas: the year’s king and queen of a local Schützenfest, the marksmen’s festival held in many German villages. 📷 Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons (“Dülmen, Kirchspiel, Strohfiguren — 2015 — 5793”, CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🌬️ Stillness in Motion — By Olga Ziemska in Orońsko, Poland 🇵🇱 The body is made of stacked branch ends, and the long sweep of willow behind it reads like hair pulled sideways by the wind. Olga Ziemska’s project page dates the work to 2002, at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, made from locally reclaimed willow branches. **💡 Series Fact:** It was the first work in her Matka series. “Matka” means “mother” in Polish, and she has since built the figure in other countries from trees that grow native to each place. 🔗 Follow **Olga Ziemska on Instagram**

## Ten times an artist looked at something ordinary and decided to **play** A car gets a movie villain’s stare, a weed becomes armpit hair, and two painted elephants borrow real pine trees for their trunks. Each piece here starts with something that was already on the street and adds just enough to make you laugh. * * * ### 🚗 Terminator Tail Lights — By Rudy Willingham in Seattle, USA 🇺🇸 Two square tail lights on a red Corvette turn into the Terminator’s glowing red eyes. Rudy Willingham works with removable stickers around Seattle that turn everyday objects into quick jokes, then leaves them for neighbors to find. **💡 Film Fact:** The Library of Congress added _The Terminator_ to the National Film Registry in 2008, so this parked car is borrowing a stare that is officially preserved as American film history. More: **Rudy Willingham: SpongeBob, Terminator, and More** 🔗 Follow **Rudy Willingham on Instagram** * * * ### 🌾 “L’aisselle / The Armpit” — By Sandrine Estrade Boulet A tuft of grass growing where the wall meets the pavement becomes the armpit hair of a painted figure stretching her arm. The artist’s portfolio lists the piece as _L’aisselle / The Armpit_. Next summer the weed decides how hairy it gets. **💡 Artist Fact:** Boulet calls herself a “hallucinartiste.” Her own biography builds her work on pareidolia, the habit of recognizing familiar shapes in the things around us. More: **Waterworld: Street Art by Sandrine Boulet** 🔗 Follow **Sandrine Estrade Boulet on Instagram** * * * ### 🐘 Elephant Twinning — By Falko Fantastic in Cape Town, South Africa 🇿🇦 Falko Fantastic paints two elephants on a low wall, dangling from the trunks of two real pine trees that their own trunks run straight up into. The trees finish the animals, and the elephants look like they are hanging on for dear life. More: **A Reason to Smile (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Falko Fantastic on Instagram** * * * ### 🖍️ Schoolyard Friends — By David Zinn David Zinn drew one of his creatures on a schoolyard, where it ended up surrounded by children’s chalk monsters. He captioned it: “One nice thing about being drawn in a schoolyard is that you always make some friends.” **💡 Chalk Fact:** Zinn does not mind when the weather wins. In his own FAQ he explains that the work is not meant to last, so wind and rain wiping it away is part of the plan. More: **David Zinn’s Magical Chalk Art** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### ✂️ Don’t Worry, I’ll Protect You — By Oakoak A door in a wall made of caged rocks gets a pair of scissors and a sheet of paper. The paper stands next to the scissors and promises to protect them. Anyone who has played rock, paper, scissors knows why. **💡 Artist Fact:** Urban Nation describes Oakoak’s method as playing with the city’s mundane flaws and geek references “to poeticize the urban environment.” More: **Lovely by Oakoak (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Oakoak on Instagram** * * * ### 🚬 Crime Scene — By Slinkachu A discarded cigarette butt gets a full forensic team in white suits, a case of equipment and one investigator who just stands there looking at it. Slinkachu places tiny figures like these in the street and photographs them. **💡 Miniature Fact:** Most of Slinkachu’s little people start as model railway figures. His FAQ says most are made by the German company Preiser, and he often cuts and repaints them before they go outside. More: **7 Tiny Street Dramas by Slinkachu** 🔗 Follow **Slinkachu on Instagram** * * * ### 🌬️ Clean Energy — By TABBY A small wind turbine stands by the wall with a mop in hand. TABBY’s own archive lists _Clean Energy_ as a cutout wooden canvas panel. Clean energy, taken literally. More: **Clean Energy on Street Art Utopia** 🔗 Follow **TABBY on Instagram** * * * ### 🪏 The Dalton Brothers Escape — By Blesea in Cherbourg, France 🇫🇷 A broken concrete column becomes the escape route for the four Dalton brothers from the _Lucky Luke_ comics, standing on each other’s shoulders in their striped prison clothes, the top one’s hair made from the broken concrete itself. Blesea uses the damage as if it had been the plan all along. More: **Escape! The Dalton Brothers by Blesea in Cherbourg, France** 🔗 Follow **Blesea on Instagram** * * * ### 🐻 John’s Slippers — By David Zinn A small chalk bear sits on the pavement in fluffy pink slippers, feet out in front of him. Zinn’s caption explains it: “John’s morning was rattled by the realization that he had left the house in his slippers.” **💡 Artist Fact:** Before the sidewalk creatures, Zinn spent years on commissions. His official biography lists landfill murals, environmental superheroes and hand-painted dump trucks among them. More: **This Is Amazing Art by David Zinn! (11 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 😄 Green Smile — By Xanoy Xanoy paints a face with closed eyes and a wide grin and leaves the hair to the plants growing over the wall. The hairstyle changes with the season, and nobody needs to book a haircut. More: **When Artists Play With Nature (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Xanoy on Instagram**

## Some statues you want to hug. Some you walk past a little faster. You decide: **cute or creepy?** Bronze kids in a queue, an empty cloak in Prague, a cherub with bad intentions and a troll grinning out of a Danish forest. Same materials, very different first reactions. More: Playing With Statues (40 Photos) * * * ### 🎭 “Cloister Conspiracy” — By Philip Jackson Three hooded figures, no faces, one gold hand. They stand close together like they’re sharing a secret you’re not invited to. 💡 Sculpture Fact: Another cast of the group stands in the Lake Nona Sculpture Garden in Orlando, Florida, on a lawn with palm trees. Much less gloomy. More: Haunting Sculptures by Philip Jackson (10 Photos) 🔗 Follow Philip Jackson on Instagram * * * ### 🎻 “Music Unhurried” — By Qian Chang and Huang Jianxun in Guangzhou, China 🇨🇳 A bronze violinist leads a line of children, each holding the clothes of the one in front. Then a real toddler walked up and took the last boy’s hands. 💡 Place Fact: The sculpture stands in a garden plaza on Shamian Island, a quiet old quarter of Guangzhou. Isidor’s Fugue photographed it with the title and both sculptors on the plaque. * * * ### 👻 “Il Commendatore” — By Anna Chromy in Prague, Czechia 🇨🇿 An empty cloak, sitting. No face, no hands, only a dark hollow where someone should be. 📷 Photo: Josep Renalias / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) 💡 Opera Fact: It sat outside the Estates Theatre, where Mozart’s Don Giovanni premiered in 1787. The Commendatore is the dead man who comes back for Don Giovanni. After more than 20 years there, Prague moved the sculpture into storage in 2025, Expats.cz reported. * * * ### 😔 Sad Together A little girl copies a bronze figure hugging its knees. Same pose, same ledge, much smaller. * * * ### 👼 Cherub Attack A stone cherub mid-swing, and a visitor who sold the moment completely. * * * ### 🤝 A New Best Friend A toddler takes both hands of a bronze girl standing in her mother’s high heels. It looks like the start of a dance. * * * ### ✉️ “Le Messager” — By James Colomina in Kyiv, Ukraine 🇺🇦 A small red figure leans out of a wall, and a red Ukrainian trident runs down the tiles below it. 💡 Stamp Fact: Colomina placed it on the wall of the main post office on Independence Square. In February 2025 Ukraine put it on a postage stamp, Le Journal Toulousain reports. More: Santa Claus With a Gift Box Head and More by James Colomina 🔗 Follow James Colomina on Instagram * * * ### 👫 Hold My Hand A boy steps into a bronze family’s walk and grabs the bronze kid’s hand. Nobody in the family objects. * * * ### 🐦 The Pigeon’s Revenge A giant pigeon stands over a man on the grass who plays the victim very well. * * * ### 🌲 “Helle Haltben” — By Thomas Dambo in Højslev, Denmark 🇩🇰 A giant wooden troll grins out of the forest. Friendly smile, a lot of teeth. 💡 Troll Fact: Helle lost a leg in a fall, so she rests on one arm in Hald Skov near Højslev. Her missing leg is hidden somewhere in the same forest, Opdag Danmark says. More: 10 Giant Trolls Hiding in Forests, Lakes and Ruins 🔗 Follow Thomas Dambo on Instagram * * * ### 🦖 Monster City Showdown — By SAW ONCE RURAL BOYZ and Harfo in La Algaba, Spain 🇪🇸 A ruined city stretches across the wall, with a giant lizard at one end and a roaring gorilla at the other. Painted for the La Algaba Jam. 🔗 Follow SAW ONCE RURAL BOYZ and Harfo on Instagram * * * ### 🐻 Bear Hug A carved bear holds a cyclist like it found him on the trail. Either a rescue or a snack. You decide.

## Public **Toilets** People Travel to See Most public toilets are places you leave as fast as you can. People cross the world to see these. In a small New Zealand town, the toilet block is the main sight. In Tokyo, star architects designed park toilets, one of them with walls you can see through. * * * ### 🌈 The Hundertwasser Toilets — By Friedensreich Hundertwasser in Kawakawa, New Zealand 🇳🇿 Fat ceramic columns in red, blue and purple hold up a grass-topped roof, and a tree grows straight through the middle. Hundertwasser lived near Kawakawa from the mid-’70s and designed the town’s public toilets. Local volunteers built them with bricks from an old Bank of New Zealand building and recycled bottles. **💡 Heritage Fact:** The toilets opened in 1999, and Hundertwasser died a year later. Students from the local Bay of Islands College made the ceramic tiles. In 2023 the toilets were listed as a Category 1 Historic Place. 📷 Photo and cover crop: Petr Kraus / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🔍 Transparent Toilets — By Shigeru Ban in Tokyo, Japan 🇯🇵 Blue and green glass walls let you look straight inside the toilet in Haru-no-Ogawa Community Park. That is the idea: you can check that it is clean and empty before you walk in. Lock the door and the glass turns opaque. The first time still takes some trust. **💡 Design Fact:** Ban built two of these for The Tokyo Toilet project, and both opened on August 5, 2020. At night they light up the park like lanterns. 📷 Photo and cover crop: Syced / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) * * * ### 🚽 The Victorian Toilets — Rothesay, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Dark marble urinal stalls stand around a central column on a patterned mosaic floor, in a gents’ toilet built on Rothesay’s West Pier in 1899. Historic Environment Scotland lists it at Category A and calls it “an outstanding and rare surviving example of a high-quality Victorian public convenience.” Even the cisterns above the urinals have glass sides. **💡 Plumbing Fact:** The fittings came from Twyfords and cost £530. A much later restoration cost almost £300,000. 📷 Photo: DeFacto / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🏛️ The Roman Latrines — Ephesus, Turkey 🇹🇷 A long marble bench with a row of keyhole-shaped holes, no walls between them, above a channel of running water. These public latrines in ancient Ephesus were built in the 1st century AD over a channel with a constant flow of water. Dozens of people sat here shoulder to shoulder. Privacy was not part of the plan. 📷 Photo: Carole Raddato / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) * * * ### 🌸 The Bryant Park Restroom — New York City, USA 🇺🇸 A carved stone building with “WOMEN · MEN” over the door, just off 42nd Street in Bryant Park. Inside there are two attendants at all times, fresh flowers and classical music. In Midtown Manhattan, that is close to a miracle. **💡 Restroom Fact:** A 2017 makeover cost $280,000, and in 2011 the travel site VirtualTourist named it No. 1 in the world. 📷 Photo: SnowFire / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) * * * ### ☕ Café Achteck — Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 A green, eight-sided cast-iron urinal under the trees in Berlin’s Wedding district. The first ones went up in 1879. Berliners nicknamed them Café Achteck, “Café Octagon,” because this is where you get rid of your coffee. **💡 Berlin Fact:** By 1920 the city had 142 of them; only 11 of the originals still exist, and some are protected monuments. 📷 Photo: Miriam Guterland / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) * * * ### ☂️ Amayadori — By Tadao Ando in Tokyo, Japan 🇯🇵 A round toilet wrapped in vertical metal louvers, under a wide circular roof in Jingu-Dori Park. Ando named it Amayadori, which means taking shelter from the rain. The space under the roof is meant as a place to rest, toilet or not. **💡 Tokyo Fact:** It opened on September 7, 2020, as part of The Tokyo Toilet, a project with 17 toilets by 16 designers. 📷 Photo: sergejf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🪖 The Roman Fort Latrines — Hadrian’s Wall, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Stone walls, water channels and two stone basins are what remain of the communal toilets at Housesteads Roman Fort in Northumberland. English Heritage calls them the best preserved Roman loos in Britain. Soldiers sat side by side here, in northern English weather. **💡 Roman Fact:** There were no cubicles and no toilet paper. Many used a sponge on a stick, washed and shared. 📷 Photo: Carole Raddato / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) * * * ### 🚹 The Last Vespasienne — Paris, France 🇫🇷 A dark green metal street urinal on Boulevard Arago, in front of the high wall of La Santé prison. Paris had about 1,200 of these by 1930. This is the only one left. **💡 Name Fact:** The name points to the Roman emperor Vespasian, who, according to Suetonius, taxed public toilets, then held a coin from the first payment under his son’s nose: “Yet it comes from urine.” The line “money doesn’t smell” is a later saying built on that story. 📷 Photo: Mbzt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

## When Art Holds Its Breath For one second, each of these animals seems ready to breathe, blink or take another step. Sand, snow, bronze, scrap, tires and rice straw do the impersonating. * * * ### 🐂 Just Resting — By Andoni Bastarrika in Zarautz, Spain 🇪🇸 The lowered head, folded legs and loose-looking skin make this sand bull seem heavy with sleep. Bastarrika created it on the seafront promenade (malecón) in Zarautz in 2019, and the bull went viral that same year. More of his sand animals are in his sculpture archive. More: **Incredibly Realistic Sand Sculptures by Andoni Bastarrika** 🔗 Follow **Andoni Bastarrika on Instagram** * * * ### 🐈 Up the Trees — Artist Unknown A whole gang of snow cats has scrambled onto the trunks, paws spread and tails curled. The artist remains unidentified. More: **Snow Cats Climbing Trees** * * * ### 🐇 The Last Hare Joins In — By E. G. Kuznetsov in St. Petersburg, Russia 🇷🇺 A toddler hugs the final bronze hare and completes the line. _Hares During a Flood_ is a 2015 work at the Peter and Paul Fortress. 🔗 Read the **Pushkin Institute entry** * * * ### 🐕 Sand Dog — By Andoni Bastarrika in Spain 🇪🇸 The larger dog is sculpted from sand; the smaller dog lying beside it is real. Bastarrika shapes sand and earth of different colors by hand, with a stick and a pen for the details. More: **Incredibly Realistic Sand Sculptures by Andoni Bastarrika** 🔗 Follow **Andoni Bastarrika on Instagram** * * * ### 🐻 The Bear in the Wall — By Bordalo II in Turin, Italy 🇮🇹 A monumental bear pushes out from the side wall of Teatro Colosseo, on Via Giorgio Bidone at the corner of Via Madama Cristina in Turin’s San Salvario district. Bordalo II builds his Big Trash Animals from discarded scrap. **💡 Artist Fact:** Bordalo II is Artur Bordalo, born in 1987, and as a child he spent hours watching his grandfather, the painter Artur Real Bordalo (1925–2017), at work. The first Big Trash Animals went up in Łódź, Poland, in 2015. More: **Bordalo II Builds Animals From Trash** 🔗 Follow **Bordalo II on Instagram** * * * ### 🐘 Elephant — By Villu Jaanisoo in Jyväskylä, Finland 🇫🇮 Old car tires on a steel frame become an elephant with a trunk, ears and heavy legs. The tread turns into convincing folds of skin. Jaanisoo lists the work simply as Elephant (2018, 360 × 420 × 250 cm), installed in a public park in Jyväskylä. **💡 Artist Fact:** The elephant was not Jaanisoo’s first animal made of old tires. His seated tire gorilla _Everything Is Possible_ (2009) stood in front of the Korona info center on the University of Helsinki’s Viikki campus until it was destroyed by fire on January 10, 2018. More: **Looking Tyred** 🔗 Follow **Villu Jaanisoo on Instagram** * * * ### 🐶 Double Dog — Artist Unknown A small snow dog sits beside its fluffy real-life twin. Two dark eyes and a dark nose do most of the work. More: **Fun With Snow Sculptures** * * * ### 🦕 A Triceratops After the Harvest — Wara Art Festival in Niigata, Japan 🇯🇵 Two children meet a giant Triceratops made from rice straw at Uwasekigata Park in Niigata’s Nishikan Ward. Each year, students from Musashino Art University design the figures, local craftspeople build the wooden frames, and farmers weave the straw left after the harvest into the sheets that cover them. **💡 Festival Fact:** Wara Art began as an exchange between the former Iwamuro Village and Musashino Art University professor Shingo Miyajima, and Niigata City has run the festival since 2008. More: **Giant Straw Animals at the Wara Art Festival** 🔗 Visit **Niigata’s Wara Art guide** * * * Tell us in the comments.

## Old buildings, **small surprises** Most people look at a cathedral from a distance. Walk closer to these ten and you find an astronaut in Salamanca, an alien in Paisley, Darth Vader on a tower in Washington and a mouse on a pew in Yorkshire. Some of these details are more than 800 years old; others were added in the last 50 years. * * * ### 🦷 Bitten Cheek — Salisbury Cathedral, England 🇬🇧 From below it is one more stone head with its mouth open. Up close there is a second figure: a small creature hanging on to the side of the face with its teeth in the cheek. The carving is on Salisbury Cathedral. The face above the bite does not look happy about it. More: 9 Hilarious Gargoyle Statues: Medieval Humor! * * * ### 🧑‍🚀 Astronaut — By Miguel Romero in Salamanca, Spain 🇪🇸 Among the stone leaves around the Puerta de Ramos of the New Cathedral floats a figure in a spacesuit and boots. It is not a mystery from the 1500s: it was added in 1992, when the door was restored, and chosen to represent the 20th century. Stone carver Miguel Romero made it. **💡 Restoration Fact:** The astronaut was not the only newcomer. Romero filled the same corner with other modern figures: a lynx, a bull, a stork, a crayfish, a hare and a creature eating ice cream. 📷 Photo: Tamorlan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) * * * ### 👽 Alien Gargoyle — By David Lindsay in Paisley, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Paisley Abbey needed twelve new gargoyles for the roof and parapet of its 13th-century nave, and the client asked for modern designs. Carver David Lindsay drew this one late one evening in 1993, as a homage to the creature from Alien. In the second photo it sits among the other eleven at Paisley Abbey, including heads that see, hear and speak no evil. **💡 Carving Fact:** Lindsay and two other carvers shared the work, and each gargoyle took about four weeks to carve. * * * ### 🖤 Darth Vader — Washington National Cathedral, USA 🇺🇸 High on the northwest tower of Washington National Cathedral, between the usual stone faces, is Darth Vader’s helmet. The cathedral lists it among its fun facts and notes that it is technically a grotesque, not a gargoyle. It came from a children’s contest in National Geographic World magazine to design grotesques for the cathedral: Christopher Rader’s drawing took third place. Jay Hall Carpenter sculpted it and Patrick J. Plunkett carved it in stone. **💡 Viewing Fact:** It is hard to see with the naked eye; binoculars are usually needed to spot it. 📷 Photo: Cyraxote / Wikimedia Commons (public domain) * * * ### 😈 Lincoln Imp — Lincoln Cathedral, England 🇬🇧 Look between the two arches: under the carved leaves and just above the bearded stone head, a small figure sits cross-legged, about 12 inches (30 cm) high. The imp is in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral, built between 1250 and 1280. In the story the cathedral tells, he flew in to cause trouble, the angels told him to stop, he answered “Stop me if you can!” and he was turned to stone. **💡 Football Fact:** Lincoln City FC are nicknamed The Imps, and the imp is on the club’s crest. 📷 Photo: Julian P Guffogg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) * * * ### 🐸 Frog on a Skull — University of Salamanca, Spain 🇪🇸 The Plateresque facade of the University of Salamanca is covered in carvings from top to bottom. On the right-hand side, high up, three carved skulls sit along a ledge, and a small frog sits on one of them. By popular tradition, students who find it without help will have luck in their exams. **💡 Meaning Fact:** The most common reading is a reminder of death: the frog stands for lust, and on a skull it says that life is short. Nobody knows for sure. 📷 Photo: Tamorlan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) * * * ### 👀 The Curieux — Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy, Conques, France 🇫🇷 The Last Judgment over the portal of Sainte-Foy has at least 124 figures and dates from the first half of the 12th century. Most visitors look at the middle. On the arch above, small angels grip the edge and peek over it. They are known as the curieux, the curious ones, still waiting for the verdict. More: Medieval humor – At Abbey of Sainte Foy, Conques, France (c. 1107) * * * ### 🦉 The Owl — Notre-Dame de Dijon, France 🇫🇷 A small owl is carved into a corner of Notre-Dame de Dijon, on the street that is named after it, rue de la Chouette. Touch it with your left hand and make a wish, the tradition goes, and so many people have done it that the stone has been worn smooth. **💡 City Fact:** The owl was damaged by vandals in 2001 and repaired, and it is now watched by a camera. It also gives its name to the Owl Trail, a 22-stop walk through the old town marked by bronze arrows set into the pavement. 📷 Photo: François de Dijon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🍑 Bare Backside — Freiburg Minster, Germany 🇩🇪 On the south side of the nave of Freiburg Minster, among the stone animals and monsters, one gargoyle is a naked man stretched out from the wall with his bare backside pointed at the street. Officially he is the Hinternentblößer, roughly “the backside-barer”, one of 91 gargoyles that carry rainwater away from the walls. 📷 Photo: Asurnipal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🐭 Pew Mouse — By Robert Thompson in Hubberholme, England 🇬🇧 Running up the end of a pew in the church of St Michael and All Angels in Hubberholme is a carved oak mouse. It is the signature of Robert Thompson, the furniture maker from Kilburn in North Yorkshire known as the Mouseman, who carved a mouse on almost every piece he made. **💡 Origin Fact:** According to the workshop’s own history, the mouse started in 1919: while the two were carving a cornice, a fellow carver said he was “poor as a church mouse,” and Thompson answered, “I’ll carve a mouse here.” 📷 Photo: Ruhrfisch / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

## These Signs Are Talking to You Warnings, questions, invitations, and one very public bill dispute. These ten signs turn the street into a conversation. * * * ### 📵 “Beware of Smartphone Zombies” — Särkänniemi, Tampere, Finland 🇫🇮 A familiar warning-sign language, repurposed for people walking with their eyes on their phones. More: Clever Signs (9 Photos) * * * ### 🎤 “Hello? Is It Me You’re Looking For?” The tear-off flyer turns a familiar lyric into a request for help nobody needs. More: These Clever Signs Turn Streets Into a Comedy Club (9 Photos) * * * ### ❤️ “Take as Much Love as You Need” A simple street-corner offer, with enough missing tabs to show that people accepted it. More: Funny Signs (20 Photos) * * * ### 🎨 “Don’t Be Like Terry” — Bolsover, England 🇬🇧 An unpaid bill becomes a very public advertisement on the side of the house. More: Silly, Sarcastic and Cute Signs (12 Photos) * * * ### 🪨 “Rock Snake” — Lake Elsinore, California, USA 🇺🇸 The instruction is easy: add one painted rock and help the snake grow farther down the path. More: Silly, Sarcastic and Cute Signs (12 Photos) * * * ### 🙂 “Don’t Grow Up. It’s a Trap.” A small warning for adults, written in the least official way possible. More: Feel Good Signs (9 Photos) * * * ### 😊 “Smile Zone” No fine print. Just a cheerful local rule in yellow and black. More: Feel Good Signs (9 Photos) * * * ### 🌼 “Please Do Not Touch” — By Michael Pederson in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 Pederson gives one ordinary dandelion the full museum treatment, right down to the tiny barrier. More: Feel Good Signs (9 Photos) * * * ### 🍺 “Beer Is Now Cheaper Than Fuel. Drink. Don’t Drive.” A price comparison, a safety message, and a smiling roadside delivery system. More: Clever Signs (8 Photos) * * * ### ❓ “If Not Now, Then When?” — Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦 The question fills the wall and leaves very little room for an excuse. More: Silly, Sarcastic and Cute Signs (12 Photos)

## **Autumn** looks a little different here A dragon breathes fallen leaves across a sidewalk, a chalk fox gets her den ready for winter, and one last swimmer refuses to call it a season. These 22 artworks range from leaf patterns and tiny pavement scenes to mosaics and murals full of autumn color. Some make you want to get outside; others make a good case for a warm coat. * * * ### 🐉 In Which Nadine Amuses a Dragon and Makes Autumn Happen — By David Zinn A dragon breathes a trail of fallen leaves across the sidewalk while Nadine looks on. Zinn draws the characters right at the edge of the leaf pile. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Before his sidewalk creatures made him known, David Zinn spent more than twenty years freelancing for commercial clients in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, on work such as theatrical posters and logos, according to the artist’s biography. His street drawings are always improvised on location. More: **More autumn chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Visit **David Zinn’s website** * * * ### 🍃 Leaves Around the Roots — By James Brunt Green and yellow leaves spread out in curved rows around mossy roots. Brunt leaves small gaps between them, making every leaf easy to pick out against the brown forest floor. More: **More land art by James Brunt** 🔗 Visit **James Brunt’s website** * * * ### ⌛ Horarium — By Jon Foreman with Layla Parkin in Little Milford Woods, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Yellow leaves climb a mossy trunk and widen into a pool on the ground, giving the arrangement an hourglass shape. Foreman identifies Horarium as a 2024 collaboration with Layla Parkin at Little Milford Woods in Pembrokeshire. More: **Jon Foreman Uses Nature Like This** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** and **Layla Parkin on Instagram** * * * ### 🛴 Perry’s Autumn Ride — By David Zinn Perry rides a red scooter along a patch of pavement bordered by fallen leaves. The tiny wheels, little paws and helmet turn an ordinary crack in the sidewalk into the start of an autumn outing. More: **More autumn chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Visit **David Zinn’s website** * * * ### 🍁 Golden Leaf Circles — By James Brunt Golden leaves form concentric rings above a dense pattern of twigs. The dark gaps keep each ring distinct. More: **More land art by James Brunt** 🔗 Visit **James Brunt’s website** * * * ### 🍂 Kora’s Autumn Hair — By Bruno Althamer in Warsaw, Poland 🇵🇱 A real horse chestnut tree supplies the changing hair in this portrait of Polish singer Kora. Designed by Bruno Althamer and painted by the Redsheels team, the mural at Nowy Świat 18/20 in central Warsaw combines a few painted branches with the limbs of the tree, which give her hair its autumn colors. **💡 History Fact:** Kora was born Olga Ostrowska in 1951 and was the lead singer of the Polish band Maanam from 1976 to 2008. She died in July 2018. More: **Kora’s portrait through the seasons** 🔗 Visit **Bruno Althamer on Facebook** * * * ### 🐟 A Fish Among the Leaves — By David Zinn A wide-eyed golden fish swims through a scattering of maple leaves while a tiny mouse steers alongside it. Zinn turns the pavement into a pond, with real autumn leaves floating across the scene. More: **More autumn chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Visit **David Zinn’s website** * * * ### 🦔 Little Autumn Hedgehog — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner A tiny hedgehog peers out from a pile of fallen leaves. White fluff, grass seed heads and thin red spikes make up its prickly coat, while a glossy dark eye and nose bring the little face into focus. More: **More animals made from nature by Hannah Bullen-Ryner** 🔗 Visit **Hannah Bullen-Ryner’s website** * * * ### 🌈 Fluentem Colos — By Jon Foreman in Little Milford, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Foreman arranges the leaves in a color gradient that bends between the roots. Bare earth shows through the gaps, making the whole patch look as if it has lifted into a wave. More: **More forest sculptures by Jon Foreman** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🧹 Raking the Leaves — By David Zinn The rake and its owner are drawn on the pavement; the leaves are real. Zinn places the little worker beside the pile so the autumn cleanup becomes a scene in miniature. More: **More autumn chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Visit **David Zinn’s website** * * * ### 🍃 Leaveshroom Void — By Jon Foreman in Little Milford Woods, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Yellow and green leaves balance on sticks around a dark center. The curved branches spread the leaves away from the trunk, making them look like a little grove of mushrooms growing out of the tree. More: **Jon Foreman Uses Nature Like This** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🌳 Leaf Rings Around a Tree — By James Brunt and Collaborators Rows of yellow leaves follow the roots instead of hiding them. Brunt made this arrangement with seven young Syrian collaborators, building the pattern outward around the tree. **💡 Artist Fact:** Born just outside Sheffield, Brunt studied fine art at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London and now works from the Teesside coast in North Yorkshire, according to his biography, which also describes community projects that use art to build wellbeing and confidence. More: **More land art by James Brunt** 🔗 Visit **James Brunt’s website** * * * ### 🍁 A Leaf-Sized Voyage — By David Zinn A chalk mouse sets off on a leaf-shaped raft, surrounded by real red, orange and yellow leaves. Its paddle makes the pavement feel like a tiny waterway. More: **More autumn chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Visit **David Zinn’s website** * * * ### 🍃 Colos Curva — By Jon Foreman in Little Milford Woods, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Bands of red, orange, yellow and green leaves curve around a dark center on the trunk. Foreman points out that he did not carve into the tree: he built up the shape with clay and used dark earth for the hollow, so it looks deeper than it is, and the rain washes it all away. He made it in autumn 2024, the first time he had red leaves to work with, which let him push the color change further. More: **More forest sculptures by Jon Foreman** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🍂 Autumn Cleanup — By Slinkachu One tiny street sweeper faces a very large cleanup. His broom and bin cart are miniature models; the fallen leaves are full size, towering over him like a wall. More: **More tiny street scenes by Slinkachu** 🔗 Visit **Slinkachu’s website** * * * ### 🍂 Into the Leaf Pile — By David Zinn Arms raised and feet off the ground, Sluggo heads straight for the leaf pile. The chalk figure supplies the jump; the real leaves supply somewhere to land. More: **More autumn chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Visit **David Zinn’s website** * * * ### 🦊 Maggie Gets Ready for Winter — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 Maggie peers out of a hatch drawn on the sidewalk. In Zinn’s original caption, she is giving the fallen leaves a chance to furnish her den before she closes up for winter. **💡 Chalk Fact:** Zinn improvises these temporary drawings on location using chalk, charcoal, and objects he finds there. More: **Beautiful Autumn By David Zinn! (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🍁 “Ascending Red” — By Jon Foreman and Layla Parkin at Colby Woods, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Red leaves climb the trunk while the woodland floor is covered in gold and brown. Jon Foreman and Layla Parkin sit at the base, small beside the tree they have worked on. **💡 Land Art Fact:** Foreman explains that the leaves are held in place with mud and clay. More: **Jon Foreman Uses Nature Like This (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman and Layla Parkin on Instagram** * * * ### 🧣 A Walk in the Woods — By SMUG in Kotka, Finland 🇫🇮 A man in a fur hat grips a walking stick, with a rat perched on a branch beside him. Painted for UPEA17 in Kotka, the scene has the red leaves and heavy layers of a cold autumn walk. More: **24 Times SMUG Made Walls Look More Real Than Life** 🔗 Follow **SMUG on Instagram** * * * ### 🧩 A Little Repair — By Ememem Blue, green, and yellow tiles fill a broken patch of sidewalk, with orange leaves gathered along the curb. A small repair that makes looking down a little more rewarding. More: **Be The Change (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Ememem on Instagram** * * * ### 🧡 “In the Autumn of Life” — By AÉRO in Leeuwarden, Netherlands 🇳🇱 Two older faces fill a wall with the warm colors of an autumn forest. Created for Writer’s Block, AÉRO’s mural honors the residents of the care home and older people more broadly. More: **In the autumn of life (by AÉRO in Netherlands)** 🔗 Follow **AÉRO on Instagram** * * * ### 🏊 “Nadine and the Last Autumnal Swimmer” — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 A tiny tiled pool opens in the pavement, surrounded by fallen leaves. Nadine keeps the last swimmer company; someone is clearly not ready to call it a season. More: **Beautiful Autumn By David Zinn! (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram**

## **Giant Pumpkins** That Turned Into Something Else Every October, the small harbor town of Damariscotta, Maine, lines Main Street with giant pumpkins that weigh hundreds of pounds each. Then volunteers and local artists take over. A few weeks later the street has a mouse, a puffin, a pig and a steam engine, and the river has pumpkins with people sitting in them. More: **Not Sleeping Tonight (12 Photos)** * * * ### 🐭 Mouse With Cheese — Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 A gray giant pumpkin got pink ears, two big black eyes, buck teeth and wire whiskers, then a wedge of foam cheese to guard. The ribs of the pumpkin work as the mouse’s fur. The cars behind it are parked on a normal shopping street. 📷 Photo and cover crop: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🐦 Atlantic Puffin — Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 This one is just paint: a black back, a white belly and the striped orange beak of a puffin, a seabird that nests on islands off the Maine coast. The pumpkin’s lopsided shape does the rest, and it looks like a puffin that sat down on the sidewalk. 📷 Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### ⚙️ “Steampumpkin” — By Minda Gold, Jonah and Jacques Vesery in Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 Copper paint, pipes, gauges, gears and a funnel full of small pumpkins turned a giant pumpkin into an engine. You have to look for a while to find any orange. At the 2013 festival, Minda Gold and Jonah and Jacques Vesery worked on it in front of Fernald’s Country Store. The Boothbay Register reported that Gold named it “Steampumpkin”, after the steampunk style. **💡 Pumpkin Fact:** On October 3, 2026, British grower Ian Paton set a world record with a pumpkin of 2,856 lb 12.8 oz (1,295.8 kg), Guinness World Records reports. A week later, Ron Wallace of Rhode Island weighed one at 3,156 lb, a new record claim, Boston.com reported. 📷 Photo and cover crop: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🐷 Pink Pig — Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 Floppy ears, a snout, long eyelashes and bright red lips. The giant pumpkin was already round enough to be a pig; it only needed the paint. 📷 Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🦞 Lobster Purse — By Deb Arter in Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 Deb Arter painted this pumpkin in 2015 to look like one of the lobster-print purses sold by her sponsor, Tori Anna Designs. She had already turned earlier pumpkins into teacups, rabbits and candy apples. Her rule: “The pumpkin tells you what it wants to be.” 📷 Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🐡 Puffer Fish — Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 Strings of mini lights wrapped around a pale giant pumpkin stand in for spines, with two small gourds for eyes and the stem as a mouth. A puffer fish is round anyway, so this was a good match. 📷 Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🐚 Sea Creatures — Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 No paint here. Fish, shells and other sea life are carved across the whole pumpkin, so it looks more like old ivory than a vegetable. **💡 Seed Fact:** Most of these giants are Atlantic Giant pumpkins. Howard Dill, who lived near Windsor, Nova Scotia, patented and registered the seeds in 1979. 📷 Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 😁 Grinning Monster — Damariscotta, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 Rows of painted teeth run across the full width of the pumpkin, under two green eyes and a tiny red top hat. It is the only one on the street that looks hungry. **💡 Gravity Fact:** The festival ends with a Pumpkin Drop: a crane lets go of fresh pumpkins from more than 160 feet up. 📷 Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🚣 Pumpkin Boat Regatta — Damariscotta River, Maine, USA 🇺🇸 Some giant pumpkins end up on the water. Racers hollow them out, wedge themselves inside and paddle or motor down the Damariscotta River, most of them in costume. **💡 Boat Fact:** The pumpkin boats weigh 400 to 700 pounds, and the first two raced each other in 2007. 📷 Photo: Matthew Bellemare / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) * * * ### 🐪 Pyramids and a Camel — Jack O’Lantern Spectacular in Louisville, Kentucky, USA 🇺🇸 Far from Maine, this carving glows on a dark trail: three pyramids, a camel with its rider and a huge bright disk in the sky, carved so thin in places that the light inside shines through the skin. Photographed at the 2013 Jack O’Lantern Spectacular in Louisville’s Iroquois Park. **💡 Glow Fact:** The Spectacular has filled its trail with about 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins each fall. In 2026 it left Iroquois Park for Kentucky Kingdom. 📷 Photo: Lou Oms / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

## Sometimes the street lends a hand A small opening, a borrowed scarf, a flower between old rivals: these works make care visible without making a speech. * * * ### 🐶 “Have You Seen This Dog?” At first it looks like a missing-dog notice. Then the bottom line lands: “Now you have. Have a GOOD day.” The tear-off tabs pass the wish along. * * * ### 🦔 Barnes Hedgehog Highway — Barnes, London, UK 🇬🇧 A hole at the foot of a garden wall becomes a tiny through-road. Three blue hedgehog signs ask people to keep it open. 📷 Photo: The wub / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped. * * * ### 🐰 Helping Bunnies — Public Art A toddler gives the smallest bronze rabbit a lift toward the rest of the procession. The public sculpture supplies the setup; the child completes the scene. * * * ### 👶 When Statues Become Fathers — Sweden 🇸🇪 For Arena Idé’s #kvantitetstidspappan campaign, male statues around Sweden were fitted with baby slings to draw attention to unequal parenting. More: Arena Idé on #kvantitetstidspappan * * * ### 🐭 Evelyn’s Kindness Pipe — By David Zinn A rust-brown downpipe becomes part of a tiny street-level world. Evelyn stands guard where the kindness is supposed to come out. More: Chalk Art Magic by David Zinn 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🧣 Geraldine’s Scarf-Sharing Program — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 Geraldine has a scarf long enough to share. The ledge does most of the staging, and one purple line carries the whole exchange. More: More street art by David Zinn 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🌹 Blooming Friendship — By TABBY in Vienna, Austria 🇦🇹 A tiny mouse holds out a red flower to the cat leaning over the wall. It is a truce, an introduction or both. More: Blooming Friendship by TABBY 🔗 Follow **TABBY on Instagram** * * * ### 🚸 “Stop Bullying” — By GOIN in Bristol, England 🇬🇧 A school sign and one bright red boxing glove turn the wall into a compact anti-bullying message. More: GOIN’s Bristol archive 🔗 Follow **GOIN on Instagram** * * * ### 🤍 “El Abrazo” — By Jota López in Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸 Two portraits overlap across the facade until they read as one embrace. The person below gives the quiet gesture its scale. More: The Hug mural by Jota López 🔗 Follow **Jota López on Instagram** * * * ### 🐕 Man and His Dogs — By Lalone Laleiro Leilo in Málaga, Spain 🇪🇸 A hooded figure gathers several dogs into the same patch of wall. Their bodies lean together, making the mural feel less like a portrait than a shelter. 📷 Photo: Marisol. More: Street Art That Is Really Good 🔗 Follow **Lalone on Instagram**

## These **bus stops** have other ideas A strawberry with a doorway, an armadillo-like roof, a giant orange jaw, a mosaic octopus and a shelter furnished like a tiny living room. These eight photos show how much imagination can fit around an everyday place to wait. More: **Love Waiting Here (14 Stops)** * * * ### 🍓 Strawberry Bus Stop — Konagai, Japan 🇯🇵 A giant strawberry makes room for a doorway and a bench. Built for a 1990 travel expo, Konagai’s fruit-shaped shelters were inspired by Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage. 📷 Photo by STA3816 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Also cropped in the cover. * * * ### 🚌 Braunschweiger Platz — By Frank Gehry in Hannover, Germany 🇩🇪 Overlapping metal sheets curl over the shelter like an armadillo’s armor. Frank Gehry designed it for Hannover’s 1994 BUSSTOPS project. **💡 Project Fact:** Gehry’s shelter is one of nine BUSSTOPS, each by a different designer, including Jasper Morrison, Ettore Sottsass and Massimo Iosa Ghini. The project was initiated by Stiftung Niedersachsen, the transit operator Üstra and Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen, with the aim of turning waiting time into a short rest in a special place. 📷 Photo by Christian A. Schröder (ChristianSchd) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Also cropped in the cover. * * * ### 🪵 Unterkrumbach Nord — By Ensamble Studio in Krumbach, Austria 🇦🇹 It looks like a stack of lumber with room to sit inside. Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa of Ensamble Studio took their cue from local timber-drying stacks, using layers of untreated boards. **💡 Project Fact:** Krumbach’s cultural association launched the BUS:STOP project with seven international architects, who were offered a holiday in the Bregenzerwald instead of a typical fee. Each one partnered with a local architecture office that worked with the regional craft businesses building the shelters. 🔗 Visit **Antón García-Abril** and **Débora Mesa** at Ensamble Studio. 📷 Photo by Austriantraveler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). * * * ### 🟨 Steintor — By Alessandro Mendini in Hannover, Germany 🇩🇪 Black-and-yellow checks climb the columns beneath a row of golden cones. This is Alessandro Mendini’s Steintor design. 📷 Photo by GeorgDerReisende / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * ### 🍈 Melon Bus Stop — Konagai, Japan 🇯🇵 The melon version has a curved stem and a doorway cut into its patterned green shell. It belongs to the same set of 16 shelters in five fruit designs along Konagai’s roads. 📷 Photo by STA3816 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * ### 🐋 The Amazing Whale Jaw — By Maurice Nio in Hoofddorp, Netherlands 🇳🇱 The orange form curves around an opening big enough to frame the buses behind it. Maurice Nio’s “The Amazing Whale Jaw” combines a bus station with a piece of sculpture. Completed in 2003 beside the hospital in Hoofddorp, it is built from polystyrene foam and polyester. 📷 Photo by Alena Hanzlová / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). * * * ### 🐙 Octopus Bus Shelter — By Zurab Tsereteli in Gagra District, Abkhazia Mosaic-covered arms arch over the entrances to this octopus-shaped shelter, one of the sea-themed bus stops Zurab Tsereteli designed around Pitsunda from the late 1960s. Photographed in 2011, it was already abandoned, with broken surfaces and plants growing around its base. 📷 Photo by karel291 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). * * * ### 🪑 Bobby’s Bus Shelter — Unst, Scotland, UK 🇬🇧 A chair, table, maps and curtains make this tiny shelter feel like a room someone cares for. Bobby’s Bus Shelter in Baltasound is known for its changing decorations; this photograph shows its 2016 makeover. **💡 History Fact:** In 1995 the council removed the old shelter here as unsafe, and seven-year-old Bobby Macaulay wrote to The Shetland Times asking for a replacement. A new shelter went up a few weeks later and was named after him. 📷 Photo by Julian Paren — _2016 makeover of the well-known Baltasound Bus Shelter_ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

## Same work, **two distances** Every work below gets two photos. The first is taken close, with nothing nearby to measure it against. The second steps back, and the size you guessed turns out to be wrong, sometimes by a lot. * * * ### 👶 “Babies” — By David Černý in Prague, Czech Republic 🇨🇿 At this distance it could be a toy stuck to a wall. From the street it is one of ten crawling babies on the 216-meter Žižkov Television Tower, each about 3.4 meters long. They went up in 2000 as a temporary piece and stayed for good in 2001 because people liked them. **💡 Tower Fact:** The babies on the tower today are identical copies, mounted in March 2019. The originals came down in 2017 and went back to the artist; both photos here show the original set. 📷 Photos and cover crop: Balou46 (close-up, CC BY-SA 3.0) and Rosa Menkman (wide, CC BY 2.0) / Wikimedia Commons * * * ### 🤿 “Diver” — By Mihály Kolodko in Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 A deep-sea diver in a heavy helmet, gripping a key. Then the street appears: he sits on top of a stone post shaped like a fire hydrant at the corner of Dohány and Osvát streets, easy to walk past. Kolodko added him in 2019. **💡 Legend Fact:** The key points to the New York Café nearby. Writer Ferenc Molnár is said to have thrown the café’s key into the river so it could never close. The diver looks like he just fished it out. 🔗 Follow Mihály Kolodko on Instagram 📷 Photos: Globetrotter19 (close-up, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Globetrotter19 (wide, CC BY-SA 4.0) / Wikimedia Commons * * * ### 😌 “Dream” — By Jaume Plensa in St Helens, England 🇬🇧 A calm face with closed eyes, nothing else in frame. The people at its base give it away: Dream is 20 meters (66 feet) tall and weighs 500 tonnes. It stands on the former Sutton Manor colliery, where ex-miners helped commission it before it was unveiled in 2009. **💡 Project Fact:** Dream came out of Channel 4’s Big Art Project, which St Helens joined in 2008. It was funded through the project together with Arts Council England and The Art Fund, at a cost of about £1.8 million. 🔗 Follow Jaume Plensa on Instagram 📷 Photos: Teresa Grau Ros (close-up, CC BY-SA 2.0) and pam fray (wide, CC BY-SA 2.0) / Wikimedia Commons * * * ### 🧍 “Hanging Out” — By David Černý in Prague, Czech Republic 🇨🇿 A man in a suit, holding on with one hand. From the cobblestones he is a small dark shape high above Husova street in the Old Town, and most people walk right under him. The figure is Sigmund Freud, made by Černý in the late 1990s. **💡 Mix-up Fact:** When the sculpture was shown in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2007, passersby called the authorities, and firefighters went to the roof before finding the beam that holds him. 📷 Photos: Jarek Andrzejewski (close-up, CC BY-SA 3.0) and ŠJů (wide, CC BY-SA 3.0) / Wikimedia Commons * * * ### 🕷️ “Maman” — By Louise Bourgeois in Bilbao, Spain 🇪🇸 Seen from below it is all legs, sky and a sac of marble eggs. From the side the visitors under it look tiny: Maman is about 9 meters tall, made of bronze, stainless steel and marble, and stands outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. **💡 Origin Fact:** Bourgeois first made Maman for the opening of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London in 2000. The title means “Mom,” and the spider is a tribute to her mother, a weaver who repaired tapestries. 📷 Photos: Jules Verne Times Two / julesvernex2.com (close-up, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (wide, CC BY 2.0) / Wikimedia Commons * * * ### 🚀 Moon Rover Mini Statue — By Mihály Kolodko in Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 An astronaut waves from a lunar rover crossing a pale, bumpy surface. Pull back and the “moon” is a round stone bollard beside a parked car on Hold Street. Kolodko set it up in September 2019. **💡 Name Fact:** Hold means “moon” in Hungarian. When Kolodko moved his family from Ukraine to Budapest in 2016, their first apartment was on this street, and he liked the name too much to leave it alone. 🔗 Follow Mihály Kolodko on Instagram 📷 Photos: Globetrotter19 (close-up, cropped, CC BY-SA 3.0) and Globetrotter19 (wide, CC BY-SA 3.0) / Wikimedia Commons

## Wood with **a past** A troll napping under an oak in Iowa wears old lodge flooring as fur. A life-size horse is made of branches that washed up on beaches. These ten sculptures give driftwood and reclaimed wood a second life. More: **From Debris to Masterpiece: 10 Driftwood Sculptures** * * * ### 🌳 Marwin — By Thomas Dambo in Clinton, Iowa, USA 🇺🇸 Flat on his back under an old oak at Bickelhaupt Arboretum, Marwin keeps his giant feet in the air. His fur is flooring taken from the lodge at Eagle Point Park, his hair is branches collected by Clinton’s city crews, and the structural lumber came from logs milled by the local Sawmill Museum, Eastern Iowa Community Colleges reports. **💡 Troll Fact:** Marwin is one of the three brothers in Dambo’s The Tree Thieves, a story built on Clinton’s past as a Mississippi River lumber town. Local partners spell his name Marvin. More: **Three Giant Trolls Followed Their Stolen Trees to Iowa (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Thomas Dambo on Instagram** 📷 Image via Eastern Iowa Community Colleges * * * ### 🐴 “The Eden Horse” — By Heather Jansch in Devon, England, UK 🇬🇧 Every curve of the neck and legs is a branch that washed up on a beach. Heather Jansch (1948–2021) became known for life-size horses made from driftwood. One of them was voted the most popular artwork at the Eden Project in Cornwall and has been known as The Eden Horse ever since. Here it stands in her garden in Olchard, Devon. **💡 Eden Fact:** The original driftwood horse at Eden’s entrance has grown so fragile that it went to the foundry to be cast in bronze, so it can be kept. 📷 Photo: Kieronjansch / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🪵 “Hannes” — By Thomas Dambo at De Schorre, Boom, Belgium 🇧🇪 Hannes sits on the edge of a ruined brick building with a string of beads in his hands; in Dambo’s poem for the series he likes “to put pearls on a string for everyone to see.” He is one of seven trolls Dambo built there in 2019, from reclaimed wood from his workshop and wood found in the park itself, over a frame of new treated wood. **💡 Park Fact:** The trolls were a gift from the Tomorrowland festival for its 15th birthday. Dambo sees them slowly returning to nature; a full renovation would be costly and only temporary, so the park works to slow the wear instead. More: **This Is a Troll and His Name Is Hannes** 🔗 Follow **Thomas Dambo on Instagram** 📷 Photo: m.d.w._pictures * * * ### 🚂 Driftwood Locomotive — Emeryville Mudflats, California, USA 🇺🇸 A steam engine pieced together from driftwood, tires and an oil drum stands at the edge of San Francisco Bay in this 1977 photo. The Emeryville mudflat sculptures first went up in 1962, built mostly by anonymous amateurs from driftwood and other material found on the spot. The last ones were hauled away in 1997. **💡 History Fact:** California College of the Arts describes the mudflats as an art school experiment that grew into decades of installations by local people, many of whom never thought of themselves as artists. 📷 Photo: George Garrigues / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) * * * ### 🌿 Driftwood Forest Figure — By Debra Bernier of Vancouver Island, Canada 🇨🇦 A small woman seems to grow out of a weathered trunk, with twigs and roots rising above her head. Debra Bernier works with driftwood, clay and shells. “When I work with driftwood, I never start with a blank canvas. Each piece of driftwood is already a sculpture, created by the caresses of the waves and wind,” she says. More: **19 Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier** 🔗 Follow **Debra Bernier on Instagram** * * * ### 🐉 “Wyvern Dragon” — By James Doran-Webb in Churt, Surrey, UK 🇬🇧 A driftwood dragon spreads its wings on top of a domed garden temple at The Sculpture Park in Churt. British-born James Doran-Webb works from Cebu in the Philippines. He builds a stainless steel frame first, then his team bolts driftwood onto it piece by piece. **💡 Studio Fact:** In the same interview he says a horse takes his studio about 1,500 hours on average. 🔗 Visit **James Doran-Webb’s website** 📷 Photo: Michael Garlick / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) * * * ### 🔥 Phoenix Rising From the Ashes — Hokitika Beach, New Zealand 🇳🇿 Fanned driftwood wings rise from a pile of blackened wood. This phoenix was an entry in the 2020 competition at Driftwood & Sand, a beach art festival on New Zealand’s West Coast that began in 2002 as a community project. 📷 Photo: Jonathan Wilson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🦅 Crested Honey Buzzards — By James Doran-Webb at CHIJMES, Singapore 🇸🇬 Two driftwood birds of prey glide over the courtyard at CHIJMES, lit up at night beside the white chapel. Singapore also has Doran-Webb’s largest public work, The Sculpture Park notes: three life-size galloping thoroughbreds at Gardens by the Bay. 📷 Photo: Sgconlaw / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🐎 Driftwood Horse — Newport News, Virginia, USA 🇺🇸 Head down as if grazing, this horse is a tangle of sun-bleached driftwood. Photographer Tony Alter saw it at the Port Warwick Art Festival in Newport News in October 2014 and noted that its maker had built many other animals too. 📷 Photo: Tony Alter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🌊 “Mantle” — By Anne Daniel at Hokitika Beach, New Zealand 🇳🇿 A long driftwood arch spans the gray sand, with dozens of beach stones, each wrapped in knotted string, hanging from it. Anne Daniel’s Mantle was a Judge’s Choice winner at Driftwood & Sand in 2023. 📷 Photo: Mike Dickison / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

## Read the sign. **Then read it again.** A warning about smartphone zombies, a sign that asks you not to read it, and a crosswalk button that promises to restart everything. Eleven signs where the joke is in the words, from a New York subway platform to a shop window in St. Catharines, Ontario. More: **Funny Signs (8 Photos)** * * * ### 📵 “Beware of Smartphone Zombies” The triangle shows two people walking with their heads down and their phones up. The plate underneath gives them a name. Most of us have been one of them this week. **💡 Word Fact:** The Germans have a word for it. The Guardian reported that “smombie”, a mix of smartphone and zombie, was voted Youth Word of the Year in Germany. More: **Clever Signs (9 Photos)** * * * ### 🔒 “Private Sign, Do Not Read” A blue board on a post by a forest track, hand-painted in white: private sign, do not read. By the time you get to the second line, it is too late. More: **Cute Signs (10 Photos)** * * * ### 📜 “Near Misses Throughout History” — By Michael Pederson in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 A small black plaque on a park step, in the style of a heritage marker. It records that on June 5, 2016, Amy Keane tripped here, stumbled all the way down and landed on her feet. She raised her hands in triumph, but nobody was there to see it. **💡 Artist Fact:** Colossal wrote that Pederson, who works as Miguel Marquez Outside, makes his signs look like official warnings and notices in both design and placement, so people read them before they get the joke. More: **Clever Art by Michael Pederson (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Michael Pederson on Instagram** * * * ### 😐 “Please Do Not Smile at Strangers” — 14th Street Station, New York City, USA 🇺🇸 It uses the same lettering as real subway instructions, which is why it works. Barry Popik’s write-up says art students put it up in February 2011 at the 14th Street F train, and that it was never an official MTA sign. Gothamist shared it the same month. More: **Funny Signs (20 Photos)** * * * ### 🐦 “Closed. Frig Off.” — St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 Two lines on a shop window in St. Catharines, each with a small white bird on top: “closed.” and, underneath, “frig off.” The snowy street outside is reflected in the glass. It is a shorter way to say come back tomorrow. 📷 Photo: Gogerr / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) * * * ### 🔁 “Reboot Universe” Where the label would normally say push to cross, this one offers something bigger. One press, and everything starts over. **💡 Button Fact:** The joke has a point. A Durango Herald column recalls that The New York Times found most of New York City’s walk buttons had long been switched off and called them “mechanical placebos.” Residents answered with fake labels over the buttons, “Reboot Universe” among them. More: **Clever Signs (9 Photos)** * * * ### 🧠 “Lost My Brain” It looks like any lost-and-found flyer on a tree, with a drawing of what went missing. Then the line at the bottom: “Please don’t contact me, I’m happy.” More: **Funny Signs (20 Photos)** * * * ### 🧭 “Ignore Sat Nav & Engage Brain” — Linthwaite, England, UK 🇬🇧 A sign for drivers who follow the GPS a little too far. The small print on Lees Mill Lane adds: no through road, security barrier in place, release fee £100. 📷 Photo: Tim Green / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 📞 “Is It Me You’re Looking For?” “Hello?” at the top, Lionel Richie in the middle, and his line from “Hello” underneath. The tear-off tabs at the bottom carry more of the lyrics, so you can take one with you. More: **Funny Signs (20 Photos)** * * * ### 🎉 “Congrajlashins” A marquee sign with an honest explanation for a common shortcut: people write congrats because they can’t spell congrajlashins. Hard to argue with. More: **Cute Signs (10 Photos)** * * * ### ⚫ “Luke, I Am Your Father” The drain vent already had the shape of a famous helmet. One speech bubble on the wall next to it did the rest. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The famous line is a misquote. ACMI notes that in The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader actually says, “No, I am your father.” More: **Cute Signs (10 Photos)**

## A dinosaur, elephants, and a dog in the hedge A front-garden hedge can become an elephant. A clipped border can hide a running dog. These six photographs show topiary animals in streets, squares, and gardens, from a leafy dinosaur in Vigo to a peacock outside an English cottage. * * * ### 🦖 Dinoseto — Vigo, Spain 🇪🇸 Dinoseto stands above a bed of red flowers in this 2020 photograph from the Porta do Sol in central Vigo. It drew so many people taking pictures that the city proposed a designated photo spot in 2015 to protect the planting. Later that year, construction work on the square meant it was moved to the Alameda in Praza de Compostela. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The boxwood dinosaur first turned up on a roundabout on Rosalía de Castro street, and the placement was later described as a mistake, since it had reportedly been meant for a park in the Navia area. It was removed quickly, but photos had already spread online, and internet users gave it the name Dinoseto. 📷 Photo: Toatway / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * ### 🐕 A Dog in the Hedge — Badminton, England 🇬🇧 A running dog emerges from the clipped surface of this hedge in the gardens of Badminton House, close to the pets’ cemetery, according to the photographer’s notes from June 2025. The raised tail and space below its belly make the shape readable without a single added eye or painted detail. **💡 Place Fact:** The estate gave its name to a sport: according to Britannica, the game of badminton was first played at Badminton, the Duke of Beaufort’s country estate, around 1873. 📷 Photo: “A topiary dog” by Philip Halling / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). * * * ### 🐘 Elephant Hedges — By Tim Bushe in London, England 🇬🇧 Tim Bushe began turning a neighbor’s overgrown privet into a herd of elephants in 2012. The herd stands on the corner of Ambler Road and Romilly Road in Finsbury Park. A former architect known locally as Hedgecutter Man, Bushe told Time Out that the 15-foot hedge looked to him like it “could become a herd of elephants.” He has used the work to raise money for the learning-disability charity Hft. In this 2022 photograph, trunks hang down over the garden wall, bringing the animals right up to the sidewalk. 📷 Photo: MumphingSquirrel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * ### 🦚 A Peacock on a Pedestal — Greatford, England 🇬🇧 A peacock perches above stepped layers of hedge outside a cottage in Greatford. Its narrow neck and swept-up tail do most of the work; the rest is a very tidy pedestal. 📷 Photo: “Topiary peacock” by Bob Harvey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). * * * ### 🦌 A Leafy Reindeer — Hever Castle, England 🇬🇧 A clipped reindeer stands on the lawn at Hever Castle in Kent. The garden’s account of its Topiary Walk explains that the reindeer is one of the shapes supported by a frame to help retain its outline. 📷 Photo: “Hever Castle stag topiary” by Robert Eva / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). * * * ### 🐿️ A Giant Squirrel — Rufford Old Hall, England 🇬🇧 The curled tail gives this squirrel away. Rufford Old Hall in Lancashire has two giant squirrel topiaries, maintained by its garden team. According to the National Trust, the shapes used to be pheasants in the 1900s. **💡 History Fact:** The National Trust dates the house to around 1530, when Sir Robert Hesketh built it; Sir Thomas Hesketh (1526–88) later enlarged it to house his own company of actors and musicians. The Hesketh family gave the hall to the National Trust in 1936. 📷 Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * More: Tree stump art and carvings. Cover: “Dinoseto topiary” by Toatway (CC BY-SA 4.0) and “Topiary peacock” by Bob Harvey (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons; cropped and combined. Cover composition: CC BY-SA 4.0.

## When **yarn bombing** takes over the street A car gets a crocheted cover, a tree wears stripes, fountain figures get new outfits, and a concrete bollard becomes R2-D2. These eight examples of knitting and crochet take yarn far beyond the sweater drawer. * * * ### 🚗 Crocheted Beetle — By Olek in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 Olek covered this Volkswagen Beetle in crochet, right down to its wheels. The car stood on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan in 2010. 🔗 Follow **Olek on Instagram** * * * ### ⛲ Dressed-Up Fountain — By Soso of Collectif France Tricot in Paris, France 🇫🇷 Soso of Collectif France Tricot dressed the figures of a Wallace fountain in yarn outfits. The photograph was taken at Place Saint-Sulpice during La Nuit du StreetArt in May 2009. **💡 History Fact:** Paris got its first Wallace fountains in 1872, after the British philanthropist Richard Wallace gave the city 50 drinking fountains following the water shortages of the 1871 siege and Commune. According to the City of Paris, sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg’s four caryatids stand for Simplicity, Kindness, Sobriety and Charity. 📷 Photo by **Denis / tofz4u** * * * ### 🤖 R2-D2 Bollard — By Sarah Rudder in Bellingham, Washington, USA 🇺🇸 Sarah Rudder knitted a fitted R2-D2 cover for a concrete bollard in 2012. Her project account says it took about 1,200 yards of yarn; she removed it when she left that day. More: **More views of Sarah Rudder’s knitted R2-D2** 🔗 Visit **Sarah Rudder’s blog** * * * ### 🚲 Crocheted Bicycle — By Olek in Brooklyn, New York City, USA 🇺🇸 The wheels, frame and saddle all get a crocheted covering on this Olek bicycle. It was photographed near the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian entrance in DUMBO in 2011. 🔗 Follow **Olek on Instagram** * * * ### 🌳 Die Trauerweide — By Ute Lennartz-Lembeck in Velbert, Germany 🇩🇪 The knitting follows the trunk and spreads into the branches of this willow. Ute Lennartz-Lembeck documented Die Trauerweide from May 2011 to September 2013. 🔗 Visit **Ute Lennartz-Lembeck’s website** * * * ### 🐂 Project B — By Olek in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 Olek wrapped Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull at Bowling Green in crochet on Christmas night 2010. CNN reported that the cover was torn off early the next morning. In a contemporary interview, the artist said installing the cover took four hours. **💡 History Fact:** The bull itself began as an unauthorized installation. Di Modica paid about $360,000 to make it and unloaded it at night in front of the New York Stock Exchange in December 1989; after it was removed, it was moved to Bowling Green. 🔗 Follow **Olek on Instagram** * * * ### 🧶 Striped Bicycle Rack — By Streetcolor in Orinda, California, USA 🇺🇸 Streetcolor wrapped the four-loop bicycle rack outside Orinda Public Library in striped knitting in May 2011. In the artist’s account, Betsy helped sew the pieces into place. 🔗 Visit **Streetcolor’s blog** * * * ### 🐾 Sweaters for the Sculptures — Trutnov, Czechia 🇨🇿 Irena Janigová, Karolína Dvořáčková, Zdeňka Prouzová and Lucie Pangrácová crocheted outfits for Michal Gabriel’s bronze felines outside UFFO in Trutnov. The sweaters went on in December 2011. **💡 Place Fact:** Michal Gabriel’s set of seven predators, titled Smečka (Pack), was bought by the Trutnov gallery and unveiled outside UFFO in September 2010, when the new cultural center opened. The building is named after Uffo Horn, a 19th-century Trutnov native active in culture and politics. More: **The crocheted sculptures in Trutnov** 📷 Photo: **Trutnovinky**

## These **fountains** let water do the work A tap hangs in midair, a bronze man carries an umbrella made of water, and a sailboat gets its sails from falling streams. Elsewhere, a hillside grows a face and water becomes a glowing tunnel. These eight fountains make the flow part of the artwork. More: **Strange Finds (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🚰 Floating Tap — El Puerto de Santa María, Spain 🇪🇸 A giant tap appears to float above its pool in El Puerto de Santa María. The falling water conceals the pipe that supports it and supplies the flow. 📷 Photo by Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). * * * ### ☔ Rain — By Jean-Michel Folon in Lausanne, Switzerland 🇨🇭 The umbrella is made of the very thing it is supposed to keep out. In Jean-Michel Folon’s Rain, water spreads above a bronze man outside the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. 📷 Photo by Guy Delsaut / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * ### ⛵ Water Boat Fountain — Valencia, Spain 🇪🇸 Streams of water fill the open frame of a sailboat, turning its sails and hull into shimmering sheets. Sunlight makes the boat almost disappear against the sky. 📷 Photo by Juan Andres Martinez / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). * * * ### 🌿 The Giant — By André Heller in Wattens, Austria 🇦🇹 A waterfall pours from the mouth of a face built into a green hillside. André Heller created the Giant in 1995 for Swarovski’s centenary; it marks the entrance to the Chambers of Wonder at Swarovski Kristallwelten. 📷 Photo by Marek Śliwecki / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). * * * ### 🌼 El Alamein Fountain — By Robert Woodward in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 A giant dandelion seems to have taken root in Kings Cross. Robert Woodward’s El Alamein Fountain, opened in 1961 in Fitzroy Gardens, uses sprays at the ends of 211 stalks to form its watery sphere. **💡 History Fact:** The fountain is a war memorial to the Australian 9th Division, which fought in both battles of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942. Woodward, himself a World War II army veteran, won the City Council’s 1959 design competition with it. 📷 Photo by Angus Fraser / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). * * * ### 🌀 Charybdis — By William Pye in Seaham, UK 🇬🇧 This close-up looks into a spinning column of water. William Pye’s Charybdis, completed in 2000, creates an air-core vortex inside a clear acrylic cylinder at Seaham Hall, where steps let visitors look down from above. 📷 Photo by Andrew Curtis / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). * * * ### ⚙️ Tinguely Fountain — By Jean Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland 🇨🇭 Wheels, pipes, and moving metal figures turn this pool into a performance. Opened in 1977, Jean Tinguely’s fountain occupies the site of Basel’s former theater stage, now Theaterplatz. **💡 History Fact:** The fountain was a gift to the city from the Migros cooperative of Basel to mark the cooperative’s 50th anniversary. Tinguely designed and built all ten figures himself, arranging them like actors or dancers on a stage. 📷 Photo by Kurt Riedberger / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). * * * ### ✨ Tunnel of Surprises — Lima, Peru 🇵🇪 Glowing jets curve overhead to make a roof you can walk beneath. The Tunnel of Surprises stretches 35 meters through Lima’s Magic Water Circuit. **💡 Place Fact:** The fountains stand in the Parque de la Reserva, a park opened in 1929 and named for the reservists who defended Lima during the War of the Pacific in 1881. The water circuit itself was inaugurated on July 26, 2007. 📷 Photo by McKay Savage / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Cover: cropped photos by Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Marek Śliwecki (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cover arrangement: CC BY-SA 4.0. The floating tap, the water umbrella, or the tunnel you can walk through? Tell us in the comments.

## Look up, then look down A painted hippo comes crashing through a white wall in a Stockton-on-Tees yard, jaws first. The surprises in these eight works come in very different sizes, and one is small enough to step over. * * * ### 🦛 Hippo — By Joe Hill in Stockton-on-Tees, England, UK 🇬🇧 The mouth is wide open, the white wall seems to have shattered, and a hippo is coming straight into the yard. Joe Hill, of 3D Joe and Max, painted this illusion in Ship Inn Yard, near West Row. Stockton BID commissioned it to brighten the town’s yards and alleys, and the hippo is a nod to a fossil tooth found near Stockton in 1958. The real brickwork above makes the escape even better. **💡 Artist Fact:** The “Max” in 3D Joe and Max was Joe Hill’s partner Max Lowry, who died in 2010. The following year Hill painted what Guinness World Records listed as the largest and longest 3D painting, at Canary Wharf in London. More: **Amazing 3D Art By Joe and Max (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **3D Joe and Max on Instagram** * * * ### 🎃 “Pumpkin” — By Yayoi Kusama on Naoshima, Japan 🇯🇵 A yellow pumpkin sits at the edge of the sea, covered in rows of black dots that follow its curves. Yayoi Kusama made Pumpkin in 1994 for an old pier on Naoshima, near Benesse House Museum, as the first of her pumpkins designed to stand outdoors. Typhoon Lupit swept it into the sea in 2021, and a remade version returned to the same spot in October 2022. **💡 Artist Fact:** Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, where her family ran a plant nursery with its own seed farm. She later recalled that when she first picked a pumpkin from its vine as a child, “it immediately began speaking to me.” Photo: Rahil Chadha on Unsplash. More: **Yayoi Kusama Covered the World in Dots (12 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **Yayoi Kusama’s website** * * * ### 🦋 “La Petite Guerrière” — By Snek in Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France 🇫🇷 Orange butterflies crowd around a pale face, while a robin flies across the wall beside it. Gold-colored cracks run over the face like repairs in porcelain. The wall is busy, but the closed eyes keep it calm. 🔗 Follow **Snek on Instagram** * * * ### 🌲 “Jeppe Væktæppe” — By Thomas Dambo near Voldum, Denmark 🇩🇰 A wooden giant crouches between the trees, and the two children standing by its hand show just how big it is. Thomas Dambo made Jeppe Væktæppe near Voldum, close to Aarhus. Dambo says the idea came from playing peekaboo with his toddler twins, which makes this forest encounter feel a little less alarming. More: **10 Giant Trolls Hiding in Forests, Lakes and Ruins** 🔗 Follow **Thomas Dambo on Instagram** * * * ### 🐏 “Big Merino Ram” — By Matt Sloane in Richmond, Tasmania, Australia 🇦🇺 From a distance, it is a ram standing in a field. Up close, the fleece becomes a coat of metal parts, with different patterns across the face and body. Matt Sloane’s life-sized scrap metal merino keeps watch by the gate at Richmond Park Estate, 7 Morgan Street, Richmond. Even the curled horns are pieced together from scrap. More: **3 pics: Merino Ram sculpture by Matt Sloane in Tasmania, Australia** 🔗 Follow **Matt Sloane on Instagram** * * * ### 🎈 Seth and the Balloon — By David Zinn The biggest surprise here might be the smallest. A raccoon in shorts waits on the curb with a pink balloon and a tiny beetle. David Zinn introduced Seth as someone offering balloon rides to beetles. It is a whole little business, tucked into one corner of the sidewalk. More: **Cute Art By David Zinn (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🪨 “Colos Chaos” — By Jon Foreman and Layla Parkin at Freshwater West, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Pale stones fill the center, pink stones gather around them, and dark blue-gray stones make the outer edge. Jon Foreman and Layla Parkin created Colos Chaos in 2025 at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire. The pebbles stand on their sides in dense rows, almost like something woven. **💡 Place Fact:** Freshwater West was a filming location for the last two Harry Potter films. Shell Cottage was built at the foot of its dunes and removed after filming, but Dobby’s grave was allowed to stay on the beach. More: **The Art of Stones (12 Photos by Jon Foreman)** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman** and **Layla Parkin** on Instagram * * * ### ☁️ “Horizons” — By Neil Dawson at Gibbs Farm, New Zealand 🇳🇿 It looks like a loose sheet caught by the wind, or a drawing floating above the hill. Neil Dawson’s Horizons, from 1994, is actually welded and painted steel, measuring 15 meters high. The cattle below give away the real scale. More: **You Won’t Believe This Incredible Sculpture in New Zealand Isn’t Photoshopped!** 🔗 Visit **Neil Dawson at Jonathan Smart Gallery**

## Things You’ll Only See in **Canada** A sign beside an Ontario wheat field asks drivers not to feed the sharks. In Calgary, a bookshop asks customers to open the door gently, because a bat is asleep on it, and in Old Montreal a giant cat strolls over the rooftops. Twelve Canadian finds, from front-yard snow statues to Toronto’s Greek and Portuguese neighborhoods. * * * ### 🦈 “Great Wheat Sharks” — By Anne Melady near Dublin, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 Fins cutting through the wheat, and a handwritten warning by the road: Please do not feed the sharks. Anne Melady drew the four fins on a sheet of plywood; one neighbor cut them out and another fitted brackets so they turn in the wind. **💡 Field Fact:** The idea was borrowed. Melady got it from a similar display in Erin, Ontario, where she had seen someone with two fins in a field the year before. More: **Please Do Not Feed the Great Wheat Sharks** * * * ### 🗿 Snow Moai — By Matt Morris in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 A row of moai heads rises out of a front-yard snowbank and stares past the porch. Waterloo teacher Matt Morris builds the 7-foot statues with a homemade plywood mold, after seeing a full-size moai in a museum and deciding it could be done in snow. **💡 Snow Fact:** Morris doesn’t wait for perfect snowman snow. He actually recommends non-packing snow for sculptures. More: **Snow Is Fun (26 Photos)** * * * ### 🦇 Sleeping Bat Warning — The Next Page in Calgary, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦 Look left of the note and there it is: a tiny brown bat asleep on the door frame. The bookshop, in Calgary’s Inglewood neighborhood at 1217A 9 Avenue SE, taped up a polite sign instead of moving it, and the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation later took the little brown myotis in for the winter. More: **A Sleeping Bat at The Next Page Bookshop in Calgary Becomes an Unlikely Star** * * * ### 🌃 Cyberpunk Portrait — By Rouks One and Wonez in Montreal, Quebec, Canada 🇨🇦 Rouks One painted the woman in the glowing helmet in red and blue, and Wonez painted the lettering beside her. The two made the wall during Under Pressure 2026, the 31st edition of Montreal’s graffiti festival. More: **8 Stunning Public Artworks That Make Montreal Feel Alive** 🔗 Follow **Rouks One and Wonez** on Instagram * * * ### 💔 “Nobody Likes Me” — By iHeart in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦 A boy cries under an orange notification bar: zero comments, zero likes, zero followers. The stencil in Stanley Park went viral in 2014 after Banksy shared it on his own Facebook page, and StreetArtNews later ranked it the second most-searched street art of the year. More: **Boy Crying for Instagram Likes by iHeart** 🔗 Follow **iHeart on Instagram** * * * ### 🐈 “I’m Too Big for This Town” (Cat Version) — By Milkbox in Montreal, Quebec, Canada 🇨🇦 A giant pale cat with blue eyes strolls across a row of tiny painted rooftops, far too big for the town below. Milkbox painted it in the courtyard of the AC Hotel in Old Montreal. **💡 History Fact:** Old Montreal is where the city began. Some 50 settlers came here in 1642 to found Ville-Marie, the settlement that grew into Montreal. More: **45 Cats – Purrrrrfect Street Art Pieces** 🔗 Follow **Milkbox on Instagram** * * * ### 🏺 “Classical Greek Art Tribute Mural” — By Megan Oldhues in Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 A woman in white holds a red jug under a fruit tree, painted in loose strokes high above a GreekTown sidewalk. The neighborhood features it as its Classical Greek Art Tribute Mural, and Oldhues describes it as a celebration of the area and of classical art. **💡 Neighborhood Fact:** GreekTown on the Danforth calls itself the largest Greek neighborhood in North America. More: **Megan Oldhues’ Classical Greek Mural in Toronto** 🔗 Follow **Megan Oldhues on Instagram** * * * ### ❤️ “Heart of Ambleside” — By Tyler Toews in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦 A red heart, a bridge, clouds and waves seem to burst out of a plain wall above the parking spaces. The local business association says Toews finished it in September 2021 at Clyde Avenue and 15th Street, as one of Ambleside’s first murals, and named it for the spot people call the heart of the neighborhood. More: **Heart of Ambleside** 🔗 Follow **Tyler Toews on Instagram** * * * ### 🌹 “Home” — By BlazeWorks in Chatham, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 A tattooed woman in a flowing blue dress reads a book with a blue rose on the cover while a long-haired cat sits beside her, and the building’s real windows sit right in the scene. BlazeWorks painted it for this year’s CK Can Jam and called it “Home”, after the people, pets and familiar things that make a place feel like home. More: **For Book Lovers (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **BlazeWorks on Instagram** * * * ### 🧵 “Conceição” — By Hanna Lucatelli in Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 A Portuguese woman with her sleeves rolled up, children playing with boats and flowers at her feet, and blue tile patterns running out across the wall. The 160-square-meter mural at 1636 Dundas Street West went up in spring 2026 for the Dundas West Open Air Museum, honoring the women of Toronto’s Little Portugal. More: **Made This For Mother’s Day (15 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Hanna Lucatelli on Instagram** * * * ### 🔥 A Face Glows Across the Building — By Lacey Jane Wilburn in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦 Warm red and orange light moves across a calm face on a dark wall, with blocks of green and teal at the bottom. Downtown Squamish lists the mural on Cleveland Avenue, painted in 2025 and credited to LaLa, the duo Wilburn forms with Layla Folkmann. More: **7 Strong Street Art Faces** 🔗 Follow **Lacey Jane Wilburn on Instagram** * * * ### 📰 Mary Ann Shadd — By Adeyemi Adegbesan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 Mary Ann Shadd in gold and flowers, painted on the side of Mackenzie House at 82 Bond Street. She was the first Black woman in North America to publish a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, and the portrait went up in 2021 for Toronto History Museums’ Awakenings program. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The wall fits the subject. William Lyon Mackenzie, whose house it is, was an early Toronto newspaper publisher too. More: **Mural of Mary Ann Shadd in Toronto** 🔗 Follow **Adeyemi Adegbesan on Instagram**

## When People Become Part of the Artwork A visitor grabs a bronze hand, another tries to reclaim a blanket from SCAF’s giant squirrel, and a real parking space finishes a CHEONE illusion. In these nine photos, people, animals, and city details step in to complete the artwork. **More:** 100 Times People Stepped Into the Artwork * * * ### 🕺 Join the Circle The bronze figures already form a moving ring. One visitor grabs an open hand and leans back, giving the frozen dance momentum again. * * * ### 🐿️ Hold On — By SCAF SCAF’s squirrel grips one end of the patterned cloth while the visitor pulls the other. The pose turns a painted wall into a tug-of-war. **Follow:** SCAF on Instagram * * * ### ♿ The Parking Space Joins In — By CHEONE CHEONE carries the illusion onto the pavement: the blue bay lines and accessibility mark lead straight into the painted hands above. The real parking space supplies the final piece. **More:** Amazing 3D Murals by CHEONE (24 Photos) * * * ### 🎒 Last in Line The boy slips into the one open space and faces the same direction as the bronze children. His backpack makes him look like the only member of the line who might walk away. * * * ### 🐕 Meet Your Double — By Jakub Tsau in Třebíč, Czech Republic 🇨🇿 The painted bull terrier fills the wall. Directly below, a real dog and its owner mirror the setup at street level. **More:** ArtMag’s report on Graffiti Rock Jam Vol. 18 * * * ### 👮 The Lucky Belly — By András Illyés in Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 The visitor rests one hand on the statue’s polished belly. The bright spot in the bronze shows exactly where people keep reaching. **More:** When You Jump Into the Frame to Play With the Statues * * * ### 🐕 Tug of War The sculpture freezes one dog mid-pull. A real dog chooses the bronze dog’s tail, and the two-frame sequence turns the scene into a tug-of-war. * * * ### 👕 Caught by the Shirt — By CHEONE A painted hand pinches the back of the visitor’s shirt. His forward lean completes the illusion, as if the wall has caught him trying to leave. **Follow:** CHEONE on Instagram * * * ### 📱 Something to Show the Allies — Sculpture by Lawrence Holofcener in London, England 🇬🇧 A visitor has something on his phone that apparently needs the attention of both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Their seated poses do the rest: what was a conversation in bronze becomes three people sharing a screen. The sculpture is Allies, made by Lawrence Holofcener in 1995, on New Bond Street in London. The open space on the bench makes room for exactly this kind of encounter.

## More Art That Could Only Happen in **America** In a field outside Amarillo, ten Cadillacs have stood nose-down in the dirt since 1974, and people still turn up with spray cans. In Bend, Oregon, someone taped googly eyes on a bronze deer, and the city ended up paying to take them off. This second round runs from a Philadelphia museum to a Venice Beach basketball court. More: **Only in America (14 Photos)** * * * ### 🚗 Cadillac Ranch — By Ant Farm in Amarillo, Texas, USA 🇺🇸 Ten old Cadillacs stand in a row with their noses buried in a field west of Amarillo, under so many layers of spray paint that the bodywork looks soft. The art collective Ant Farm planted them in 1974 for Amarillo tycoon Stanley Marsh 3. **💡 Paint Fact:** The graffiti is part of the deal. When the director of the Amarillo Art Center objected early on, Marsh answered that he didn’t care and saw the paint as proof that people felt the place was theirs. The whole row was dug up and moved two miles west in 1997 to stay ahead of the growing city. 📷 Photo: Marcin Wichary / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) * * * ### 🗽 Lady Liberty’s Lighter — At the Statue of Liberty in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 One cigarette and a low camera angle are all it takes. From the right spot, the torch of a 151-foot statue turns into a lighter, and he doesn’t even have to lean in. **💡 Torch Fact:** The flame he is borrowing is not the original. The 1886 torch was swapped out during the 1980s restoration and now sits in the Statue of Liberty Museum, and the torch has been closed to visitors since debris from the 1916 Black Tom explosion damaged it. Bartholdi’s own name for the statue was Liberty Enlightening the World. More: **Fun With Statues (26 Photos)** * * * ### 📱 Benjamin Franklin — By StudioEIS in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸 Someone has put a phone in Ben Franklin’s bronze hand, and the delegate behind him leans in as if he wants to be in the selfie. Franklin is one of 42 life-size bronzes in Signers’ Hall at the National Constitution Center, where visitors are invited to pose next to the framers. **💡 History Fact:** Two famous names are missing from the room. Jefferson and Adams were abroad as ambassadors, in France and England, during the Constitutional Convention, so neither of them signed the Constitution. More: **When Sculptures Come Alive (9 Photos vol. 2)** 🔗 Visit **StudioEIS’s website** * * * ### 🐊 A Cowgirl Rides an Alligator — By Naomi Haverland in Great Falls, Montana, USA 🇺🇸 A cowgirl in red boots rides a snapping alligator and casts a fishing line with a star-shaped lure, under a hanging sign that just says YEE-HAW. Haverland painted it for the Great Walls Great Falls festival in August 2026, and KRTV reported that the only brief was a western theme. More: **Careful, Some of These Bite (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Naomi Haverland on Instagram** * * * ### 🙂 A Smile in the Forest — By Hampton Lumber in Oregon, USA 🇺🇸 From the air, a hillside near Willamina smiles back. David Hampton laid it out with forester Dennis Creel in 2011: larch trees turn yellow in the fall to make the face, while dark Douglas-firs form the eyes and mouth. **💡 Forest Fact:** The face was laid out by hand. Planting crews used a rope to plot the circle and measured out where the eyes and mouth should go. More: **A Forester Planted a Smiley Face in an Oregon Forest** * * * ### 🦍 “King Kong” — By Carlos Alberto GH in New Rochelle, New York, USA 🇺🇸 Kong peers around a skyscraper while his huge hand spills out onto the sidewalk, so anyone who stands in the right spot ends up in his palm. It was unveiled in spring 2022 at New Roc City Plaza, and the Public Art Archive lists it in the New Rochelle Council on the Arts collection. **💡 Technique Fact:** Carlos Alberto painted Kong with house paint from Home Depot, applied through a sprayer. His two New Rochelle murals were paid for with funds from ArtsWestchester’s ReStart the Arts program. More: **King Kong in New Rochelle** 🔗 Follow **Carlos Alberto GH on Instagram** * * * ### ⚾ Perfect Timing — Harmon Killebrew Statue at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 🇺🇸 The bronze Harmon Killebrew on the plaza outside Target Field is frozen mid-swing, and this boy stepped straight into the bat’s path. For the sculptor, Bill Mack, Killebrew posed for hundreds of photos. **💡 Baseball Fact:** That swing has numbers behind it. Killebrew, nicknamed Killer, hit 573 home runs and went into the Hall of Fame in 1984. More: **Couldn’t Resist (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🦈 Matawan Shark — By Tattoo Bob in Matawan, New Jersey, USA 🇺🇸 Teeth painted around a low arch of the NJ Transit bridge over Matawan Creek turn the opening into a mouth, and the still water adds the lower jaw. The red 1916 on the brick points to the summer a real shark came up this creek. **💡 Shark Fact:** The July 1916 attacks on the Jersey coast killed four people, and two of them died in Matawan Creek, not on a beach. More: **Street Art Inspired by the New Jersey Shark Attacks of 1916** * * * ### 🦌 “Big Ears” — By Joe Halko, Googly Eyes by Jeff Keith, in Bend, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸 A bronze doe and her fawn stand in the roundabout at Simpson Avenue and 14th Street, both staring through big plastic googly eyes. Bend warned that the adhesive could damage the art, spent $1,500 removing eyes from eight sculptures, and then local man Jeff Keith said he had put some of them on with duct tape. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Halko’s Big Ears has stood at this roundabout since 2001. Before he became a full-time artist in 1976, Halko worked as a taxidermist. More: **Playing With Googly Eyes (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🪢 Indiana Jones Rescue — By Nate Baranowski in Bay Lake, Florida, USA 🇺🇸 A man on the walkway holds a real rope, and at the other end an adventurer in a fedora dangles over a torch-lit temple drawn in chalk. Baranowski made it for EPCOT’s Festival of the Arts, where the crowd walks right past the edge of the pit. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Baranowski, a Chicago-based street painter, got hooked on street painting while earning his BFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More: **3D Chalk Art by Nate Baranowski at EPCOT** 🔗 Follow **Nate Baranowski on Instagram** * * * ### 🪓 The Tin Man — By Tom Bob in Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸 Before: a plain green post on a street corner. After: a silver Tin Man with an axe across his body and the one thing he spent The Wizard of Oz looking for, a red heart. Tom Bob, a New York-based artist who grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, turns this kind of forgotten street furniture into characters. More: **Creative Genius Tom Bob (33 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Tom Bob on Instagram** * * * ### 😎 The Dude in Sand — By Damon Langlois in Port Aransas, Texas, USA 🇺🇸 Round sunglasses, a long beard, a robe and sandals: The Big Lebowski’s Dude reclines on the beach with one hand behind his head, carved entirely from sand. Langlois made it for Texas SandFest in Port Aransas. More: **Imagination Took Over (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Damon Langlois on Instagram** 📷 Photo by Padre Island Madre. * * * ### 💋 “Marilyn in Manhattan” — By Zimer in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 Marilyn Monroe lounges across a gray wall in a red halter dress, one hand in her curls, while the dress pours out into Zimer’s red graffiti shapes. Zimer’s own post places it at The Ridge Hotel, 151 East Houston Street, on the Lower East Side. More: **Cinema on the Streets: 17 Murals That Look Like Movie Stills** 🔗 Follow **Zimer on Instagram** * * * ### 🏀 “Black Mamba: Kobe Bryant Tribute” — By Chris Carlson and Nate Baranowski in Los Angeles, California, USA 🇺🇸 Kobe’s face sits in a burst of red and orange while a black mamba coils out of the frame and seems to slide off the wall. The Nike-commissioned tribute went up next to the Venice Beach basketball courts in January 2025. Carlson lists it on his website as Black Mamba: Kobe Bryant Tribute, a 20-by-40-foot anamorphic wall painting. **💡 Mamba Fact:** Kobe took the Black Mamba name after watching Kill Bill in 2004 and used it as an alter ego for what he did on the court. More: **Street Art Americans Will Recognize in One Second (14 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **Chris Carlson’s website**

## When the street finishes the artwork An air-conditioner cable becomes part of a drawing, peeling paint becomes a sheet hung out to air, a pale cobblestone becomes a video-game pipe, and a concrete hole becomes a machine for releasing spring. * * * ### 👣 The Invisible Man A cardboard sign announces an “invisible naked man with flip-flops.” All that is actually there is a pair of flip-flops on a cloth-covered stand and a small box of coins for tips. More: **Clever street interventions** * * * ### 🔌 Site-Specific Paste-Up — By Levalet in Paris, France 🇫🇷 Levalet, the alias of French artist Charles Leval, draws his figures in India ink and stages them where the street can join in. Here, on Passage Dubail in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, a man steps off a concrete post while a real cable from the air-conditioning unit above runs straight to his mouth, so the building supplies the action. **💡 Artist Fact:** Leval grew up in Guadeloupe, studied painting and animation in Strasbourg, and began wheat-pasting in Paris in 2012. He measures each site first, then draws the figure in his studio from staged photographs before pasting it up. More: **Clever street art** 🔗 Follow **Levalet** on Instagram * * * ### 🫣 The Tiny Hider — By JPS A stenciled girl in a pink dress presses her face into the corner beside a drainpipe, as if counting in a game of hide-and-seek, while a tipped-over paint can lies on the pavement behind her. JPS is the tag of Jamie Paul Scanlon, a stencil artist from Weston-super-Mare, England, and his Instagram handle is sprayed on the wall next to the piece. **💡 Origin Fact:** Scanlon, who has spoken about being homeless because of drink and drugs, says a 2009 Banksy exhibition in Bristol made him think he could do the same, and he credits Banksy with saving his life. More: **Street art by JPS** 🔗 Follow **JPS** on Instagram * * * ### 🧺 Laundry Day — By Golsa Golchini in Milan, Italy 🇮🇹 A small window and a woman leaning out of it sit just above a band of peeling paint, so the flaking white layer reads as a sheet she is hanging out to air. Milan-based Golsa Golchini is best known for placing tiny figures on thick strokes of paint; here a weathered wall does the same job. More: **Tiny street art** 🔗 Follow **Golsa Golchini** on Instagram * * * ### 🚧 Poussons !!! — By Oakoak in France 🇫🇷 Four small white figures lean into the stripes of a pedestrian crossing, as if they were shoving the misaligned halves back into line. Oakoak lists the 2013 piece as Poussons !!! (“Let’s push!”) in his own archive. More: **Street art by Oakoak** · Oakoak’s street art archive 🔗 Follow **Oakoak** on Instagram * * * ### 🍄 Cobblestone Mario — By Pappas Pärlor A bead-built Mario peeks over the top of a pale cobblestone, which stands in for one of the game’s pipes. Pappas Pärlor is Johan Karlgren, a Swedish artist from Motala who makes his pixel figures from melted Perler beads. More: **Super Mario street art** 🔗 Follow **Pappas Pärlor** on Instagram * * * ### 🐭 Edith Notices a Small Breakthrough — By David Zinn Edith pauses beside a yellow chalk flower drawn at a real pavement crack. More: **Chalk art by David Zinn** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn** on Instagram * * * ### 🌱 Spring Loading! — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 Sluggo turns a hole in the concrete, a drawn lever, and chalk flowers into a machine for releasing spring. **💡 Technique Fact:** Zinn sketches his outlines standing up, using vine or willow charcoal on a custom collapsible pole so he can draw from the angle passersby will see, and only then kneels to fill in color, according to an Ann Arbor District Library profile. More: **Silly chalk art by David Zinn** · About David Zinn 🔗 Follow **David Zinn** on Instagram

## Familiar faces, unexpected places Walter White keeps watch over a skatepark in Belgium, King Kong holds out a painted hand in New Rochelle, and in Boston a snowbank turned into Batman. These ten works pull characters from film, TV, comics and cartoons onto walls, pillars, street cabinets and abandoned rooms. * * * ### 🦍 King Kong — By Carlos Alberto GH in New Rochelle, New York, USA 🇺🇸 King Kong offers a much gentler greeting here than he usually does on screen. Carlos Alberto GH, a Mexican artist from Guadalajara known for 3D illusions, painted an enormous open hand low enough for a person to pose inside it. The mural is at 33 LeCount Place by New Roc City, one of nine murals unveiled in downtown New Rochelle in 2022 as part of the #NRNYmurals project curated by Street Art for Mankind. More: **King Kong by Carlos Alberto GH in New Rochelle** 🔗 Follow **Carlos Alberto GH on Instagram** * * * ### 🧽 SpongeBob on a Cabinet — By Jak Umbdenstock in Strasbourg, France 🇫🇷 SpongeBob has found work as street furniture. Jak Umbdenstock turned an electrical cabinet in Strasbourg’s Hautepierre neighborhood into SpongeBob in June 2021, during the COLORS City HTP festival. The tall yellow box already had the right shape. This SpongeBob grins with gold teeth that spell HTP, a nod to Hautepierre, and holds a spray can of his own. More: **SpongeBob (HTP) SquarePants** 🔗 Follow **Jak Umbdenstock on Instagram** * * * ### 🧪 Walter White — By Djoels in Kortrijk, Belgium 🇧🇪 The glasses, the stare and the respirator resting on his forehead leave little doubt about who this is. Djoels painted Walter White from _Breaking Bad_ on a concrete pillar at Skatepark Luxaplast, the covered skatepark under the R8 ring road in Marke, Kortrijk. The portrait fills the column from edge to edge. **💡 Artist Fact:** Djoels, who grew up in Meulebeke in West Flanders, is also a tattoo artist, and in 2017 she won the first edition of the Dutch-Belgian version of Ink Master. More: **Life at Sea: Mural by Djoels in Basque Country (5 photos)** 🔗 Follow **Djoels on Instagram** * * * ### 🐶 Snoopy in Ladbroke Grove — By TRUST. iCON in London, UK 🇬🇧 A few thick black lines are enough to make Snoopy recognizable from across the street. TRUST. iCON stretched the beagle along a whitewashed wall in Ladbroke Grove, crouched low with a real street lamp standing right in front of him. A small poop emoji by his tail shows exactly what he is doing. More: **Snoopy by TRUST. iCON in London** 🔗 Follow **TRUST. iCON on Instagram** * * * ### 🐭 Double Mickey Mouse — By Jerkface in Manhattan, New York, USA 🇺🇸 Two Mickeys share the same patch of Manhattan, on Mott Street near East Houston Street. Jerkface overlaps their faces, gloves and familiar red shorts until the figure seems to shift as you look at it. The yellow shoes still land firmly on the sidewalk. The wall was documented by New York Cliché in 2018. More: **Double Mickey Mouse in New York** 🔗 Visit **Jerkface’s website** * * * ### 🦇 Snow Batman — By George Li in Boston, USA 🇺🇸 After a March 2017 snowstorm, George Li turned a snowbank on Beech Street in Boston’s Chinatown into Batman, cape and pointed ears included. He told the Boston Globe it took about two and a half hours, using a shovel, his keys for the eyes and his son’s sand shovel for the details. He made it for his six-year-old son, whose favorite superhero is Batman. More: **11 Amazing Snow and Ice Sculptures** * * * ### 🤖 Cain from RoboCop 2 — By JPS A robot villain gets a surprisingly quiet setting. JPS’s detailed stencil of Cain from _RoboCop 2_ stands beside a pool of water, which repeats the machine in reflection. **💡 Film Fact:** In _RoboCop 2_ , Cain was a stop-motion puppet animated by Phil Tippett’s team, while its face on the monitor was a digitally puppeteered CG head, played back on a Sony Watchman built into the model. More: **Street Art by JPS** 🔗 Follow **JPS on Instagram** * * * ### 🐌 Gary Takes the Stairwell — By DavidL near Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸 Gary has outgrown the pineapple. DavidL, a Barcelona artist whose work is also in the collection of STRAAT museum in Amsterdam, turns SpongeBob’s pet snail into a huge, heavy-lidded presence above a worn staircase. The curled shell and long eyestalks follow the corner, making the creature seem wedged into the old building. Photo: DLozano. 🔗 Follow **DavidL on Instagram** * * * ### 💃 Marilyn in Manhattan — By Zimer in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 Marilyn Monroe’s red dress spreads across the side of The Ridge Hotel at 151 East Houston Street. Zimer bends the fabric around the building’s architectural details. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Zimer learned graffiti in Queens around 2000 and honed his craft at the 5Pointz aerosol museum, before earning an architecture degree from New York Institute of Technology. 🔗 Follow **Zimer on Instagram** * * * ### 🍪 Cookie Monster Moves In — By DavidL near Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸 Cookie Monster appears to have claimed the sofa. DavidL stretches the blue character’s mouth into a toothy grin and scatters painted cookies around the room. The battered furniture is real. Photo: DLozano. More: **Surreal Art by DavidL** 🔗 Follow **DavidL on Instagram**

## These buildings look **odd** for a reason A few are real structures in unlikely places. The rest are plain walls and houses that artists reshaped with paint (and, in Madrid, with plants), usually working around the real windows, corners and roofs. More: **Strange Finds (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🦅 Jatayu — By Rajiv Anchal in Chadayamangalam, Kerala, India 🇮🇳 A stone eagle the size of a building lies across a hilltop at Jatayu Earth’s Center in Chadayamangalam, and the small visitor on its wing gives away the scale. Kerala Tourism measures it at 200 feet long, 150 feet wide and 70 feet high. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The bird is also a building. Kerala Tourism says visitors can explore a museum and an audio-visual gallery inside the sculpture. * * * ### ⛰️ Bivacco Buffa di Perrero — Monte Cristallo, Italy 🇮🇹 The hut sits in a notch of bare rock with nothing around it but cliff. Cortina’s via ferrata guide places the former military shelter at Forcella Padeon, 2,760 meters up, and dates it to 1915. **💡 Nerd Fact:** According to the Alpini association, the only ways up are the Ivano Dibona via ferrata or a helicopter, and the Regole d’Ampezzo donated all the timber for the 2022 restoration. More: **6 Real Buildings That Look Impossible** * * * ### 🙏 Portrait of José Gregorio Hernández — By Hamk Trazos in Petare, Venezuela 🇻🇪 Dozens of hillside homes share one face, and the pieces only line up from the highway below. The portrait covers about 25 to 30 houses in La Alcabala and was painted for Hernández’s canonization in October 2025. Photo by Daniel de Jongh. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Hernández was also a scientist. An article in the Gaceta Médica de Caracas dates his chair of bacteriology in Caracas to 1891, the start of scientific microbiology in Venezuela. More: **Wish We Had Art Like This Everywhere (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Hamk Trazos on Instagram** * * * ### 🧩 Anamorphic Facade — By Peeta in Porrentruy, Switzerland 🇨🇭 Painted bands and shadows make a plain apartment block look as if it is unfolding around its own windows. The work at La Colombière 7 is part of the Porrentruy POPA Festival, which turns the town into an open-air museum of optical art. **💡 Name Fact:** Peeta started writing graffiti in 1993, and the first shapes he treated as sculpture were the letters of his own name. More: **6 Photos Of 3D Mural by Peeta in Mannheim, Germany** 🔗 Follow **Peeta on Instagram** * * * ### 🪟 “Wendy at the Window” — By Seth in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA 🇺🇸 Several floors up a blank brick wall, a girl hangs from a real window ledge to peek inside. Street Art Cities lists Seth’s mural at 17 McWilliams Place. More: **34 Murals That Turn Walls Into Wonders: Seth’s Street Art Will Blow Your Mind** 🔗 Follow **Seth Globepainter on Instagram** * * * ### 🦉 “Knowledge speaks – Wisdom listens” — By WD (Wild Drawing) in Athens, Greece 🇬🇷 WD turned a whole low corner house into an owl, with the beak landing exactly on the corner. This Is Athens places it in Metaxourgeio, at Palaiologou and Samou streets, and says the title is borrowed from a Jimi Hendrix quote. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Athens Live explains the owl as a symbol of wisdom and of Athena, who gave the city its name. WD painted it in 2016 for the Petit Paris Athens festival. More: **Beautiful 3D Art by WD! (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **WD (Wild Drawing) on Instagram** * * * ### 🦸 “Raising the Barn” — By JPS in Lohr am Main, Germany 🇩🇪 The barn and the stone wall are real; only Superman, fist up against the timber, is painted. JPS posted it as “Raising the barn” in May 2020, and a blog post from the same week places it in Lohr am Main. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Lifting heavy things is Superman’s oldest move. The cover of Action Comics #1, his 1938 debut, shows him raising a car over his head. More: **40 Stunning Street Art By Creative Genius JPS** 🔗 Follow **JPS on Instagram** * * * ### 🌊 “The Distance from the Sea to Certainty” — By Medianeras in Caorle, Italy 🇮🇹 Red and orange bands wrap the building’s corners, chimney and windows, and the young face only comes together from one spot on the street. In their post about the work, Medianeras describe it as a wave of color linking the figure to Caorle’s coast; it was painted for the 2026 Caorle Sea Festival. Il Nordest lists it under its Italian title, “La distanza dal mare alla certezza,” on the Hotel Splendid. **💡 Name Fact:** In Spanish, medianeras are the walls shared by neighboring buildings. The duo, Argentine artists Vanesa Galdeano and Anali Chanquia, took their name from them. More: **Mural by MEDIANERAS in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (9 photos)** 🔗 Follow **Medianeras on Instagram** * * * ### 🧵 “Al hilo del tiempo” — By IMVG in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain 🇪🇸 From top to bottom, the facade is painted as patterned cloth, with the real windows sitting in its folds. Vitoria-Gasteiz’s mural route guide credits it to Verónica and Christina Werckmeister of IMVG, painted in 2007 on Plaza de las Burullerías. Photo by Begoña Gómez García. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The same guide ties the fabric to the medieval cloth market once held in the square and says the 225-square-meter wall was painted in four weeks. More: **By Collectiv IMVG – In Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain** * * * ### 🏢 Corner Illusion — By Shozy in Solnechnodolsk, Russia 🇷🇺 Before and after: the flat corner of a panel block now seems to sprout extra rooms and stacked windows. The project listing dates the 320-square-meter wall at Solnechny Boulevard 10 to 2021, and Colossal points out that the whole construction lies flat on the corner walls. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The same listing says the wall took 12 days and that a real air conditioner on it was worked into the illusion. More: **Stunning Optical Illusion Mural by Shozy Changes the Way You See Street Art** 🔗 Follow **Shozy on Instagram** * * * ### ⚙️ “Modulo 7×3” — By Vesod in Bari, Italy 🇮🇹 A calm face sits in the middle of giant rings and spokes, as if the building had a machine set into its end wall. Street Art Cities lists it at Via Filippo Cifariello 14 in the San Paolo district, painted for SanPArt, a 2024 project that brought 11 murals to the neighborhood. More: **I Can’t Stop Looking at These Incredible Murals by Vesod** 🔗 Follow **Vesod on Instagram** * * * ### 🌿 Vertical Garden — By Patrick Blanc in Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸 Instead of paint, the wall beside CaixaForum Madrid is covered in living plants, and the people at its base look tiny. CaixaForum puts the garden at 460 square meters, and the World Green Infrastructure Network counts more than 15,000 plantings. Patrick Blanc lists it among his own projects. **💡 Nerd Fact:** There is no soil. According to CaixaForum, five pipe structures hold the roots, water is fed in at three heights, and about half of it is recycled. More: **Vertical Garden – By Patrick Blanc in Madrid and Paris**

## Nine double takes and the **artists** behind them None of these came with a sign explaining itself. In Gdynia, a kid seems to dangle from an underpass ceiling; in Orvault, a park bench stares back with E.T.’s eyes. Below, each one gets its answer: who made it and where. More: **Someone Had Fun (9 Photos)** * * * ### 🎯 “Schleudersitz” — By Cornelia Konrads in Neustadt an der Donau, Germany 🇩🇪 A park bench hangs in a red strap pulled back across a forked tree trunk, ready to be fired. The title is German for “ejection seat”; Konrads dates the work to 2010. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Sculpture Network lists it under Flying Objects, an art exhibition on a former vineyard in Neustadt an der Donau that is now a leisure park overlooking the Danube valley. So the bench is aimed at the view. More: **Cornelia Konrads on Street Art Utopia** * * * ### 🌅 “Morning is Broken” — By Banksy in Herne Bay, England 🇬🇧 A boy, with a cat at his side, pulls the corrugated-metal sheets over a farmhouse window apart like bedroom curtains. On a boarded-up house, it reads as the first morning in years. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Banksy confirmed the work on Instagram on March 15, 2023, but demolition of the derelict house at Blacksole Farm had begun the day before. The contractors said they had not known it was a Banksy. More: **Some Of Banksy’s Most Clever Street Art (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Banksy on Instagram** * * * ### 🍇 Berry Workers — By Oakoak in Avignon, France 🇫🇷 Tiny painted workers climb a bare vine on a pale wall and haul its real berries like heavy cargo. The fruit was already there; Oakoak only added the crew, the same trick that runs through his own street-art archive. More: **Wrong but Right: Art By Oakoak (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Oakoak on Instagram** * * * ### 🚸 Crossing the Crossing Sign — By Pabi A in Lund, Sweden 🇸🇪 The pedestrian has had enough of his triangle and is climbing out over the top of the sign. Design Observer used this Lund piece in an essay on art made from overlooked parts of the city. **💡 Sign Fact:** Sweden’s crossing-sign figure is nicknamed Herr Gårman, “Mr. Walkman,” and has been on Swedish crossings since 1955. More: **Street Art by Pabi A** * * * ### 👽 E.T. on the Bench — By Jinks Kunst in Orvault, France 🇫🇷 Two big glossy eyes and a small nose turn the wooden backrest into E.T., peering at whoever sits down. In his post about it, Jinks Kunst calls it part of a series of benches painted at Château de la Gobinière in Orvault. More: **Funny and Clever Art (11 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jinks Kunst on Instagram** * * * ### 🎾 Crashing Tennis Ball — By Jan Is De Man in Utrecht, Netherlands 🇳🇱 A giant tennis ball bursts through the brick wall of the clubhouse at Zuilense Tennis Club, Burgemeester Norbruislaan 680 in Utrecht, with painted bricks flying out around it. Someone clearly hit that one too hard. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Zuilense Tennis Club was founded on May 16, 1925. The club says the mural was unveiled at its centenary celebration in July 2025, the same day it received a royal medal of honor. More: **8 Happy 3D Artworks by Jan Is De Man That Will Make You Smile** 🔗 Follow **Jan Is De Man on Instagram** · 📷 Photo by Gnikcombor * * * ### 🧱 “GRIETA” — By Alberto León in Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸 Four figures climb up through a jagged crack in a plain wall, one above the other, while a man in a black cap walks by. “Grieta” is Spanish for “crack.” More: **The Crack Was the Idea (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Alberto León on Instagram** · 📷 Photo by gisleiderandres * * * ### 🐇 Peek-a-Boo Rabbit — By Adeline Yvetot in Belleville, Paris, France 🇫🇷 A small gray rabbit peeks around a rough wall corner, easy to miss at walking speed. In an artist feature for M.U.R de Rennes, Yvetot describes her rabbit as an invitation to curiosity, travel and discovery. More: **Too Cute (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Adeline Yvetot on Instagram** · 📷 Photo by Urban Poetry FR * * * ### 🧗 A Child on the Ledge — By Marek LOONEY Rybowski in Gdynia, Poland 🇵🇱 A painted boy grips the real concrete edge of an underpass and hangs there in red sneakers while a butterfly drifts past. It is one section of a longer mural that runs through the pedestrian underpass beneath the bypass, linking the Demptowo and Pustki Cisowskie districts of Gdynia. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The City of Gdynia says residents chose the mural in the participatory budget, with more than 2,700 votes; the same project also paid for a public defibrillator and an outdoor gym. More: **Mural by LOONEY in Gdynia, Poland** 🔗 Follow **Marek LOONEY Rybowski on Instagram**

## Eight times artists treated the street like a toy box A parking block becomes a crocodile, flowers pour from a giant paint tube, and Darth Vader spends the evening fishing. These eight street and public artworks show what happens when a playful idea takes over an everyday object. * * * ### 🐊 Crocodile in the Parking Lot — By Tom Bob in Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪 Tom Bob turned a wooden parking block into a bright green crocodile, painting legs and a tail on the ground beside it. **💡 Artist Fact:** Tom Bob grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, before moving to New York City to pursue an art career, and Boston 25 News reported in 2021 that he had started making street art about seven years earlier. He gets permission from building owners and the city before starting a project. **More:** 33 Artworks by Creative Genius Tom Bob 🔗 Follow **Tom Bob on Instagram** * * * ### 🌼 Marigold Paint Tube — In Boulogne-sur-Mer, France 🇫🇷 An enormous orange tube appears to squeeze a thick ribbon of color onto the grass, except the “paint” is made from living marigolds. Photographer Steve Hughes came across the installation in a public park in Boulogne-sur-Mer, as Colossal reported in 2015, with a giant picture frame full of flowers nearby. **More:** When the Street Became a Place to Play * * * ### 🎣 Darth Fisher — By Frankey in Amsterdam, the Netherlands 🇳🇱 Frankey gives the galaxy’s most intimidating villain a quiet evening beneath Amsterdam’s Torontobrug on the Amstel. He made the piece in 2021 for the tenth edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival. The glowing red fishing rod turns a lightsaber into the least threatening tool in the universe. **💡 Place Fact:** The Torontobrug opened in 1969 as the Stadhoudersbrug and got its current name in 1974, when Toronto mayor David Crombie traveled to Amsterdam to mark the twin-city agreement between Toronto and Amsterdam. **More:** Darth Fisher by Frankey in Amsterdam 🔗 Follow **Frankey on Instagram** * * * ### 👣 The Invisible Man A pair of flip-flops, an empty cloth and a handwritten sign are all it takes to stage an invisible street performance. **More:** Made It Funny Again * * * ### 🔌 Site-Specific Paste-Up — By Levalet in Paris, France 🇫🇷 Levalet draws a determined figure directly into the building’s hardware, making a real cable and air-conditioning unit part of the scene. It feels like catching a tiny maintenance drama halfway through. **💡 Artist Fact:** Levalet is the street name of Charles Leval, who was born in Épinal in 1988 and grew up in Guadeloupe. According to the Hôtel de Gallifet, he earned a teaching diploma in 2012, the same year his India-ink figures began appearing on the streets of Paris. **More:** This Is Clever 🔗 Follow **Levalet on Instagram** * * * ### 🌸 Matryoshka Cement Mixer A cement mixer drum already has the rounded shape of a nesting doll. Someone painted it like one. **More:** Rolling Art: Cement Trucks Turned into Giant Matryoshka Dolls * * * ### 🧷 Corridor Pin, Blue — By Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen in San Francisco, USA 🇺🇸 A familiar safety pin becomes monumental, bright blue and strangely elegant. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco lists the work as Corridor Pin, Blue (1999), a stainless steel and aluminum sculpture installed outdoors at the de Young in Golden Gate Park. **More:** Funny Sculptures With a Clever Twist * * * ### 🍪 Cookie Monster Bin Two googly eyes, purple paint and one perfectly placed cookie turn an ordinary street bin into a hungry character. **More:** Clever! (12 Photos)

## **3D street art** that makes you look twice A truck seems to sit in an empty lot, until the next photo reveals the concrete blocks underneath. These fourteen works use paint to give solid surfaces unexpected depth, with a few creatures apparently spilling out into the street. * * * ### 🚛 A Truck Made of Concrete — By Odeith The wheels, fuel tank and cab are painted onto a set of concrete blocks. Odeith makes the truck look as though it has been parked there for years; the bare blocks in the second photo give it away. More: **3D Art By Odeith (25 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Odeith on Instagram** * * * ### 🎩 “Metal Fingers” — By Taroe in Rotterdam, Netherlands 🇳🇱 The record shop, its shop windows and the two men in pink and white suits are all flat paint on the end wall of an apartment block. Taroe painted it entirely with brushes for ALL CAPS 2026 in Lombardijen; only the real balconies on the side give the wall away. 🔗 Follow **Taroe on Instagram** * * * ### 🐍 A Snake Along the Wall — By CHEONE CHEONE coils a huge snake along a low wall, with its head and forked tongue seeming to cross onto the sidewalk. The painted shadow under its jaw sells it. More: **Amazing 3D Murals by CHEONE! (24 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **CHEONE on Instagram** * * * ### 🐓 Giant Rooster — By Odeith in Portugal 🇵🇹 Even up on a chair, the man in the red hoodie only reaches the bird’s chest. The corner of breeze-block walls is real; the rooster is folded across it, its dark tail fanning over one wall and its body standing on the other. Photo by 1904manuel via Wikimedia Commons (cropped; CC BY-SA 4.0). More: **3D Graffiti by Odeith (20 Photos)** * * * ### 🏡 “La Guinguette” — By A-Fresco / Patrick Commecy in Brives-Charensac, France 🇫🇷 The open café, its customers and the woman upstairs are all part of A-Fresco’s painted façade at the corner of Rue de Charensac and Avenue Charles Dupuy, completed in December 2012. The real roof and flower bed make it easy to believe there is a room behind those blue doors. **💡 Local Fact:** The newspaper reader is a nod to Joseph Servant, who founded the town’s twinning committee in 1987. More: **Art That Feels Real (12 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **A-Fresco’s official website** * * * ### 🫠 “The Vision” — By CHEONE in Milan, Italy 🇮🇹 The windows, balconies and cornices look as if the whole facade is melting. CHEONE painted them on Casa Maiocchi at Corso di Porta Romana 113 and unveiled the mural in July 2021, taking cues from Gaudí’s Casa Batlló. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The commission came from shading company MV Line, and its project page explains the joke: the lower windows stay protected by its sunshades while the rest of the building seems to melt in the heat. * * * ### 🚪 A Door Into Somewhere Else — By Miles Toland The lock and doorknob are still there, but the flat surface seems to spiral into a deep, dark opening. Miles Toland’s portal even spills over the frame onto the siding. More: **A Closer Look at Miles Toland’s Portal** 🔗 Follow **Miles Toland on Instagram** * * * ### 🏘️ A Town Square on a Parking Lot Wall — By Rober Bece in Santa Marta de Tormes, Spain 🇪🇸 The white parking lines run straight into a painted square with houses, balconies, shop signs and a fountain. The wall stands by the town hall on Plaza de España, and the scene pays tribute to the town’s shops and bars, Salamanca Diario reported. 🔗 Follow **Rober Bece on Instagram** * * * ### 🦇 Something in the Corner — By SCAF A crouching, winged creature fills what started as an empty corner. SCAF carries the painted claws and shadows onto the floor, so the figure seems to lean out into the room. More: **Explore SCAF’s 3D Illusions** 🔗 Follow **SCAF on Instagram** * * * ### 🪲 “Touching Earth” — By Odeith Look at the bottom photo first: a plain, rain-stained concrete dome. Above it, the same dome is the striped back of an enormous beetle, its legs and feelers painted onto the ground and wall around it. Odeith posted it as “Touching Earth”; the figure bracing against its head gives the scale. * * * ### 🐬 Dolphins Around the Corner — By CHEONE Two dolphins seem to swim inside a little blue building. CHEONE wraps the nearest dolphin’s face around the corner, while the real windows remain above its back. 🔗 Follow **CHEONE on Instagram** * * * ### 🥣 Porcelain Bowl and Swallow — By Odeith in Portugal 🇵🇹 A bowl, saucer and spoon seem to float off the wall while a swallow lands on the rim. The shadow behind them does the work: the porcelain looks as solid as the artist crouching below to finish it. **💡 Local Fact:** The ceramic swallow is a familiar Portuguese symbol; Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro’s 1891 swallows still hang in the Tabacaria Mónaco on Lisbon’s Rossio square. * * * ### 🌊 A Balcony by the Sea — By WD on Tinos, Greece 🇬🇷 WD’s Tinos mural opens a solid concrete block onto the sea, adding a seated figure and a cat. The painted horizon meets the real one, and the tiny balcony looks like somewhere you could sit. **💡 Artist Fact:** WD (Wild Drawing) was born in Bali, Indonesia, and started out as a street artist in 2000; he later settled in Athens, where he lives and works. More: **Beautiful 3D Art by WD** 🔗 Follow **WD on Instagram** * * * ### 🌙 Fishing for the Moon — By Nikolaj Arndt A crescent moon glows at the bottom of a pool that seems to open in the pavement. Nikolaj Arndt paints rocks around the edge, and the ordinary street carries on just past them. More: **This Feels Too Real: 22 Illusions by Nikolaj Arndt** 🔗 Follow **Nikolaj Arndt on Instagram** * * * ### 🐸 Super Distorted Frog — By Odeith Odeith sits across from the giant blue frog, making the painted distortion read like a creature leaning out of the wall.

## Public **sculptures** with a punchline A harbor breakwater in The Hague hid a Rubik’s Cube, and a Cold War bunker in Prague turned into R2-D2. In Moscow, a set of garbage bins grew teeth and claws and lost most of them within a day. And in Conques, a stone face carved about 900 years ago still peers over a church portal. More: **14 Photos Funny Sculptures With a Clever Twist** * * * ### 🧩 Rubik’s Cube Breakwater Block — Scheveningen, The Hague, Netherlands 🇳🇱 Roel Wijnants photographed this sea-worn Rubik’s Cube on a Scheveningen harbor breakwater in August 2013, one painted block among plain concrete ones. It’s the only block in the pile anyone would try to pick up. More: **Eroded Rubik’s Cube in the Netherlands** * * * ### ♻️ “This Waste Is Not a Toy” — By Andrej Josifovski in Bečej, Serbia 🇷🇸 A LEGO-style figure eight meters tall, built on a steel frame and wrapped in cardboard, stood guard over the landfill in Bečej. Architect Andrej Josifovski Pijanista made it to call out Serbia’s illegal dumps, and later versions went up at landfills in Dolovo and near Inđija. **💡 Award Fact:** The project, “Eko čikica – ovaj otpad nije igračka,” won the research and experiment category at the 45th Architecture Salon. More than 35 people helped build it. More: **This Waste Is Not a Toy by Andrej Josifovski** * * * ### 🤖 R2-D2 Bunker Vent — Folimanka Park, Prague, Czechia 🇨🇿 Anonymous artists painted the ventilation shaft of a buried Cold War bunker in Folimanka Park as R2-D2 and added a concrete piece on each side of the dome. It was never city-sanctioned, but in October 2017 Prague 2 said it would not remove the robot. **💡 Bunker Fact:** The shelter underneath was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s and could hold 1,300 civilians. More: **Transforming a Nuclear Shelter: The Rise of R2-D2 Graffiti** * * * ### 🐿️ “Climate Climax” — By FALCO in Cachan, France 🇫🇷 FALCO worked the fire hydrant at the foot of the wall into the stencil: its hose runs up to a squirrel aiming a long blue jet over a row of dark pines. He shared it from Cachan, just south of Paris, under the title “Climate Climax.” More: **Spreading Peace in Roubaix, France** 🔗 Follow **FALCO on Instagram** * * * ### 🎼 Conductor’s Hand Parking Barriers — Estonian National Opera, Tallinn, Estonia 🇪🇪 At the parking entrance of the Estonian National Opera, each barrier arm was a conductor’s baton held by a sculpted hand, so every car got its own downbeat. The opera’s general manager, Aivar Mäe, came up with the musical barriers, and TwistedSifter made them a Picture of the Day in July 2014. * * * ### 🗑️ “PREDATOR” — By Nikita Golubev in Moscow, Russia 🇷🇺 Golubev turned a row of trash containers in Moscow’s Tyoply Stan district into one monster: yellow eyes on the lids, a red mouth full of teeth and blue claws on the open doors. When he came back the next day, most of it had been torn off and only the eyes were left. More: **Dirt Made Into Art (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Nikita Golubev on Instagram** * * * ### 🐕 Rain-Boot Dog — La Manufacture, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, France 🇫🇷 A few green rubber boots make one small dog, parked by a glass storefront. It’s one of the boot dogs the local tourism office calls traffic signs for La Manufacture, a creative hub for about 20 makers at the end of Impasse de l’Hôtel de Palerme, off Rue de la République. More: **15 Times Cities Forgot to Be Serious** * * * ### 🐱 “Maui” Cat Can — By My Dog Sighs My Dog Sighs painted a tabby’s face across a crushed can, and the dents give it a squashed little body to go with the big green eyes. This one is a commissioned portrait of a cat named Maui. **💡 Can Fact:** Faces painted on discarded tin cans are a My Dog Sighs signature, and for ten years he gave his art away on the street as part of his Free Art Friday project. More: **Eyes That Speak: My Dog Sighs** 🔗 Follow **My Dog Sighs on Instagram** * * * ### 🧱 Tiny Man Lifting a LEGO-Style Brick — By Slinkachu A man no taller than a fingertip hoists a red LEGO-style brick over his head on a ledge above a busy road, while a kid in red watches. It’s from Slinkachu’s Little People project, which has been leaving tiny figures on city streets since 2006. More: **Little People by Slinkachu (Part 2 of 4)** 🔗 Follow **Slinkachu on Instagram** * * * ### 🐨 “Half-Half Coala” — By Bordalo II in Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹 Half of the koala is painted to look like soft gray fur, and the other half shows exactly what it’s made of: plastic, scrap and other trash. It went up in Xabregas, Lisbon, replacing Bordalo II’s earlier Plastic Frog on the same wall. **💡 Series Fact:** In Bordalo II’s Half-Half series, each animal is split between a natural-looking side and a plastic side, a contrast his site ties to the waste that destroys animal habitats. More: **Bordalo II Builds Animals From Trash (30 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Bordalo II on Instagram** * * * ### 👀 The Curieux — Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy, Conques, France 🇫🇷 Above the Last Judgment portal of Sainte-Foy in Conques, one of the curieux (curious ones) peeks over the molding, eyes just clearing the stone and fingers hooked over the edge like a kid at a fence. Kenyon College’s photo archive places these figures over the tympanum arch, and the Conques tourist office dates the tympanum to the first half of the 12th century. More: **Medieval Humor at the Abbey of Sainte Foy, Conques**

## Storybook characters, found in real places Pinocchio counts a pile of cash, Cinderella’s coach lies wrecked under camera flashes, and a mermaid has surfaced in a German town square. These artists took characters everyone knows from childhood books and put them somewhere you can walk up to them. More: **Fairy Tales Gone Wrong (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🤥 “Pidrocho & Friends” — By EL ROJO Pinocchio has swapped school for a suit and tie, and he is very happy with the pile of banknotes in front of him. The donkey ears from his old story are still there. Around the table, a few purple rats help themselves to the coins. More: **8 Murals You’ll Want to See Today** * * * ### 🎩 “Alice in Wonderland” — By Vera Bugatti and Carlos Alberto GH in Brande, Denmark 🇩🇰 Alice has grown too big again. She sits jammed under the roof of a house gable, chin in hand, holding out a small cake marked “Spis mig”, Danish for “Eat me”. Two visitors fit easily into the painted window beside her feet, which shows how big she is. Vera Bugatti and Carlos Alberto GH painted the trompe l’oeil gable at Jernbanegade in Brande in May 2016, a year after Bugatti won the audience prize at the town’s street art festival. **💡 Town Fact:** Brande has painted its gables since 1968, when a group of residents invited Danish artists to come and paint them. More: **Everyone in Wonderland Is Mad (5 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Vera Bugatti** and **Carlos Alberto GH** on Instagram * * * ### 🐇 “Rabbit Hole” — By Seth in Le Mans, France 🇫🇷 Stand at the right point at the dead end of Jankowski Street and the walls open into a tunnel of light. A small figure tumbles down it, Alice-style. Seth painted the anamorphosis across the buildings of the dead-end street in the city center in May and June 2022. Photo by Lapin Blanc. **💡 Award Fact:** Seth’s Le Mans wall was among the nominees in Street Art Cities’ Best of 2022. More: **“Rabbit Hole” in Le Mans, France (6 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Seth on Instagram** * * * ### 🧞 Genie Out of the Can — By SCAF Aladdin brought a spray can instead of a lamp. He crouches in the corner of an old hall in a purple vest and a respirator, and the Genie pours out of the nozzle as a blue trail across the floor, then rises over two walls with his arms flung wide and his mouth wide open. More: **26 Amazing 3D Paintings by SCAF!** 🔗 Follow **SCAF on Instagram** * * * ### 🎃 Cinderella’s Coach — By Banksy in Weston-super-Mare, England 🇬🇧 Midnight came, and so did the press. The pumpkin coach lies on its side, the white horses are down, and Cinderella hangs out of the window while a pack of photographers keep shooting. The Art Newspaper read the scene as a nod to the death of Princess Diana. It was one of ten Banksy pieces at Dismaland, his “bemusement” park in Weston-super-Mare. **💡 History Fact:** Dismaland was open for 36 days in August and September 2015, with 58 artists and about 150,000 visitors. When it closed, its timber and other materials were taken to Calais and used to build shelters in the migrant camp. More: **Inside Banksy’s Dismaland** * * * ### 🪝 Captain Hook — By EFIX The hook is real. EFIX placed Peter Pan’s old enemy on a white door and lined up his arm with the metal latch on the frame, so Captain Hook grins with a working door hook for a hand. The French artist builds his pieces around what is already there: pipes, signs, locks and drain covers. More: **EFIX’s Clever Art (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **EFIX on Instagram** * * * ### 🧜‍♀️ Mermaid — By Lydia and Vanessa Hitzfeld in Wilhelmshaven, Germany 🇩🇪 A mermaid rests her arms on the edge of a rock pool that is not there. The pool is paint on the paving of Valoisplatz, and the two people standing on her tail show the scale. Lydia and Vanessa Hitzfeld made it for the 14th International StreetArt Festival Wilhelmshaven in summer 2026. It was the festival’s largest motif, and the artists told the local paper they wanted to document the closeness to the North Sea. Photo by Rabbithole Photography. More: **Best of Wilhelmshaven Street Art Festival (11 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Vanessa Hitzfeld on Instagram** * * *

## **Street Art** Worth Seeing Again A raccoon opening a metal box, a glowing wall portrait, a stone circle beside the tide, and colorful bricks repairing a broken wall. We went back through earlier Street Art Utopia collections for 16 photos worth another look. * * * ### 🦝 Ellery Checks the Compost — By David Zinn Ellery lifts the lid of a real metal box, hoping to find something worth eating. The raccoon is chalk, drawn by Ann Arbor artist David Zinn; the little box and its heavy lid do much of the work. More: **Happy Art by David Zinn (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🔥 Glowing Portrait — By Bacon in Glasgow, Scotland 🇬🇧 A white flower and pale, sculpted features glow orange from within. Bacon painted the portrait for Yardworks Festival 2025; the wall’s seams and the streetlight in front keep the illusion firmly on the street. 📷 Photo: Craig. 🔗 Follow **Bacon on Instagram** * * * ### 🏘️ Au Hérisson — By Wen2 in Coudekerque-Branche, France 🇫🇷 A lit corner café, a red car and two figures sit on a fragment of street floating away from the wall. The city credits Wen2’s mural to an illustration by Alain Dodier, creator of the comic _Jérôme K. Jérôme Bloche_. 🔗 Follow **Wen2 on Instagram** * * * ### 🌊 “Sinking Circle” — By Jon Foreman Large upright stones gradually shrink toward the water, making the circle appear to sink into the beach. The wet edges catch the light with the sea just behind them. Foreman shared the photo on his Facebook page, saying he was very happy with how this one turned out. More: **Stone by Stone (20 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🏮 “El minero de Pulpí” — By Daes Villalba in Pulpí, Spain 🇪🇸 A miner looks out from beneath his hat, holding a lantern that lights his beard and face. The warm portrait sits low on a red wall, almost at eye level with passing pedestrians. **💡 Place Fact:** Pulpí’s mining past left more than miners’ stories: the Pulpí geode was discovered in 1999 in Mina Rica, a former silver mine in Almería. The gypsum-lined cavity measures about 11 cubic meters. 🔗 Follow **Daes Villalba on Instagram** * * * ### 🐦 Nuthatch — By Collin van der Sluijs in Meerbeek, Belgium 🇧🇪 A nuthatch fills the gable above a bench, surrounded by blue leaves and purple flowers. The Meerbeek mural was realized with Treepack, using a design by Collin van der Sluijs. More: **Murals by Collin van der Sluijs (7 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Collin van der Sluijs on Instagram** * * * ### 🌸 Rosie and Her Flower — By David Zinn Rosie leans out of a brick-sized opening with a small flower at her nose. The surrounding mortar becomes a window frame for a character small enough to miss on the way past. More: **Cute Art by David Zinn (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🌅 Lameroo Western Silo — By SMUG in Lameroo, Australia 🇦🇺 A woman holds a baby against a sunset that stretches around the silos. Completed in April 2025, the western mural honors women in the local farming community. Even the industrial structure between the cylinders becomes part of the scene. More: **24 Times SMUG Made Walls Look More Real Than Life** 🔗 Follow **SMUG on Instagram** * * * ### 🕶️ Daffy in Neon Glasses — By Bill Knospi in Germany 🇩🇪 Daffy Duck wears a broad visor of pink, orange and yellow. Most of the character is reduced to black outlines on gray plaster, leaving the glasses to supply the color. More: **Those Glasses Pop! (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Bill Knospi on Instagram** * * * ### 🍄 “Shroom Sheet” — By Jon Foreman at Freshwater West, Wales 🇬🇧 Flat stones balance on small sticks, forming a low grid above the sand. The stones shift from pale to dark across the arrangement. Foreman made the piece at Freshwater West, a beach on the Pembrokeshire coast, giving the familiar beach pebble a surprisingly delicate support. More: **Stone by Stone (20 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🐕 “El Perro” — By Omar Alonso in Barranquilla, Colombia 🇨🇴 A large dog lies across a painted recess, its front paws hanging over the edge. The artist working at the left gives away the scale, while the painted sky opens a view through the wall. 🔗 Follow **Omar Alonso on Instagram** * * * ### 🧱 “Dispatchwork” — A Project by Jan Vormann Colorful toy bricks fill gaps in a worn white wall. Vormann’s Dispatchwork project makes the patch impossible to overlook: the repair becomes the detail you stop to inspect. **💡 History Fact:** Vormann told La Libre Belgique that he began the project in 2007 in Bocchignano, a small village in Italy, before taking it to cities such as Tel Aviv, Beirut, Hong Kong and São Paulo. More: **Repairing the World with LEGO (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Dispatchwork on Instagram** * * * ### 🎨 A Bird in Motion — By L7M The bird’s face is sharply defined, while its body breaks into loose black strokes and flashes of pink and orange. The painter at the left shows how large this apparently small subject has become. More: **Street Art by L7M — A Collection** 🔗 Follow **L7M on Instagram** * * * ### 🌀 “Expletio Duo” — By Jon Foreman at Freshwater West, Wales 🇬🇧 Two stone spirals curl into each other, with alternating colors making every line easy to follow. Upright pebbles create small shadows that give the flat beach a second surface. Foreman described the piece as one of a planned set of three. More: **Stone by Stone (20 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🎈 A Pup Takes Flight — By David Zinn An orange balloon lifts a small dog above the sidewalk. The open box of chalk sits beside it, making the trick clear without spoiling the little flight. More: **Cute Art by David Zinn (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🕒 “Open 24 Hours” — By Michael Pederson in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 A sign points through a hole in a chain-link fence. It is a very small change to a damaged boundary, and the opening hours are hard to argue with. **💡 Artist Fact:** Pederson started out as a painter and, as he told SPLIT LIP Magazine, began making small street interventions as a side project around 2013 after becoming disillusioned with painting. More: **Clever Art by Michael Pederson (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Michael Pederson on Instagram**

## **Metal** that looks alive In these twelve photos, bronze, steel, chains, cages and salvaged parts take a pose, carry a song or turn into an animal. More: **Junk Metal Sculptures** * * * ### 🕊️ “Nkyinkyim Installation” — By Kwame Akoto-Bamfo in Montgomery, Alabama, USA 🇺🇸 A woman holds a child while chains link the bronze figures around her. Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s sculpture about the history of enslavement stands at the entrance to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. **💡 History Fact:** The Equal Justice Initiative says the sculpture was created at the artist’s studio in Ghana before being installed in Montgomery. Its name comes from an Adinkra symbol and proverb meaning “twisting” or “turning,” according to the artist’s Ancestor Project. More: **See more photographs from the installation** 🔗 Follow **Kwame Akoto-Bamfo on Instagram** * * * ### 🐂 “Lemmy” — By ArtFe / Kev Paxton in Scotland, UK 🇬🇧 Heavy agricultural chain becomes the shaggy coat of a Highland cow. You can see every rusty link, but the head, horns and stance still make Lemmy look ready to walk off. Photo by Robert Michael Wilson. More: **See Lemmy on ArtFe** 🔗 Follow **ArtFe on Instagram** * * * ### 🎶 “Forgotten Songs” — By Michael Thomas Hill in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 Dozens of empty metal cages hang above Angel Place while speakers return lost birdsong to the lane. The artist’s project page counts 180 cages, permanently installed in 2011. **💡 Sound Fact:** The City of Sydney says the soundscape uses calls from 50 bird species and changes from daytime birds to nocturnal ones. More: **Hear the story behind Sydney’s empty birdcages** * * * ### 🎺 Jazz Lamps Street furniture turns into a small jazz band: one lamp raises a trumpet, another leans into a saxophone, and the bench becomes a piano. More: **Urban Art Installations That Celebrate Books and Music** * * * ### 🎤 “Sky’s the Limit in the County of Kings” — By Sherwin Banfield in Brooklyn, New York, USA 🇺🇸 Sherwin Banfield’s tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. combines bronze, resin, stainless steel, Winterstone, wood, audio, lighting, and solar power. The mirrored face reflects the sky, and built-in speakers play music. According to the artist’s project page, the nine-foot sculpture stood at Clumber Corner in Dumbo from November 2022 before moving to Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn in 2023. More: **See the full Biggie tribute** 🔗 Follow **Sherwin Banfield on Instagram** * * * ### 💃 “Venetian Belle” — By Philip Jackson in the UK 🇬🇧 A narrow, faceless figure stands among the plants under a sharply folded headdress. A row of small gold buttons runs down the front of her gown. **💡 Artist Fact:** Jackson trained at the Farnham School of Art, and his official biography says his gallery works are inspired by “the melancholic beauty of historic Venice.” More: **Haunting Sculptures by Philip Jackson** 🔗 Follow **Philip Jackson on Instagram** * * * ### 🌲 “Tiepolo’s Model” — By Philip Jackson in the UK 🇬🇧 A faceless figure reclines among trees under an angular headdress. The bronze gown is heavily textured. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Outside the gallery, Jackson made the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, the national monument to the Queen Mother on The Mall, and the Bobby Moore figure for Wembley Stadium. He was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 2009, according to his Royal Society of Sculptors profile. More: **See more of Philip Jackson’s figures** * * * ### ⛓️ “Nkyinkyim Installation,” Second Scene — By Kwame Akoto-Bamfo in Montgomery, Alabama, USA 🇺🇸 This second scene from the same installation centers on another chained figure gripping a round weight. The strain shows in the shoulders, face and hands. More: **See the complete SAU photo set** * * * ### 😔 “Sad Together” — With “The Thinker” by Jesse Beesley in Covina, California, USA 🇺🇸 A child copies the bronze boy’s pose, head in hand. The Smithsonian identifies the sculpture as Jesse Beesley’s circa-1969 The Thinker, cast by Excalibur Bronze Sculpture Foundry. More: **People Made Statues Look Funny** * * * ### 🧜‍♀️ Wire Mermaid — By Martin Debenham Martin Debenham’s stainless-steel wires follow the curve of a mermaid’s back and flow into a long tail. The figure sits on a boulder beside the water, with gaps between the wires letting the garden show through. More: **Artworks That Seem to Grow From Nature** * * * ### 💡 “LOVE” — By Alexander Milov at Burning Man 2015, USA 🇺🇸 Two wire-frame adults sit back-to-back. Inside them, illuminated children reach toward each other through the metal. Alexander Milov’s _LOVE_ appeared at Burning Man in 2015; the adults’ turned backs and the children’s outstretched hands tell different stories. More: **See more of Alexander Milov’s LOVE** * * * ### 💚 “Lampioni Innamorati” — By Rodolfo Marasciuolo in Turin, Italy 🇮🇹 Two green lamp figures sit on a bench in Parco del Valentino, one leaning toward the other. Their bent bases look like seated legs, while a small metal cat stretches beside them. Rodolfo Marasciuolo, a gardener for the city, made the pair from reclaimed materials. **💡 Material Fact:** In an interview about the work, Marasciuolo explained that the lamp posts began as irrigation pipes, with a pot and a pan at their bases. More: **Sculptures With Unique Creativity**

## Nothing here needed a **gallery.** Most of these began as something people walk past every day: a trash bin, a crumbling wall, a weed by the curb. These 20 photos come from some of our most-read posts of 2025. * * * ### 🐈 Cat Bins Two orange trash containers got cat faces, whiskers and a pair of fangs each. The real cat walking underneath doesn’t look worried about the competition. More: **Silly Street Art (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🦝 “Alice Has a Special Window for Proclamations or Soliloquies, Depending on Whether Anyone Is Listening” — By David Zinn A concrete post base gets an arched chalk window, and a small raccoon leans out of it. No audience yet. More: **Happy Art by David Zinn! (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🚌 “The World’s Longest Wait for a Bus” — By Michael Pederson An empty bench with an official-looking plaque: 15 Sept. 2014, 8 am, to 19 Oct. 2024, 3:36 pm. The record holder has finally gone home. More: **Clever Art by Michael Pederson (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Michael Pederson on Instagram** * * * ### 🧱 LEGO Wall Repair — Dispatchwork The broken end of a stone wall, rebuilt in LEGO, complete with a row of tiny arched windows. It is part of Dispatchwork, Jan Vormann’s project of filling gaps in old walls with LEGO bricks. More: **What If LEGO Could Repair the World? (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Dispatchwork on Instagram** * * * ### 🗑️ Cartoon Bins Someone airbrushed faces onto a pair of wheelie bins: the brown one looks alarmed, the blue one sticks its tongue out. Collection day will never be quiet again. More: **Garbage With Style (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🏔️ “Mountains and Mirrors” — By Falko One in Cape Town, South Africa 🇿🇦 The empty window of a ruined building becomes this painted man’s glasses, and the glasses show the real landscape behind the wall. **💡 History Fact:** Falko One was born in Cape Town and got his start in 1988 by painting a high school wall in the township of Mitchells Plain, while apartheid was still in force. More: **Urban Magic (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Falko One on Instagram** * * * ### 🍄 Super Mario in the Cobblestones — By Pappas Pärlor in Sweden 🇸🇪 A pixel Mario made of plastic beads pops up from behind one pale cobblestone, as if the street had a secret level. More: **90 Pixel Art Masterpieces: Pappas Pärlor’s Perler Bead Street Takeover** 🔗 Follow **Pappas Pärlor on Instagram** * * * ### 🌱 “Urban Weed Awards: Most Delicate” — By Michael Pederson in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 A thin weed pushes up through a crack in the pavement, next to a bronze-style plaque. Somebody had to notice. The plaque is one of three in Pederson’s 2019 Urban Weed Awards, alongside “Unique Site” and “Best in Show”. More: **Clever Art by Michael Pederson (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Michael Pederson on Instagram** * * * ### 🐉 Dragon in the Brick — By David Zinn One brick is missing near the sidewalk, and a small green dragon has moved in. **💡 Artist Fact:** Zinn has been making art in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, since 1987, and his street drawings are always improvised on location, according to his artist biography. His longest-running character is Sluggo. More: **Cute Art By David Zinn (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🎬 Hollywood on a Dirt Pile White letters on a mound of dirt in front of an apartment block. All it needs now is a few palm trees. More: **Funny Street Art (10 Photos)** * * * ### 🔧 Patched Behind the Drainpipe — Dispatchwork Bright bricks fill the hole where a wall crumbled behind an old drainpipe. The pipe stayed exactly where it was. More: **What If LEGO Could Repair the World? (12 Photos)** * * * ### 🐦 Bird in the Plaster A patch of fallen plaster already had the shape. Two drawn legs finished the bird. More: **Urban Art Hacks (11 Photos)** * * * ### 🎈 “We Are Free” — By Oakoak in France 🇫🇷 A plant clinging to a white wall is the balloon. Oakoak added the basket underneath, with two small passengers looking over the edge. The piece dates from 2012 and is listed on the artist’s own street art page. More: **Lovely by Oakoak (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Oakoak on Instagram** * * * ### 🚧 A Very Small Private Property — By Michael Pederson in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 A tiny fenced lot, barbed wire and a KEEP OUT sign included, protecting one patch of green between the paving stones. More: **Clever Art by Michael Pederson (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Michael Pederson on Instagram** * * * ### 🐭 Cat, Mouse and an Axe A stencil cat creeps around a building corner toward a mouse. The mouse is ready, axe behind its back. More: **Sculptures With Unique Creativity (24 Photos)** * * * ### 🕳️ “Lily Can’t Decide If She’s an Understood Overachiever or an Overstood Underachiever; Either Way, She’s Making a Lot of Progress” — By David Zinn A chalk mole climbs out of the cracked corner of a paving slab, right by a doorstep. More: **Cute Art By David Zinn (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### 🥫 A Tiny Shrine to a Soda Can — By Slinkachu A figure in white robes, small enough to miss, stands with both hands raised before a soda can lying on its side. Someone has planted a little cross on top. **💡 Project Fact:** Slinkachu’s Little People project started in 2006. The figures are model train set characters that he remodels and repaints before leaving them on the street and photographing them. More: **Art on a Tiny Scale (7 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Slinkachu on Instagram** * * * ### 📐 Concrete Corner, Rebuilt — Dispatchwork The chipped corner of a low concrete wall, built back in striped LEGO. The parked car doesn’t seem to mind. More: **What If LEGO Could Repair the World? (12 Photos)** * * * ### 📘 “The Last Person on Earth: Survival Guide” — By Michael Pederson in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 A brochure holder on a gray wall, for anyone who has searched everywhere for people and found no one. The guide covers solitude, boredom and nostalgia. More: **Clever Art by Michael Pederson (17 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Michael Pederson on Instagram** * * * ### ❤️ Take What You Need It looks like any tear-off flyer, but every strip says LOVE. More: **Funny Signs (20 Photos)**

## In Stavelot, Belgium, Adele Renault painted one pigeon across an entire house. The other 11 birds in this collection perch on walls, gables and bare ground from Minnesota to Australia. No hide, no early alarm, no field guide required. More: **Clever Birds! (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🕊️ “Pigeons Always Fly Home” — By Adele Renault in Stavelot, Belgium 🇧🇪 Adele Renault turned an entire house into one pigeon. The beak and eye take the gable, iridescent feathers run down to the ground, and a small window sits right in the bird’s face. The local cultural center places it at the old Stavelot railway station on Avenue André Grégoire. **💡 Pigeon Fact:** Pigeon fanciers once commissioned portraits of their best birds, and the cultural center writes that Renault brings that old tradition back. More: **Pigeons Always Fly Home in Stavelot, Belgium** 🔗 Follow **Adele Renault on Instagram** * * * ### 🐤 “Helmeted Honeyeater” — By Jimmy Dvate in Richmond, Australia 🇦🇺 A helmeted honeyeater perches among yellow flowers on a narrow red-brick wall. Jimmy Dvate’s portfolio lists the mural in Richmond, Victoria. **💡 Conservation Fact:** It is Victoria’s bird emblem, but Zoos Victoria describes the helmeted honeyeater as critically endangered. More: **Platypus – Mural by Jimmy Dvate in Rochester, Australia** 🔗 Follow **Jimmy Dvate on Instagram** * * * ### 🪺 Mural de les Cigonyes — By Oriol Arumí in Lleida, Spain 🇪🇸 Two white storks stand over their chick in a nest painted high on a residential building. Lleida.com reported that the residents’ and traders’ association of Noguerola, Estació and Segre commissioned it for Avinguda del Segre 16. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The spot was picked on purpose: the mural is meant to welcome everyone entering the city, and its theme comes from the nature around the river Segre. More: **Stork Nest Mural by Oriol Arumí in Lleida** 🔗 Follow **Oriol Arumí on Instagram** * * * ### 🦅 Bald Eagle — By Blesea in Cherbourg, France 🇫🇷 Blesea wrapped a bald eagle’s head around a concrete block, so the yellow beak turns the corner. The man standing on top shows how big it is. Blesea is a Cherbourg painter, and Tendance Ouest has covered his earlier work on old wartime blockhauses around the town. More: **14 Murals by Blesea** 🔗 Follow **Blesea on Instagram** * * * ### 🌸 Petal Bird — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner in the UK 🇬🇧 A small bird made of leaves, seeds and petals sits in a ring of purple petals on bare ground. Bullen-Ryner works only with locally found natural materials and no permanent fixings, so the weather usually gets the last word. More: **Nature Is Everything! 18 Artworks by Hannah Bullen-Ryner** 🔗 Follow **Hannah Bullen-Ryner on Instagram** * * * ### 🦅 Red-Tailed Hawk — By Taylor Berman in Hastings, Minnesota, USA 🇺🇸 A red-tailed hawk spreads its wings across a turquoise building on Sibley Street. Berman’s mural notes add prairie clover, lupine and black-eyed Susans around it. **💡 Sound Fact:** The “eagle” scream you hear in movies is often this hawk. The Missouri Department of Conservation explains that Hollywood editors prefer the red-tail’s stronger call. More: **Birds! (14 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Taylor Berman on Instagram** * * * ### 🦉 Owl and Poppy — By CAL in Lyon, France 🇫🇷 CAL drew a tiny owl inside a patch of missing plaster, and a real red poppy grows right next to it. The Lyon artist is best known locally for small drawings that turn street furniture into something else. This is the smallest bird in the post, and the easiest to walk past. More: **Street Art by CAL in Lyon, France (4 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **CAL on Instagram** * * * ### 🦜 Parrot — By Curtis Hylton in Bristol, England 🇬🇧 A giant yellow and orange parrot spreads over the side of Jans Barbers on East Street. Hylton painted it for Upfest 2022. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Hylton was already an Upfest regular: Inspiring City notes that he painted murals for the festival in 2020 and 2021 too. More: **In Love with Nature – 10 Artworks by Curtis Hylton** 🔗 Follow **Curtis Hylton on Instagram** * * * ### 🐦 Robin and Tulips — By MIKA in Bergerac, France 🇫🇷 A European robin opens its beak beside pink tulips and a small birdhouse, on a wall painted the same orange as its chest. A Street Art Pedia post credits MIKA and places it in Bergerac. More: **Love Is a Rebellious Bird — Another MIKA Mural in Bergerac** 🔗 Follow **MIKA on Instagram** * * * ### 🦉 “Owl” — By Tech Moon in Bristol, England 🇬🇧 A magenta owl stares out between gray swirls, and the woman posing in front barely reaches its chin. Art UK lists it simply as “Owl”, painted around 2022 for Upfest on Clift House Road. Photo by Paul Zappa. More: **Pink Wisdom by Tech Moon at UPFEST in Bristol, UK** 🔗 Follow **Tech Moon on Instagram** * * * ### 🐦 Seagull — By Banksy in Lowestoft, England 🇬🇧 Banksy’s seagull dives down the side of a house toward a real skip, and the insulation scraps inside pass for chips. The BBC reported that Banksy claimed it in August 2021 as part of his “A Great British Spraycation” video. More: **Banksy: A Great British Spraycation** 🔗 Follow **Banksy on Instagram** * * * ### 🐓 “The Lucky Rooster” — By Jan Is De Man in Frassinello Monferrato, Italy 🇮🇹 Jan Is De Man gave a rooster the whole yellow gable of a house in Frassinello Monferrato. Wake-up calls not included. More: **8 Happy 3D Artworks by Jan Is De Man That Will Make You Smile** 🔗 Follow **Jan Is De Man on Instagram**

## **Hands on the art.** Sometimes the art grabs back. Some art is impossible to leave alone: a lucky belly, a marble girl who seems to be listening, a seat on the bench next to a statue. In the second half of these eight photos, the art returns the favor. * * * ### 👮 One Rub for Luck — By András Illyés in Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 The rest of the policeman is dark bronze, from his helmet to the sword at his side. His belly is the one bright spot, polished by visitors’ hands. This visitor adds another rub, smiles past the camera and looks very pleased with the deal. **💡 Luck Fact:** The statue was unveiled in 2008 at Zrínyi utca 4 in Budapest’s District V. Rubbing the belly is said to bring luck and a return trip to Budapest. More: **When You Jump Into the Frame to Play With the Statues (20 Photos)** * * * ### 🤫 Can You Keep a Secret? — By Randolph Rogers The marble girl has a hand cupped to her ear, so the visitor leans in with a hand at her mouth and whispers. The statue tilts her head and looks ready to hear every word. It is hard to stand next to someone listening that closely and say nothing. **💡 Story Fact:** Nydia is the blind flower seller from an 1834 novel set in Pompeii. Rogers shows the moment during the eruption when she calls out and listens for an answer, as the Harvard Art Museums explain. The sculpture was copied 167 times, in two sizes. * * * ### 🍿 Want Some? He has a soda in one hand and holds the popcorn box out to his bronze neighbor on the bench. The statue keeps its hands resting on its knee and its eyes on the street. A wreath with a red bow hangs on the fence behind them. Some people are hard to share with. * * * ### 👶 Same Move, Real Baby The bronze mother sits on her bench and throws her child high above her head. The real mother next to her copies the move with her own baby, arms straight up and back arched the same way. Both children are in the air; only one of them is made of bronze. * * * ### 👕 Come Here a Second Now the art reaches back. The painted statue grabs a fistful of navy T-shirt and pulls it forward, its face pressed right against his ear. He looks down and holds very still. This time the statue is the one with something to whisper. * * * ### 🖐️ Not Even Superman A grinning bronze rider on a unicycle sticks one arm straight out at head height. The man walking past in a Superman T-shirt gets the open palm square in the face, flip-flops still mid-step. The statue looks delighted. Not even Superman saw that one coming. * * * ### ⚾ Wrong Place to Stand The bronze batter is in the middle of a full swing, front foot planted and the bat level. The boy in the white T-shirt stepped right into its path. Eyes squeezed shut and mouth wide open, he takes the hit with perfect timing. The banners behind them carry the Twins’ TC logo. * * * ### 🕶️ Not So Fast — By CHEONE The painted man in sunglasses only needs two fingers. He pinches the back of a real passerby’s white T-shirt and stretches it across the turquoise pillar, while the passerby leans forward and reaches ahead as if trying to get away. The wall is winning. **💡 Artist Fact:** CHEONE is Cosimo Caiffa, born in Gallipoli in southern Italy in 1979. He trained in classical painting at home, took up spray paint after moving to Germany, and has been based in Milan for about two decades. More: **Amazing 3D Murals by CHEONE** 🔗 Follow **CHEONE on Instagram**

## Some ideas are impossible to take seriously. In East Dulwich, the Queen rides a hoverboard with three corgis on leads. In Čačak, a painted old man grabs a real streetlamp and grins. The other six are small jokes on walls, pipes, parking lots and one Oregon hillside. More: **Made You Smile (9 Photos)** * * * ### 👑 Queen Elizabeth II on a Hoverboard — By CATMAN in East Dulwich, London, England 🇬🇧 The Queen, in headscarf and quilted jacket, rolls along on a hoverboard while three corgis pull ahead on their leads. CATMAN first painted her on a Lordship Lane wall for her 90th birthday, after leaving the wall’s owners a letter asking for permission, Southwark News reported. In 2022 she returned on a new wall by a coffee shop on Frogley Road, just off Lordship Lane, repainted with help from Dulwich Street Art in time for the Platinum Jubilee, as the organizer posted on the East Dulwich Forum. Photo by Paul Davies. **💡 Royal Fact:** The corgis are not random extras. The Royal Collection Trust says Princess Elizabeth was given a corgi named Susan for her 18th birthday in 1944, and every corgi she bred after that descended from Susan. More: **Queen Elizabeth II by CATMAN in London** 🔗 Follow **CATMAN on Instagram** * * * ### 🐭 Just Around the Corner — Kalamata, Greece 🇬🇷 On one side of a wall corner, a black cat strolls along. On the other side, a mouse waits with something big and heavy raised over its head. Neither can see the other yet. Photo by George Venios. More: **Just Around the Corner in Kalamata, Greece** * * * ### ✨ “The Light Is All Around” — By Endo in Čačak, Serbia 🇷🇸 An old man in thick glasses grins from the side of a building and holds a real streetlamp like his own torch. Endo painted him around the lamp in 2015, so after dark the bulb lights up his face. Street Art Cities lists the mural as The light is all around. **💡 Mural Fact:** Čačak has earned the nickname City of Murals. According to the DUK festival, the city now has more than 120 murals by 93 international muralists. More: **The Light Is All Around by Endo** * * * ### 💪 Hulk Breaks Through — By Pappas Pärlor A pixel Hulk made of fuse beads punches his way up through a parking lot, with chunks of broken asphalt all around him. **💡 Artist Fact:** Pappas Pärlor is Johan Karlgren from Motala, Sweden. The regional museum in his home county, Östergötlands museum, gave his bead art a whole exhibition: The Legend of Pappas Pärlor. More: **90 Pixel Art Masterpieces by Pappas Pärlor** 🔗 Follow **Pappas Pärlor on Instagram** * * * ### 🐻 “Lord Gumi” — By Price Goodman in Phoenix, Arizona, USA 🇺🇸 A see-through red gummy bear stands in full samurai armor, sword in hand, on a wall in downtown Phoenix. Goodman painted the candy so light seems to shine through it, while the armor stays solid metal. Photo by With the Flicks. More: **Street Art That Looks Good Enough to Eat** 🔗 Follow **Price Goodman on Instagram** * * * ### 🌲 The Smiley Face Forest — Grand Ronde, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸 Every fall, a giant yellow smiley face appears in a dark green Oregon forest. Forester Dennis Creel and Hampton Lumber co-owner David Hampton planted it in 2011 while replanting the hillside, Fox Weather explains. It is about 300 feet across, so most people only see it from the air. **💡 Forest Fact:** The face is larch, a conifer that turns yellow before it drops its needles. The eyes and mouth are evergreen Douglas fir, so the smile only shows in fall. Full Fact checked the viral photos and confirmed they are real. More: **Forest With a Smile** * * * ### 🍺 Beer on Tap — By Pappas Pärlor A white drainpipe bends over like a tap and pours a long stream of yellow beads into a pixel beer mug, foam and all. Only the beer is beads. The pipe did the rest. More: **90 Pixel Art Masterpieces by Pappas Pärlor** 🔗 Follow **Pappas Pärlor on Instagram** * * * ### ❤️ “Heart Attack (Kill Them With Kindness)” — By TABBY in Vienna, Austria 🇦🇹 Two soldiers work a mortar on a white brick wall, but the ammunition is red hearts. TABBY lists the 2017 piece on the artist’s website as Heart Attack – Kill them with kindness. More: **Heart Attack by TABBY in Vienna** 🔗 Follow **TABBY on Instagram**

## Art That Could Only Happen in **America** Days after the 2021 inauguration, Bernie Sanders and his mittens were sitting on a wall in Los Angeles. In Houston a cowboy dips his partner in front of the Lone Star, and in Little Rock a robot leans out of a real window to reach for a frog. Eighteen works on American walls, from icons the whole country knows by heart to kids swimming up a building in Lynn. More: **Street Art Americans Will Recognize in One Second (14 Photos)** * * * ### 🧤 Bernie’s Mittens — By Jonas Never in Los Angeles, California, USA 🇺🇸 Bernie Sanders in a parka, face mask and oversized mittens, legs crossed on a folding chair, painted around a utility door in Mar Vista. Jonas Never painted it after the inauguration photo turned into a meme and added one line in script: “Cause U Love The Mittens.” **💡 Mitten Fact:** The mittens came from Vermont. Second-grade teacher Jen Ellis made them from repurposed wool back in 2016, when she was making presents for her daughter’s teachers. More: **Bernie Sanders Meme in Los Angeles (3 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jonas Never on Instagram** * * * ### 🤠 “The Texas Kiss” — By Eduardo Kobra in Houston, Texas, USA 🇺🇸 The 1945 V-J Day kiss from Times Square, moved to Texas: cowboy hat, bandana, fringe and boots, with the Lone Star behind the couple. The downtown Houston wall covers about 1,000 square meters, and Kobra said he meant the kiss as a wish for unity and peace, not a political statement. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The wall is part of Big Art. Bigger Change., a Houston series of 58 large-scale murals curated by Street Art for Mankind. More: **19 Murals by Eduardo Kobra** 🔗 Follow **Eduardo Kobra on Instagram** 📷 Photo by Charles Holt. * * * ### 💪 Popeye Pipes — By Tom Bob in New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸 Before: a green wall with gas meters and a few pipes. After: Popeye flexes beside a can of spinach, the pipes sprout red leaves and the meters have eyes. Tom Bob grew up in New Bedford before moving to New York, and his own post tags this wall there. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Popeye was a late arrival. He first appeared in 1929 in E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theater, a strip that had run since 1919 around Olive Oyl. More: **Street Art by Tom Bob – Collection 2 (31 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Tom Bob on Instagram** * * * ### 🤖 Robot With a Frog — By Jason Jones in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA 🇺🇸 A gray robot with a flashlight for a head leans out of a real window, a flower sprouting from the top, and holds out one long finger to a small green frog. Mushrooms, flowers and a butterfly fill the wall below. Jones lives in Fayetteville, and back in 2019 he had already painted more than 100 murals in Northwest Arkansas. **💡 Bot Fact:** Robots turn up all through his work. His portfolio includes a Strawberry Bot, a Tomato Bot, a Carrot Bot and a Firefly Bot. More: **Made It Funny Again (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jason Jones on Instagram** * * * ### 🐊 Alligator Wall — By ROA in Atlanta, Georgia, USA 🇺🇸 A gator the length of the building, belly-up with its claws in the air, painted in ROA’s usual black and white. Southern Spaces places it on the east side of 209 Mitchell Street, facing Forsyth Street, right under the old Star Hotel sign. More: **ROA – A Street Art Collection** * * * ### 🎩 “Lincoln” — By Eduardo Kobra in Lexington, Kentucky, USA 🇺🇸 The seated Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial, repainted in kaleidoscope colors on the back of the Kentucky Theatre. The mural is 60 feet high and went up in 2013. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The statue Kobra borrowed is not one block of stone. It was carved from 28 separate pieces of Georgia marble, fitted together almost seamlessly. More: **Abraham Lincoln by Eduardo Kobra in Kentucky** 🔗 Follow **Eduardo Kobra on Instagram** * * * ### 🏊 “Stay Cool Logan” — By Bryan Beyung in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸 Kids float, wave and swim their way up a turquoise building, with the real windows sitting in the water. In his post about the mural, Beyung says it is about the lightness of childhood: growing up, playing and making memories. It was made through Beyond Walls’ Classroom to the Streets program, where students, teachers and artists design murals together. **💡 School Fact:** The wall keeps teaching after it is finished. Each mural sparks lesson plans built around subjects such as visual arts, social studies, English and science. More: **Still a Kid (14 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Bryan Beyung on Instagram** * * * ### 🛑 “Stop Making Stupid People Famous” — By Plastic Jesus in Los Angeles, California, USA 🇺🇸 Five red words on a gray utility pillar, in the city that makes people famous for a living. Plastic Jesus is a Los Angeles street artist whose wall pieces often move on to prints and canvases, and this line went the same way. More: **Plastic Jesus in Los Angeles (6 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Plastic Jesus on Instagram** * * * ### 🚀 “Houston, We Have a Problem…” — By MrDheo in Houston, Texas, USA 🇺🇸 Internet celebrity Hasbulla in a spacesuit, an astronaut planting a flag on the moon behind him, and the line everyone ties to this city written in script on the brick. MrDheo painted it at 1502 Sawyer Street for the Big Walls Big Dreams mural festival. **💡 Space Fact:** Nobody on Apollo 13 said “we have a problem.” Jack Swigert radioed “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and Jim Lovell repeated it, NASA’s account of the 1970 flight shows. More: **“Houston, We Have a Problem” by MrDheo** 🔗 Follow **MrDheo on Instagram** * * * ### 🌸 “In the Golden Afternoon” — By Ouizi in Ticonderoga, New York, USA 🇺🇸 Dahlias, sunflowers and small blue flowers cover the whole brick wall, so the doors and windows become gaps in a giant garden. Ouizi took the title from Lewis Carroll’s poem at the start of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and painted it for Walls Between Waters, which brings murals to downtown Ticonderoga. **💡 Alice Fact:** The poem looks back on a boat trip on July 4, 1862, when Carroll first came up with the story for three of the Liddell sisters: Lorina, Alice and Edith. More: **Flowers For You (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Ouizi on Instagram** * * * ### 🚫 “Follow Your Dreams – Cancelled” — By Banksy in Boston, Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸 A worn-out painter, the slogan from every graduation speech, and a red stamp across it. Banksy Explained dates it to May 2010, on Essex Street in Chinatown, in the slow years after the 2008 financial crisis. More: **Banksy’s Iconic Street Art: 100 Stunning Photos** 🔗 Visit **Banksy’s official website** * * * ### 🍬 “Emoji Dispenser” — By Leon Keer in Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA 🇺🇸 A parking deck turned into a gum machine the size of a building, filled with emoji faces instead of gum, with painted cardboard boxes stacked around the corner. The City of Fayetteville calls it a comment on how emotions have become things we buy; Keer painted it on the Town Center deck in summer 2025. **💡 Gum Fact:** Penny gum machines started in New York. In 1888 Thomas Adams put Tutti-Frutti gum machines along the city’s elevated train lines: a penny in, a turn, a piece of gum out. More: **This Happens When You Have a Strong Imagination (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Leon Keer on Instagram** * * * ### 🦇 Fear and Loathing Homage — By HUETEK in New York, USA 🇺🇸 A Las Vegas-style welcome sign with the artist’s name on it, a cactus, bats, and a man in tinted aviators with a cigarette holder, the look Raoul Duke made famous. HUETEK painted this homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on a long wall under a fence of razor wire. **💡 Book Fact:** Hunter S. Thompson’s trip first ran in Rolling Stone on November 11, 1971, under a subtitle that could fit this whole post: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. More: **“We Can’t Stop Here, This Is Bat Country” by HUETEK** 🔗 Follow **HUETEK on Instagram** * * * ### 🦋 A Neon Figure Reaches for a Butterfly — By ITSZBITSZ in New York, USA 🇺🇸 A neon green woman holds out one finger to a small butterfly while a see-through wing opens behind her. Scales, vines and a dragon-like headdress wind through the portrait against a dark blue wall. More: **Butterfly Art (15 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **ITSZBITSZ on Instagram** * * * ### 🥤 “Coca-Cola Molotov” — By Icy and Sot in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 A masked figure holds out a red crate of Coke bottles, and every bottle is on fire. The Iranian-born brothers made it in an abandoned house in New York in January 2014. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The drink in the crate was born in Atlanta. Coca-Cola dates its birth to May 8, 1886, and it first went on sale at Jacobs’ Pharmacy, at five cents a glass. More: **Coca-Cola Molotovs by Icy and Sot in New York** 🔗 Visit **Icy and Sot’s website** * * * ### 🚂 “Passage Through Ticonderoga” — By Steven Teller in Ticonderoga, New York, USA 🇺🇸 A red steam locomotive, a steamboat and a captain at the wheel, all on one wall. Teller painted it for Walls Between Waters in 2026, working from archive photos of the town’s train and steamboat days. **💡 Rail Fact:** Ticonderoga sits between Lake George and Lake Champlain. The Delaware & Hudson’s Baldwin and Ticonderoga branch lines served the steamboats and paper mills here from the late 1800s; freight ended around 1980, but the steamboats still run for tourists. More: **8 American Murals Worth the Detour** 🔗 Follow **Steven Teller on Instagram** * * * ### 🍩 Homer Simpson Donut — By Tom Bob in New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸 Before: a concrete ring around a hole in the grass. After: a pink frosted donut with sprinkles, sized for Homer Simpson. Local station Fun 107 spotted it in the middle of the Buttonwood Park baseball field. More: **Street Art by Tom Bob – Collection 2 (31 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Tom Bob on Instagram** * * * ### 🌳 “I Remember When All This Was Trees” — Attributed to Banksy in Detroit, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 A boy with a bucket of red paint stands in the rubble of the Packard auto plant, next to one sentence. In 2010, Detroit’s 555 Gallery removed the wall from the ruins to save it. **💡 Wall Fact:** The saved piece was an 8-foot, 1,500-pound slab of cinder block, and it later sold at auction for $137,500. More: **Banksy’s “I Remember When All This Was Trees”** 🔗 Visit **Banksy’s official website**

## Painted streets that are **not really there** A record shop in Rotterdam, a town square in Spain and a river view in France are all flat paint on blank walls. Three of these seven walls come with a before photo, so you can see what the painters started with. More: **Art That Feels Real (12 Photos)** * * * ### 🎩 “Metal Fingers” — By Taroe in Rotterdam, Netherlands 🇳🇱 Two men in pink and white suits walk past a record shop called Astorians, painted across the end wall of an apartment block. Taroe painted it entirely with brushes for ALL CAPS 2026 in Lombardijen, stitching fragments of cities he had photographed into one street that does not exist. 🔗 Follow **Taroe on Instagram** * * * ### 🏘️ A Town Square on a Parking Lot Wall — By Rober Bece in Santa Marta de Tormes, Spain 🇪🇸 The white parking lines run straight into a painted square with houses, balconies, shop signs and a fountain. The wall stands next to the town hall on Plaza de España, and the scene pays tribute to the town’s shops and bars, Salamanca Diario reported. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The town council inaugurated the wall in late January 2025, according to Salamanca24Horas. 🔗 Follow **Rober Bece on Instagram** * * * ### 🏛️ “Fresque des Québécois” — By CitéCréation in Québec City, Canada 🇨🇦 The houses, shops, stairs and gateway are all painted on one flat gable at 29 Rue Notre-Dame. Québec City’s tourism office credits CitéCréation, with Hélène Fleury, Marie-Chantal Lachance and Pierre Laforest, and dates it to 1999. **💡 Spot Fact:** About 15 historic figures and nearly a dozen Québec writers and artists are hidden in the scene, the same guide says, many of them looking out of the painted windows. 🔗 Visit **CitéCréation’s website** * * * ### 🌉 “Au fil de Loire” — By A-Fresco / Patrick Commecy in Brives-Charensac, France 🇫🇷 The top photo shows the plain gable. Below it, the wall opens onto the Loire, an old stone bridge and washerwomen at work. A-Fresco’s project page notes that washerwomen beat their laundry at the river here until the 1970s. **💡 Flood Fact:** The mural includes a flood marker. The river’s record level in town was 6.80 meters on September 21, 1980, A-Fresco says. More: **Patrick Commecy’s Mural in Montpellier (9 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **A-Fresco’s website** * * * ### 🎺 “Opowieść Śródecka z Trębaczem na Dachu i Kotem w Tle” — Concept by Radosław Barek in Poznań, Poland 🇵🇱 A bare tenement wall became an old Śródka street with rooftops, a butcher in his doorway, a trumpeter and a cat creeping along the roof. The City of Poznań says Prof. Radosław Barek drew the design and Fundacja PUENTA painted it; it was unveiled on October 1, 2015. **💡 History Fact:** The rider with the white eagle on his shield is Władysław Odonic, the duke who granted Śródka town rights in 1231, according to the city. More: **A Masterpiece in Poznań’s Historic Śródka District** * * * ### 🏢 3D Balcony — By Kartitect in Sirius, Russia 🇷🇺 The bottom photo shows the wall before; the curved balconies, their shadows and the blue ornament in the top photo are all paint. The Sirius festival announcement introduces Kartitect as Kali Baynazarov from Kazakhstan, who planned an illusion mixing Russian and Kazakh ornament. More: **Walls You Can Feel (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Kartitect on Instagram** * * * ### 🚢 “Phoenix” — By Gert Neuhaus in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 The ship named Phoenix seems to crash out of an ornate old facade, but its bow, the windows and the cornices are all painted on a side wall. Neuhaus painted it in 1989 on the firewall at Wintersteinstraße 20 in Charlottenburg; Wandbilder Berlin calls it his best-known facade motif. It is typical of his work: the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district office describes him painting missing portals, windows, balconies and stucco onto blank walls.

## When the rock **is the artwork** Across lawns, beaches, city streets, a river and a desert rock face, these artists work with the stone as it is. A boulder becomes a sheep or a handbag, a ring of beach stones seems to turn, and one painted eye watches the Cliffs of Moher. * * * ### 🐑 Stone Sheep — By Dorthe Steenbuch Krabbe in Denmark 🇩🇰 Three large boulders gain black heads, ears and, for one of them, legs, until a quiet lawn becomes a small flock. The untouched stone does most of the body language. More: **Sculptures That Blend With Nature** * * * ### 👜 Rock Purses — By Cheng-Tsung Feng Curved handles turn hefty city boulders into handbags without hiding what they are. You would need a crane to carry one. * * * ### 🌿 “Sylvia Is a Fierce Protector of All Woodlands, Starting With This Rock” — By David Zinn David Zinn places Sylvia directly on a rounded woodland rock, letting moss, leaves and neighboring stones complete her tiny territory. **💡 Artist Fact:** Zinn is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and draws with chalk and charcoal; he often carries both on walks around the city so he is ready when a spot gives him an idea. More: **Happy Art by David Zinn** * * * ### 🎲 Throw the Dice — Artist Unknown Several square stone blocks have been painted as dice and left among the darker paving stones. The street looks like someone paused a giant game mid-roll. More: **Throw the Dice** * * * ### 🪨 A Pocket-Sized Stonehenge — Artist Unknown Dark paving blocks are balanced into a miniature stone circle beside a curb and traffic cone. A road repair scene becomes an accidental archaeological site. More: **From Megaliths to Street Art** * * * ### 🦒 Giraffes Across the Rock Face — Unknown Prehistoric Artists near Djanet, Algeria 🇩🇿 Tall giraffes and smaller human figures are engraved across the weathered sandstone, with a line of loose stones at its foot. **💡 History Fact:** The rock art of Tassili n’Ajjer, the plateau around Djanet, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982. Its more than 15,000 drawings and engravings record climate change, animal migrations and human life from about 10,000 BC to the first centuries AD. More: **Ancient Art of Tassili n’Ajjer** * * * ### 👁️ Untitled Boulder Eye — By Eoin at the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland 🇮🇪 A black-and-white eye by the Irish artist Eoin wraps around a large coastal boulder while the cliffs and Atlantic remain fully in view. More: **Street Art by Eoin in Ireland** * * * ### ⚔️ Sword in the River Stone — Artist Unknown in Cheddar, England 🇬🇧 A sword rises from a rock in the Cheddar Yeo, just below the small weir in the village, turning a piece of the riverbed into a scene from a legend. Walkers have logged the spot as the Sword in the Stone at Cheddar Village Waterfall. With the water, the village and the greenery around it, the sword is easy to miss. * * * ### 🌗 “Moons Motion” — By Jon Foreman at Freshwater West, Wales 🇬🇧 Pembrokeshire land artist Jon Foreman laid out the piece on the beach at Freshwater West. Natural stones curve inward from a heavy outer rim to thin lines that nearly meet. Nothing is painted, yet the circle seems to rotate around its empty center. **💡 Process Fact:** Foreman usually spends about four hours on a beach piece, and he has said the tide washes the stones back to the tide line, leaving him an empty canvas the next day. More: **Jon Foreman Uses Nature Like This**

## **Every feeling has a face** Wonder looks up through a wall of flowers. Grief bends under a cage of stones. Dignity stands steady beneath a stormy sky, while another figure pulls away a bright smiling mask. These eight works turn very different moods into something you can see. More: **Emotion (15 Photos)** * * * ### 🌼 “Petals of Time” — By Studio Giftig in Ticonderoga, New York, USA 🇺🇸 Belva Blood was 103 when Studio Giftig painted her portrait. Her lifted gaze and the drifting white flowers give the wall a quiet sense of wonder, while the windows and balconies keep her rooted in the life of the building. More: **11 Impressive Murals by Studio Giftig** 🔗 Follow **Studio Giftig on Instagram** * * * ### 🪨 “The Weight of Grief” — By Celeste Roberge in Reno, Nevada, USA 🇺🇸 A human frame folds forward under the literal weight of stones. The child reaching toward it changes the photograph: grief is no longer only something heavy to look at, but something another person is trying to understand. More: **Emotion (15 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **Celeste Roberge’s website** * * * ### 📷 “Dans l’objectif…” — By Blesea in Normandy, France 🇫🇷 Blesea uses the concrete blockhouse as the body of a giant camera. The girl’s wide, focused eyes and the real person standing above the lens turn curiosity into the whole architecture of the scene. More: **14 Murals by Blesea** 🔗 Follow **Blesea on Instagram** * * * ### 😵 “Hell Is Round the Corner” — By Bifido in Gambettola, Italy 🇮🇹 Bifido makes overwhelm impossible to miss. The figure covers his face while windows, pipes and doors cut through the painted body, turning the whole building into a picture of a mind that has had enough. More: **Hell Is Round the Corner** 🔗 Follow **Bifido on Instagram** * * * ### 🦋 “Dignity of Earth and Sky” — By Dale Lamphere near Chamberlain, South Dakota, USA 🇺🇸 The 50-foot stainless-steel figure opens a star quilt against the weather. Dale Lamphere designed Dignity to honor Lakota and Dakota cultures, giving resolve and calm a monumental presence above the Missouri River. More: **Sculptures About Strength and Freedom** 🔗 Learn more from **Travel South Dakota** * * * ### 😄 “Counterpoint” — By Dennis Smith in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA 🇺🇸 Dennis Smith’s bronze mother swings her daughter through the air. A visitor grabs the girl’s feet and leans back, turning a family scene into a split-second tug-of-war and adding mischief to the collection. More: **Fun With Statues** 🔗 See the sculpture record at the **Smithsonian Institution** * * * ### 🎭 The Smile Comes Off — By Odrus in Criciúma, Brazil 🇧🇷 The golden mask is bright, theatrical and cheerful. The face beneath it is not. By freezing the moment the smile comes away, Odrus turns hidden pain into the collection’s most direct contrast. More: **120 Photos of New Beloved and Clever Street Art** 🔗 Follow **Odrus on Instagram** * * * ### 🌻 “Joy” — By ZABOU in Maubeuge, France 🇫🇷 The face, raised arms, sunflowers and confetti all move in the same direction: up. ZABOU gives happiness a physical shape here, letting the collection end in the instant someone stops holding it in. More: **Clever Art by ZABOU (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **ZABOU on Instagram**

## A different view of **Britain** In Windsor, a house leans over the cobbles. In Glasgow, a pigeon reads the paper from the Duke of Wellington’s head. Across Britain, a police box becomes a fish tank, a giant girl examines the street, and a crescent moon is built from beach stones. * * * ### 🏚️ The Crooked House — Windsor, England, UK 🇬🇧 The little house is wedged between a stone building and a blue one, and it is the only one of the three that tips. Follow the green door frame and the bay window above it and you can see how far it has drifted. Historic England’s listing dates the timber-framed building to 1687 and describes it, very calmly, as standing “on considerable cant.” **💡 Place Fact:** Its official name is Market Cross House, and it has been Grade II listed since January 4, 1950. The same list entry groups it with Windsor’s Town Hall and its neighbors on High Street as one historic set. * * * ### 🏠 Dear Old Thing — By GRAFFMATT in Bristol, England, UK 🇬🇧 Here the house does not lean. It flies. A wooden shack, a windmill and an old car float up a pink gable wall, with a child sitting on the roof and an armchair stuck in the pile. “Dear Old Thing” is painted on the side of the car. The wall is at 107 West Street in Bedminster, and GRAFFMATT finished it in May 2026. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The name comes from a real local shop. GRAFFMATT’s own entry says the Upfest mural was inspired by the antique shop Dear Old Thing on West Street. 🔗 Follow **GRAFFMATT on Instagram** * * * ### ❤️ Drone Heart — By JPS in Weston-super-Mare, England, UK 🇬🇧 A small drone hovers beside a dripping red heart, a spray can hanging underneath, as if it has just finished the job. The yellow sign on the same wall is real and warns of falling objects. JPS, the stencil artist Jamie Paul Scanlon, was born in Weston-super-Mare, and the Weston Mercury reports that he has painted works there in support of the Birnbeck Trust’s regeneration plans. More: **Street Art by JPS – A Collection (40 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **JPS on Instagram** * * * ### 🦊 Longbridge Foxes — By Annatomix in Birmingham, England, UK 🇬🇧 The fox sits on a brick pillar beneath a concrete bridge, with real plants growing around its feet. Sharp orange and gray planes make it look like folded paper. Annatomix painted the Longbridge Foxes in 2023 for developer St Modwen on a railway bridge at the former MG Rover factory site. The Bromsgrove Standard puts the figures at around 15 feet tall, painted on what she called “some of the wettest brickwork I’ve ever had the pleasure of tackling.” **💡 Nerd Fact:** Her animals are often described as origami, but Annatomix names geometry, low-poly modeling, crystalline structures and architecture as her influences. Origami, she says, has no influence on her work. More: **Origami Fox by Annatomix in Longbridge, Birmingham (3 photos and video)** 🔗 Follow **Annatomix on Instagram** * * * ### 💍 I Love You Will U Marry Me — Park Hill, Sheffield, England, UK 🇬🇧 White letters run along a concrete bridge high between two blocks of the Park Hill flats: “I love you will u marry me,” with a name sprayed at the left end. The Star reports that Jason Lowe sprayed it in 2001 for his girlfriend, Clare Middleton. The couple never married, but the proposal stayed and became one of Sheffield’s best-known sights. **💡 Place Fact:** When the owner, Urban Splash, removed the paint for concrete repairs in 2021, many people in Sheffield protested. In June 2022 the words went back in their original spot, together with the neon lettering that lights them at night. * * * ### 🐺 All City Movement — By Jussi TwoSeven in Brighton, England, UK 🇬🇧 A black-and-white wolf runs across a white wall above the shops. It is one of five wolves Jussi TwoSeven painted around Brighton in May 2018 for All City Movement, part of the Brighton Fringe. Brighton Source explains that each wall shows the same wolf at a different stage of its stride, so together they work like a flip book spread across the city. More: **Wolfs in Motion (5 murals)** 🔗 Visit **Jussi TwoSeven’s website** * * * ### 🛸 Microcosmic — By Rocket01 in Southampton, England, UK 🇬🇧 A woman in a green helmet studies a tiny landscape inside a glass globe. Mushrooms and plants grow beneath its curved surface, a blue butterfly rests on a leaf, and a small flying saucer hovers nearby. The suit and helmet belong to science fiction; the stained concrete behind them belongs to the parking garage at Westquay. Rocket01’s portfolio lists the piece as Microcosmic, painted for the Multi-Stories event in Southampton. 🔗 Follow **Rocket01 on Instagram** * * * ### 👼 Angel of the North — By Antony Gormley in Gateshead, England, UK 🇬🇧 Rust-colored wings stretch across most of the photograph, above a figure standing on a grassy rise with its feet together. Gormley’s page for the work gives its size as 22 meters high and 54 meters across. Gateshead Council commissioned it, and it was completed in 1998 on a hill in Gateshead. **💡 Place Fact:** The hilltop was once part of a coal mine, and the Angel stands on the site of its former pithead baths, built in 1939; mining there ended in the late 1960s. Out of sight below the plinth, concrete piles reach down to solid rock 20 meters below, anchoring a sculpture built to withstand winds of more than 100 mph. 🔗 Visit **Antony Gormley’s website** * * * ### 🕊️ The Newspaper Pigeon — By The Rebel Bear in Glasgow, Scotland, UK 🇬🇧 A pigeon in a traffic-cone hat reads _The Daily Dropping_ from the Duke of Wellington’s head. The Rebel Bear added it in November 2025, giving Glasgow’s familiar cone-topped statue another occupant. 🔗 Follow **The Rebel Bear on Instagram** 📷 Photo by The Rebel Bear * * * ### 🐟 Piranha Police Box — By Banksy in London, England, UK 🇬🇧 Banksy turned the glass of a police sentry box on Ludgate Hill into a piranha tank in August 2024. The photograph shows it in its original street setting; the box was later moved into protective storage ahead of its planned London Museum display. 🔗 Follow **Banksy on Instagram** * * * ### 🔍 Honey… I Shrunk the Kids — By SMUG in Glasgow, Scotland, UK 🇬🇧 A girl with a magnifying glass reaches down toward the cars and pedestrians below. SMUG painted Honey… I Shrunk the Kids on Mitchell Street, making the people in the lane look small enough to pick up. More: **Street Art by SMUG** 🔗 Follow **SMUG on Instagram** * * * ### 🌙 Exspergo Luna — By Jon Foreman at Freshwater West, Wales, UK 🇬🇧 Far from the city walls, Jon Foreman built a crescent moon from beach stones at Freshwater West. The larger stones fit tightly along the outer edge, while smaller pebbles scatter inward across the sand. More: **Natural Materials by Jon Foreman** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram**

## 12 photos. 12 cities. How many can you place? Think you recognize that dome? Or the street around that mural? Look beyond the artwork: buildings, balconies, shopfronts and landmarks are all part of the clue. Some cities are easier to spot than others. Choose one of four cities under each photo. Your first answer counts, then the location and the story behind the artwork appear. Finish all 12 to see your score. These are photos from our archive, so some temporary artworks have since moved or disappeared. Guess the City ### Look above the painted windows. Which city is home to this famous dome? Show answer **London, England, UK 🇬🇧** The dome belongs to St Paul’s Cathedral. Sr. X painted these two figures at Paternoster Square, with support from Global Street Art. Their painted windows sit just above the real pavement: a small street-art surprise beneath a very recognizable landmark. Artwork: Sr. X · Supported by Global Street Art Read more on Street Art UtopiaSr. X at Paternoster Square Guess the City ### A real bicycle, painted children and a weathered wall. Which city is this? Show answer **George Town, Penang, Malaysia 🇲🇾** Ernest Zacharevic fixed a real bicycle to this wall on Lebuh Armenian for George Town Festival in 2012 and let the stains in the old plaster become part of the picture. He returned to restore it in September 2024, Buletin Mutiara reported. Artwork: Ernest Zacharevic Read more on Street Art UtopiaErnest Zacharevic’s Penang Street Art Collection Guess the City ### Look at the apartment block around the swing. Which city is this? Show answer **Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪** Demut painted the laughing child with WandKonzepte in May 2026, on an 11-story apartment building at the corner of Randowstraße and Vincent-van-Gogh-Straße in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. According to the commissioner, the design draws on elements from Van Gogh’s paintings. Artwork: Demut with WandKonzepte · Photo: Jeal Berlin Read more on Street Art UtopiaHave a Good Day (9 Photos) Guess the City ### This giant child looks up from a turquoise facade. Which city is it in? Show answer **Havana, Cuba 🇨🇺** Máisel López painted this three-by-four-meter mural in 2024 at the Amiguitos del Átomo nursery in Playa, Havana. It belongs to Los Colosos, the series he began in 2015 to give children a prominent place in the city, OnCuba News reported. Artwork: Máisel López Read more on Street Art UtopiaWhen Art Takes Over (17 Photos) Guess the City ### A steep neighborhood staircase becomes a rainbow. Which city is this? Show answer **Istanbul, Türkiye 🇹🇷** Retired forestry engineer Hüseyin Çetinel painted the 145 steps between Fındıklı and Cihangir over four days in August 2013, Archnet records. The municipality painted them grey again within days, and rainbow stairs soon appeared elsewhere in Türkiye, Reuters reported. Artwork: Hüseyin Çetinel Read more on Street Art UtopiaHow Rainbow Stairs Spread Across Türkiye Guess the City ### The sign says Amsterdam. Look at the tower behind it. Which city are we actually in? Show answer **Paris, France 🇫🇷** The Eiffel Tower gives it away. Frankey placed this little Donald Duck scene on Avenue de Camoëns in Paris. The sign points your attention toward Amsterdam, but the landmark behind it supplies the answer. Artwork: Frankey Read more on Street Art UtopiaFrankey’s Donald Duck in Paris Guess the City ### Spot the pedestrian below these four-story portraits. Which city is this? Show answer **Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺** SMUG painted his grandparents on a former power station at the corner of Lonsdale and Spencer streets. CitiPower commissioned the mural in collaboration with Juddy Roller, and it was unveiled in June 2016, Pedestrian reported. Artwork: SMUG Read more on Street Art Utopia24 Times SMUG Made Walls Look More Real Than Life Guess the City ### A blue bird fills this colorful, low-rise street facade. Which city is this? Show answer **Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴** Yurika MDC painted El destello Maria Mulata in 2013 at Plaza de la Trinidad in Getsemaní. The artist’s own account says it grew from a neighborhood children’s story: colorful birds saved a burning village, and the smoke turned them black. María mulata is Cartagena’s local name for the great-tailed grackle. Artwork: Yurika MDC Read more on Street Art UtopiaEl destello Maria Mulata in Cartagena Guess the City ### The palace behind the giant is your clue. Which city is this? Show answer **Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺** Ervin Hervé-Lóránth’s Ripped Up (Feltépve) pushed through the lawn at Széchenyi István Square in 2014. It was a temporary polystyrene installation, made with Gallery Out of Home for Art Market Budapest, artnet reported. Artwork: Ervin Hervé-Lóránth Read more on Street Art Utopia25 Extraordinary Sculptures Guess the City ### Look beyond Kermit to the fire escape and corner storefront. Which city is this? Show answer **Brooklyn, New York City, USA 🇺🇸** JAMIE HEF painted Kermit as a graffiti artist at Wilson and Myrtle Avenues in Brooklyn, with spray cans floating around him and a blue milk crate behind. Artwork: JAMIE HEF · Photo: John Dominé Read more on Street Art UtopiaJAMIE HEF’s Kermit Mural in Brooklyn Guess the City ### Look at the balconies and street around the scrap-metal raccoon. Which city is this? Show answer **Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹** Bordalo II built the raccoon across the stepped walls behind Centro Cultural de Belém for his 2015 solo show Pânico, Drama, Terror. When the building was marked for demolition in 2025, he adapted and reinstalled it in Chelas as Re-Raccoon. Artwork: Bordalo II Read more on Street Art UtopiaBordalo II Builds Animals From Trash (30 Photos) Guess the City ### Follow the painted street between the stone buildings. Which city is this? Show answer **Montréal, Canada 🇨🇦** NÓS Architectes made Moving Dunes with MU for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2018. The painted bands made the flat street on Avenue du Musée look like sand dunes, and the mirrored spheres curved the lines further. It stayed in place until October 29, 2018. Artwork: NÓS Architectes with MU Read more on Street Art Utopia8 Public Artworks in Montréal ### Your score ## Which city gave itself away? Tell us your score and which detail helped you most. Was it the artwork, the architecture—or a place you’ve walked past yourself?

## Good **design** earns a second look A utility box becomes a toaster with just a few painted additions. Elsewhere, the thinking goes into how a bench dries after rain or how a wall is built. These nine ideas reward a closer look at the ordinary things around us. More: **Design Doesn’t Stop Indoors** * * * ### 🌀 Spiral Wall — By John Bainbridge John Bainbridge turns the courses of a stone wall into a tight spiral. The small opening at its center makes the whole wall look as though it is curling inward. More: **Street Art You Can’t Ignore When You Walk By** * * * ### 🍞 Street-Side Toaster — By Tom Bob Two black slots and a painted cord turn this green utility box into an oversized toaster. Tom Bob barely changes its shape; the box was already doing most of the work. More: **Tom Bob’s Street Art — Collection 2** 🔗 Follow **Tom Bob on Instagram** * * * ### 🎵 21 Balançoires — By Daily tous les jours in Montréal, Canada 🇨🇦 The swings in Montréal’s 21 Balançoires play musical notes as people move. Daily tous les jours gives a row of seats a second job: making music with whoever happens to sit next to you. **💡 Music Fact:** Swinging higher raises the pitch. Moving in sync with other people unlocks more complex melodies, according to the studio’s project notes. * * * ### 🌧️ The Rolling Bench Sung Woo Park and his team’s Rolling Bench has a simple answer to a wet seat. Turn the handle to rotate the wooden slats and bring the dry underside up where you can sit. **💡 Design Fact:** The bench was a 2007 Samsung Design Membership project. Park’s original proposal also suggests turning the handle for the next person, even if you do not need a seat yourself. More: **Creative Benches** * * * ### 🧩 A Corner Worth Keeping — By Ememem A chipped corner becomes a narrow strip of blue and patterned tiles. Ememem follows the irregular edges of the damage, making the repair the part you want to look at. More: **Ememem’s Mosaic Repairs** 🔗 Follow **Ememem on Instagram** * * * ### 👀 A Face in the Letters — By Kone in Dublin, Ireland 🇮🇪 Kone fits a face inside the loops and sharp edges of his lettering. The eyes hold the portrait together while the black gaps keep breaking it apart; a puddle below catches the whole puzzle again. 🔗 Follow **Kone on Instagram** * * * ### 🪑 “Double Doily” — By Jennifer Cecere in New York, USA 🇺🇸 Jennifer Cecere’s Double Doily turns an intricate lace pattern into an aluminum bench at Whitehall and Water Streets. The photos by NYC ♥ NYC include the useful final check: someone actually sitting on it. * * * ### 🧵 Thread Across the Sidewalk — By CHEONE The woman bends over her sewing, but the red thread refuses to stay inside the picture. CHEONE carries it onto the pavement, joining the painted scene to the space at your feet. More: **CHEONE’s 3D Murals** 🔗 Follow **CHEONE on Instagram** * * * ### 🐟 Croydon Fishpond Mosaic — By Gary Drostle in Croydon, England 🇬🇧 The fish cast dark blue shadows, and the rings seem to spread across the water. Then the little tile edges pull the surface flat again. Gary Drostle makes the same hard material describe the fish, the depth below them and the moving surface above. Drostle dates the two-metre Croydon commission to 1996. It became the starting point for a much longer series of mosaic fishponds. 🔗 Visit **Gary Drostle’s website**

## Wait, that’s not supposed to be there A concrete wall leaks blue tape onto the sidewalk, and a parked car in New York asks strangers to draw on it. The rest of this set from American artists and places works the same way: it starts with something ordinary and adds one thing nobody expected. * * * ### 💧 L.A. Leaker — By Aakash Nihalani A security guard stands next to a hole that isn’t there. Black lines and flat blue tape turn a stained concrete wall into a blocky opening, and two blue strips run down to the pavement as if the sky were leaking out. Aakash Nihalani lists the piece as L.A. Leaker among his outdoor works. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Nihalani was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, and studied art in New York. He told designboom that working with tape sets his work apart from other street art because it “revels in the temporary.” More: **Street Art by Aakash Nihalani** 🔗 Visit **Aakash Nihalani’s website** * * * ### 🍾 Bottle Cap Mirage — By Carl Leck in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 🇺🇸 A glass bottle appears to hang from metal supports in front of the brick wall. Painted reflections and a broad shadow give it weight, while an oversized cap sits down by the sidewalk. The real windows are a useful clue to how large the illusion is. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The bottle has a local connection: this is the Bottleworks District, a former Coca-Cola bottling plant. The National Park Service records its conversion into a mix of hotel, shops, dining and entertainment. 🔗 Follow **Carl Leck on Instagram** * * * ### 🚗 Draw on Me — By Philip Romano in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 A man leans over the hood with a piece of chalk while a small crowd waits its turn. The whole car is a blackboard, and the orange plate says DRAW ON ME. Philip Romano, then a 20-year-old student, coated his 2004 Hyundai Elantra with four cans of chalkboard paint, parked it around the city and left chalk for strangers, Twisted Sifter reported. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The drawings are not permanent. A little rain wipes the board clean, so the car is ready for new artists, as Twisted Sifter notes. Romano said: “It’s kind of like a puppy, you can’t help but smile when you see it.” More: **Philip Romano’s Chalkboard Car** * * * ### 🛩️ World in Progress II — By Saype in New York City, USA 🇺🇸 Seen from the air, two children kneel side by side, folding paper, while stick figures hold hands around them. Saype painted the 11,000-square-meter image on the North Lawn of the United Nations headquarters in September 2021, using biodegradable paint made from pigments such as coal and chalk. **💡 Nerd Fact:** This is the second half of a pair. The first part was painted at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva in 2020, as Switzerland’s gift for the organization’s 75th anniversary. More: **World in Progress II by Saype** 🔗 Follow **Saype on Instagram** * * * ### 👀 The Eyes — By Cobre in Great Falls, Montana, USA 🇺🇸 Two eyes stretch across a long, low building, staring over an almost empty patch of asphalt. Two orange cones sit beneath the face. With so little else on the wall, the brows, lashes and reflected light do all the work. The Argentinian muralist painted the wall at 815 1st Avenue North for ArtsFest MONTANA in the summer of 2022, and it was later named among Street Art Cities’ top 100 murals of that year. More: **The eyes – Mural by Cobre in Great Falls, Montana, USA** 🔗 Follow **Cobre on Instagram** * * * ### 🐠 Hagerfest Goldfish — By Christian Stanley in Hagerstown, Maryland, USA 🇺🇸 Three enormous goldfish fill a narrow vertical wall. Orange fins curl into blue and green scales, with the parking decks visible on either side. It looks like a very tall aquarium. Stanley painted it from a forklift during Hagerfest 2026 and told DC News Now that he used the height of the wall to change perspective, so the goldfish change expression depending on how high or low they sit. His mural portfolio lists the piece as Hagerfest Goldfish. 🔗 Follow **Christian Stanley on Instagram** * * * ### 🦝 Aiden Checks the World — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 A small creature peers up from a staircase drawn on a flat slab among the leaves. It holds one paw up, as if testing the air before coming outside. A handful of chalk shadows turns the ground into a front door. More: **Silly Art By David Zinn (20 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram**

## When **fairy tales** stop following the script Everyone knows how these stories are supposed to go. On walls and in gardens from Bouville to Melbourne, somebody changed one detail, and now the wolf brings vegetables and the princess would rather stay asleep. * * * ### 🗝️ “Alice” — By Flow Graffiti Art in Bouville, France 🇫🇷 Alice kneels inside an open shipping container, far too big for the room, holding the “Drink Me” bottle up to a door that barely reaches her elbow. The key lies on the checkered floor next to a bowl of “Eat Me” cakes. Flow Graffiti Art painted it as a 5-by-6-meter anamorphic piece, so from one spot on Route des Ifts the steel box reads as a room she has outgrown. It was made for Inspire Festival 2026. Photo by Julia. More: **New Street Art That Brings Walls to Life (16 Photos)** 🔗 Follow Flow Graffiti Art on Instagram * * * ### 🥕 Vegan Wolf — By Loup y es tu in Paris, France 🇫🇷 Little Red Riding Hood unpacks her basket while the wolf sits politely on the other side of the checked cloth and offers her a carrot. The artist signs as Loup y es tu, “Wolf, are you there?”, and here the old story gets an ending Perrault never wrote. He often works in tandem with Little Chaperon rouge: as the pair told Le Paratonnerre, she paints the girl in red, he paints the wolves in brush and ink, and they paste up the originals, never prints, mostly in Paris’s 20th arrondissement. More: **Wanna Play Hide and Seek With the Wolf? (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow Loup y es tu on Instagram * * * ### 🍎 “Snow White Robbery” — By Herr Nilsson in Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪 The princess who sings to the birds has found a revolver. Snow White aims it along the underpass at Tranebergsbron while a rabbit watches from her feet. Herr Nilsson told us in his interview that he wants his art to be “like punches with a smile, hard and precise, but in a fun and good way.” **💡 Place Fact:** Tranebergsbron opened in 1934, and its 181-meter main concrete arch was for a year the largest in the world. It was built with one side for cars and one for trams, and the tram track was converted to the Stockholm metro in the early 1950s. 🔗 Follow Herr Nilsson on Instagram * * * ### 👠 “The Glass Slipper” — By Philip Jackson The title promises Cinderella. What stands under the garden arch has no face beneath the wide hat, only a pointed foot stepping out of the gown. It could pass for stone, but Philip Jackson’s own catalog lists it as bronze, 2.2 meters tall, cast in an edition of eight. **💡 Artist Fact:** Jackson is also behind the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park, unveiled in 2012, and the Gandhi statue in Parliament Square from 2015. His biography notes he was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 2009. More: **Haunting Sculptures by Philip Jackson (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow Philip Jackson on Instagram * * * ### ❤️ Queen of Hearts — By DavidL Outside Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸 Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts has moved into an abandoned house. Her red hair forms the heart, and two red armchairs and a red rug wait below her as if court is about to start. DavidL painted her straight onto the peeling plaster, so the flaking wall becomes part of the room. More: **Surreal Art by DavidL! (15 Photos)** 🔗 Follow DavidL on Instagram * * * ### 👑 Sleeping Beauty — By Herr Nilsson in Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪 A hundred years of sleep, and her first plan on waking is to go straight back to bed, according to the thought bubble. The frown says the rest. Herr Nilsson put her on a pebbled wall at Finspångsgatan in Lunda, Stockholm. More: **Street Art Pop Culture (21 Photos)** 🔗 Follow Herr Nilsson on Instagram * * * ### 💋 Princesses Kiss — By Unknown Artist in Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺 No prince turns up in this version. Snow White and Cinderella have found each other on a brick wall in Carlton South, and nobody seems to be waiting for midnight. Photo by Andrew. More: **Disney Love** * * * ### 🐇 “TimeHole” — By WD in Patras, Greece 🇬🇷 The White Rabbit is late again. He climbs the gold scrollwork with his watch in hand, while the woman on the giant spotted mushroom below seems to be the only one not in a hurry. WD (Wild Drawing) turned the corner of an ordinary apartment block in Patras into the way down to Wonderland. He painted it in 2018 for the third Patras street art festival, Artwalk 3, and Street Art Cities places the wall at Dimitriou Gounari 127. **💡 History Fact:** Wonderland began on a rowing trip on July 4, 1862, when Lewis Carroll told the story to 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters on the river Isis in Oxford. His handwritten first version, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, illustrated by Carroll himself, was his Christmas gift to her in 1864. More: **Beautiful 3D Art by WD! (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow WD (Wild Drawing) on Instagram

## Spot the real one One leaps across a wall under a German highway bridge. One climbs out of an old brick building in Riga. In north London, a real fox walks right past a painted one. Eight foxes in five countries, and only one of them is real. * * * ### 🦊 A Fox Leaps Through the Grass — By Morpho in Ludwigsfelde, Germany 🇩🇪 Front paws tucked, nose pointed down, this fox is a split second from landing on something small in the grass. Morpho painted it beneath the A10 bridge beside the Ludwig Arkaden as his wall for the seventh Da Bridge Jam. Photo by Yvie’s Never Ending Story. **💡 Fox Fact:** That pounce has a name, “mousing.” A Czech study of almost 600 jumps found red foxes mostly leap toward the north-east. Jumps in that direction ended in a kill 73% of the time, against 18% in most other directions. More: **New Street Art With Foxes, Giant Eyes and Future Faces (Vol. 56)** 🔗 Follow **Morpho on Instagram** * * * ### 📷 “Fox Meets Fox” — Photo by Matthew Maran in London, UK 🇬🇧 This is the real one. The painted fox runs one way and the real fox walks the other, right past it. Matthew Maran had been photographing foxes near his home in north London for over a year and had dreamt of this shot since he first spotted the wall. It took countless hours and many failed attempts, and the shot was Highly Commended in Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s 2018 People’s Choice vote. More: **Fox Meets Fox in London** * * * ### 🦊 “Dzimuši brīvībai” — By Aleksandrs and Oļegs Marinohs in Riga, Latvia 🇱🇻 A black fox, five meters tall, slips over the top of an old brick wall and starts down the corner. The title means “Born for Freedom.” Sculptors Aleksandrs and Oļegs Marinohs made it with the animal rights group Dzīvnieku brīvība, and it stands in Riga’s Lastādija creative quarter to speak up for animals kept in cages on fur and factory farms. The group calls it the first sculpture in Latvia made for animals locked up on industrial farms. **💡 Fur Fact:** The coat is not fur at all. More than 100 volunteers wove it from metal wire and hemp cord, Dzīvnieku brīvība says. More: **Black Fox in Riga, Latvia** 🔗 Visit **Dzīvnieku brīvība** * * * ### 🚪 Fox With a Door — By DZIA in London, UK 🇬🇧 DZIA’s fox stretches up the whole wall, and there is a real door right in its middle. The photographer, junepurkiss, wished the door had been closed, because the whole fox would not fit in one shot. The Belgian artist paints wild animals in his own line style, and foxes and birds are his recurring favorites. More: **Fox by DZIA in London** 🔗 Follow **DZIA on Instagram** * * * ### 🦊 A Fox Among Letters — By Odeith in London, UK 🇬🇧 Just off Brick Lane, a fox picks its way through Odeith’s chunky 3D letters as if they were rocks on a hillside. The letters are painted flat on the wall. The fox doesn’t seem to know that. More: **3D Art by Odeith** 🔗 Follow **Odeith on Instagram** 📷 Photo: KylaBorg, “Fox” / Flickr (CC BY 2.0). * * * ### 🦊 Origami Fox — By Annatomix in Birmingham, UK 🇬🇧 This fox looks folded from orange paper, but it is about 15 feet tall and painted on brick. Annatomix painted a group of them for St Modwen Homes in Longbridge, on what the artist called “some of the wettest brickwork I’ve ever had the pleasure of tackling” in an Instagram post. That is why the job took weeks. More: **Origami Fox by Annatomix in Longbridge** 🔗 Follow **Annatomix on Instagram** * * * ### 🐼 The Fox and the Panda — By Ircles Graffiti and Jhon RM in Uberlândia, Brazil 🇧🇷 A fox and a giant panda share one wall, nose to nose, under a roll of razor wire. Ircles Graffiti and Jhon RM painted it for Jardim Urbano UDI at Beco do Planalto. In the wild, these two live on different continents. 🔗 Follow **Ircles Graffiti** and **Jhon RM** on Instagram * * * ### 😴 “Le Renard Ornemental” — By BUBLEGUM in Nœux-les-Mines, France 🇫🇷 After all that leaping and climbing, one fox is simply asleep, curled into a circle with fur that turns into Baroque swirls. BUBLEGUM painted it in 2026 with the Créateurs de Bonheurs, Béthune-Bruay Tourism notes, at 14 Rue de Béthune. 🔗 Follow **BUBLEGUM on Instagram**

## Street art, sculptures and land art, sorted by reader Loves Every photo on Street Art Utopia has a Love button. These 40 are among the photos readers have Loved the most, listed in order of Loves. To keep the mix varied, we took no more than two photos per artist and four from any one post. First up: a bronze family in Yinchuan, China, that has picked up an extra member. More: **Top 100 Photos This Week** * * * ### 🧒 A Bronze Family Out for a Walk — On Yinchuan Pedestrian Street, Ningxia, China 🇨🇳 This bronze family has picked up an extra member. A toddler has taken the bronze woman’s hand and fallen into step next to the bronze boy, as if this had been the plan all along. The sculptures along the street show scenes from local life in Yinchuan. **💡 Street Fact:** The pedestrian street runs along Gulou South Street, from the Drum Tower to Yinchuan Mall, and has long been nicknamed “Little Shanghai,” according to Meet99. More: **When Sculptures Come Alive (9 Photos vol. 2)** * * * ### 🌾 “Stillness in Motion” (Matka Series) — By Olga Ziemska in Orońsko, Poland 🇵🇱 Olga Ziemska uses bundled branches to make a still figure look like it is moving. The artist’s project page describes the 2002 site-specific sculpture at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, made from hand-stacked, locally reclaimed willow. The long sweep behind the body reads like wind pulling at hair. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Stillness in Motion was the first work in Ziemska’s Matka series. “Matka” means “mother” in Polish, so the figure is also about origin and the place we come from. More: **When Nature Become Art (24 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Olga Ziemska on Instagram** * * * ### 🪨 “La Scapigliata” — By Justin Bateman in Chiang Mai, Thailand 🇹🇭 Bateman made La Scapigliata with found stones in Chiang Mai in 2021, after Leonardo da Vinci’s original, as his own post shows. The ground shows through between the pebbles, so the portrait looks ancient and temporary at the same time. **💡 Art History Fact:** The Parma museum that holds Leonardo’s painting lists it as “Testa di fanciulla, detta ‘La scapiliata’” — head of a young woman, known as the disheveled one. More: **Stone Pebble Portraits by Justin Bateman** 🔗 Follow **Justin Bateman on Instagram** * * * ### 🎶 “Music Unhurried” (乐韵悠悠) — On Shamian Island, Guangzhou, China 🇨🇳 This bronze group on Shamian Island is called 乐韵悠悠, roughly “Music Unhurried”: a line of children following a violinist. A travel blogger who photographed it noticed the same thing as this photo: a real little girl, smaller than the statues, slipping into the line. **💡 Place Fact:** Shamian later became a diplomatic and trading district. Guangzhou’s official city guide records that more than ten countries kept consulates there, alongside nine foreign banks and over forty foreign companies. More: **See What Happens When People Enter the Artwork** * * * ### 🏹 Spirit of the Medieval Huntress — By Anna & The Willow at Skipton Castle Woods, England 🇬🇧 Anna Cross made her nine-foot Spirit of the Medieval Huntress for the Woodland Trust at Skipton Castle Woods. According to Sylvan Skills, the 2018 commission recalls the woods’ past as a larder and hunting ground for Skipton Castle. **💡 Restoration Fact:** After the original willow wore out, Sylvan Skills rebuilt and rewove the sculptures in 2024. The first new layer was woven in spirals and curves for strength, and the Huntress got a bow shaped more like a traditional yew bow. More: **When Nature Become Art (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Anna & The Willow on Instagram** * * * ### 🌺 Bougainvillea Shades — Artist Unknown in Pondicherry, India 🇮🇳 The painted face, the blue sunglasses and the hoop earrings work on their own, but the bougainvillea spilling over the wall gives her the hair. It changes with every season and every bloom. We don’t know who painted it. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Oxford University Herbaria links bougainvillea to Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s 1766–1769 voyage, when the naturalist Philibert Commerson found the plant. Pondicherry itself was a French colony, and its French Quarter still shows it. More: **Street Art in Pondicherry, India** 📷 Photo: Kanthan * * * ### 🌿 “Diosa de la Naturaleza” (Goddess of Nature) — By SFHIR at HLA El Ángel in Málaga, Spain 🇪🇸 SFHIR painted Diosa de la Naturaleza at HLA El Ángel, a hospital in Málaga (see his timelapse). The bush becomes her hair, while her painted hand holds a green heart. **💡 Nerd Fact:** She is one part of a much bigger wall. HLA’s own blog describes SFHIR’s 2019 Málaga project as an 80-meter mural about medicine and Málaga culture. More: **Photo + Video — Street Art by SFHIR in Málaga, Spain** 🔗 Visit **SFHIR’s website** * * * ### 🥣 Porcelain Bowl and Swallow — By Odeith A bowl, saucer and spoon seem to float in front of the wall while a swallow flies in. The shadows make the porcelain look as solid as the artist crouching below it. **💡 Culture Fact:** The ceramic swallow is a familiar Portuguese symbol. Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro’s 1891 swallows still hang from the ceiling of the Tabacaria Mónaco on Lisbon’s Rossio square. More: **Amazing 3D Illusions by Odeith (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Odeith on Instagram** * * * ### 🌸 Bougainvillea Portrait — By Fábio Gomes Trindade in Trindade, Goiás, Brazil 🇧🇷 In his original post, Fábio places the mural on Rua 6 in Conjunto Arco-Íris, Trindade. Jornal Opção reports that the portrait was inspired by the young model Sarai and uses a lilac bougainvillea as her hair. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Bougainvillea’s colorful “petals” are really modified leaves called bracts. Gardens by the Bay explains that the true flowers are the small white or cream ones tucked inside. More: **Nature Meets Art in Brazilian Masterpieces** 🔗 Follow **Fábio Gomes Trindade on Instagram** * * * ### 👁️ The Eye — By Näutil in Siouville-Hague, France 🇫🇷 This Second World War bunker on the beach at Siouville-Hague already had plenty of mood. Näutil painted one huge eye on it, and the tide does the rest: the concrete block looks like it is watching the sea. **💡 Nerd Fact:** TF1 Info named the artist as Cyrille Corlays, alias Näutil, and reported that the eye had become a local landmark before he later painted it closed. More: **By Näutil – In Siouville-Hague, France** 🔗 Follow **Näutil on Instagram** * * * ### 🛏️ “Cobija de plantas” (Blanket of Plants) — By El Decertor in Imbabura, Ecuador 🇪🇨 El Decertor painted the pillow, the face and the hand. The blanket is a real hedge, so it grows, changes color and needs a trim now and then. He painted it in Imbabura for the Numu Festival. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Decertor is Daniel Cortez from Lima, Peru. Gateways to Newark describes his public murals as “weatherproof memories.” More: **By El Decertor in Imbabura, Ecuador** 🔗 Follow **El Decertor on Facebook** * * * ### 🐱 “Peeking Cat” — By Andy Dice Davies in Cheltenham, England 🇬🇧 Andy Dice Davies (Dice 67) painted “Peeking cat” under the road at Cirencester Road in Charlton Kings, reached through Little Herberts nature reserve. The dark brick arch becomes a hiding place for a very large kitten. More: **Step Back! (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Andy Dice Davies on Facebook** * * * ### 🪴 “True Nature” — By Daniel Popper in Cancún, Mexico 🇲🇽 The figure holds its face away from its head with two enormous hands, and there is a garden inside. Leaves spill out of the opening, and the sea is visible beyond. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Popper’s studio says the 2023 sculpture stands in Bohemian Square in Cancún, made with Grupo Rosanegra from a steel subframe and glass-fiber reinforced concrete. More: **Daniel Popper Builds Giants You Can Walk Through (32 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Daniel Popper on Instagram** * * * ### 🐕 Tug of Dog — Artist Unknown The bronze children are already pulling hard on the leash. Then a real dog walks in and goes straight for the bronze dog’s tail. **💡 Bronze Fact:** Bronze keeps a record of touch. Getty’s guidelines for bronze sculpture note that repeated touching can wear away the patina on raised areas and expose bare metal. More: **Clever Dog Art (10 Photos)** * * * ### 📚 “Gabriele D’Annunzio” — By Alessandro Verdi in Piazza della Borsa, Trieste, Italy 🇮🇹 Two visitors lean in to read over the shoulder of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, in Alessandro Verdi’s 2019 bronze on Piazza della Borsa. His quiet reading break has turned into a study group. **💡 Trieste Fact:** D’Annunzio’s own time in Trieste was short: TriesteMetro says he stayed briefly in 1902 with the actress Eleonora Duse. More: **When Sculptures Come Alive (9 Photos vol. 2)** * * * ### 🐾 A Helping Paw — By Trevor Cole in Nanaimo, Canada 🇨🇦 The painted boy looks sad, and the dog reaches out to him. Erika Lopez photographed her dog Carlos at this stencil by Trevor Cole in Nanaimo, British Columbia. More: **Kindness Is the Default (9 Photos)** 📷 Photo: Erika Lopez * * * ### 🌋 Fontana Luminosa — By Nicola D’Antino in L’Aquila, Italy 🇮🇹 When low sun catches the falling water, it looks like lava. Sculptor Nicola D’Antino made the fountain in the 1930s: two bronze women holding up a conca abruzzese, the region’s traditional water jar. It stands in Piazza Battaglione degli Alpini, at the start of Corso Vittorio Emanuele. **💡 Fountain Fact:** The fountain gets its name from the colored lights that play on it at night. In winter, the same site notes, the water pouring from the jar can freeze into a glittering ice sculpture. More: **Fontana Luminosa in L’Aquila, Italy** * * * ### 🌀 “Below” — By Jon Foreman at Lindsway Bay, Wales 🇬🇧 Foreman called this 2021 piece “Below.” From above, the rings and dense patterns make flat sand look like a deep hole. The sea is just beyond it, so the illusion was always temporary. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Foreman’s official biography says his sand drawings can reach 100 meters across. More: **The Breathtaking World of Jon Foreman (15 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🤖 R2-D2 Brings Flowers — By EFIX EFIX gives a public trash bin an admirer. R2-D2 holds out a bunch of flowers, and a small heart floats above his dome. The bin, as bins do, plays it cool. More: **EFIX’s Clever Art (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **EFIX on Instagram** * * * ### 😂 “Nadine and the Surprisingly Effective Joke” — By David Zinn A rock at the edge of the sidewalk becomes a creature laughing so hard its mouth is wide open. Tiny Nadine has just told the joke. Zinn also sells the drawing as a print. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Zinn’s own site says his drawings are made only of chalk, charcoal and found objects, and are improvised on the spot. He calls the process “ephemeral pareidolic anamorphosis.” Pareidolia is the brain’s habit of seeing faces in random shapes. More: **Street Art by David Zinn — Nadine and the Surprisingly Effective Joke (7 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **David Zinn on Instagram** * * * ### ✋ “The Giant Hand of Vyrnwy” — By Simon O’Rourke near Lake Vyrnwy, Wales 🇬🇧 When the tallest tree in Wales was damaged in a storm, a 50-foot stump was left standing. Simon O’Rourke carved it into The Giant Hand of Vyrnwy, which he describes as the tree’s last attempt to reach for the sky. **💡 Tree Fact:** The tree was a 124-year-old Douglas fir, a species native to North America that was brought to the UK in 1827. More: **From Tallest Tree to Towering Sculpture: The Giant Hand of the UK** 🔗 Visit **Simon O’Rourke’s website** * * * ### 🐝 Mimic Wasp — By Odeith Odeith paints the wasp with enough shadow to lift it off the wall, in the anamorphic 3D style he is known for. Beautiful from a distance. Less so if you imagine it moving. More: **3D Art by Odeith (25 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Odeith on Instagram** * * * ### 🧦 Keeping the Feet Warm — Artist Unknown Someone decided these two pipes looked cold. Painted socks and chalk sneakers turn them into a pair of legs ready for a walk. We don’t know who made it. More: **Made You Smile (15 Photos)** * * * ### 🦁 “Mane Problem” — By David Zinn A tuft of grass in a sidewalk crack becomes a lion’s mane. Zinn captioned the post for this drawing: “Nathan removed the thorn but couldn’t do anything about the mane problem.” **💡 Nerd Fact:** Zinn’s official bio says he has been making art in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, since 1987. More: **Cute Art by David Zinn (16 Photos)** * * * ### 🪨 “Rising Cairn” — By Celeste Roberge This sculpture is often shared online as “The Weight of Grief,” but its title is Rising Cairn. It is welded, galvanized steel holding 4,000 pounds of granite. **💡 Nerd Fact:** There is more than one. Roberge’s site lists Rising Cairns at the Runnymede Sculpture Farm in Woodside, California, and at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, plus a prototype she kept. My Modern Met reports that she welded the frame as a rough, larger-than-life likeness of her own body. More: **The Weight We Carry (10 Artworks)** 🔗 Visit **Celeste Roberge’s website** * * * ### 🌀 “Rubra Spiralis” — By Jon Foreman at Sandy Haven Beach, Wales 🇬🇧 Foreman made Rubra Spiralis over two days in 2024 at Sandy Haven Beach in Pembrokeshire. He wrote that the tide stopped short of the piece, which gave him time to finish the spiral. **💡 Geology Fact:** Sandy Haven gives its name to a rock formation in the Old Red Sandstone. The national park’s geology guide notes that it holds the Townsend Tuff, a four-meter layer of volcanic ash that fell on ancient coastal mud flats. More: **Land Art by Jon Foreman** 🔗 Follow **Jon Foreman on Instagram** * * * ### 🐯 “Tijgers van de Kolenkit” — By Sidney Waerts in Amsterdam, Netherlands 🇳🇱 Sidney Waerts painted Tijgers van de Kolenkit, the Tigers of the Kolenkit, on this Amsterdam building. The big cats look calm, until you notice they cover the whole facade. **💡 Nerd Fact:** “Kolenkit” means coal scuttle. The Dutch monument register says the neighborhood’s 1956 Opstandingskerk got that nickname because its tower looks just like one, and the church became the icon of the Bos en Lommer district. More: **Step Back! (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Sidney Waerts on Instagram** 📷 Photo: Marieke Weijsman * * * ### 🏖️ Wile E. Coyote — By PUFFERFISH Wile E. Coyote has had another bad day. PUFFERFISH carves him into the sand as if he had just been flattened into the beach, a classic cartoon ending. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner debuted in the 1949 short Fast and Furry-ous. Chuck Jones said the coyote owed something to Mark Twain’s description of a hungry, unlucky coyote. More: **Summer Fun (9 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **PUFFERFISH on Instagram** * * * ### 🌳 “UMI” — By Daniel Popper at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, USA 🇺🇸 The photo shows UMI during The Morton Arboretum’s Human+Nature exhibition. Popper’s studio describes the sculpture as “a woman, a tree, a womb, and a bower.” Its name comes from the Arabic word for “mother.” **💡 What Happened Next Fact:** After the Human+Nature exhibition closed, UMI was moved from Illinois and rebuilt in Hogan Park at The Aurora Highlands in Aurora, Colorado, Denver7 reported in 2023. More: **“UMI” at The Morton Arboretum** * * * ### 🧑‍🌾 Wheelbarrow Farmer — Artist Unknown A wheelbarrow makes the body, a tire the head, and old metal bars the arms and legs. Work gloves, shoes, sunglasses, a blue cap and a pitchfork finish the farmer. **💡 Art History Fact:** Turning found objects into a figure has a famous ancestor: Picasso’s Bull’s Head was made from a bicycle seat and handlebars. More: **Sculptures With Unique Creativity (8 Photos)** * * * ### 🥫 Popeye’s Spinach — By Semi O.K in Çayırova, Kocaeli, Turkey 🇹🇷 Semi O.K turns a real tree into spinach bursting out of Popeye’s can. The artist’s own post places the wall in Çayırova, Kocaeli. **💡 Nerd Fact:** In 1937, Crystal City, Texas, the self-declared “Spinach Capital of the World,” put up a statue of Popeye. Popeye’s official timeline calls it one of the earliest public sculptures of a cartoon character. More: **Playful Art by Semi O.K (8 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Semi O.K on Instagram** * * * ### 🫠 “The Vision” — By Cosimo CHEONE Caiffa in Milan, Italy 🇮🇹 Windows, cornices and balconies seem to buckle and melt down the facade of Casa Maiocchi at Corso di Porta Romana 113. CHEONE unveiled The Vision in July 2021, taking cues from Gaudí’s Casa Batlló. **💡 Nerd Fact:** The commission came from the sun-shade company MV Line. Its project page explains the joke: the windows behind its shades stay cool while the rest of the building melts in the heat. More: **Amazing 3D Murals by CHEONE! (24 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Cosimo CHEONE Caiffa on Instagram** * * * ### 🐻 “Three Bears” — At Ayusai Gorge in Almaty, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 Bike parked and helmet still on, this rider has stretched out across the big bear’s front legs for a break. The three bears greet visitors at the entrance to the gorge, where the trail into the narrow part begins. **💡 Name Fact:** Ayusai means “Bear Gorge” in Kazakh. Tengrinews traces the name to the Tian Shan brown bears that once lived there. More: **When Sculptures Come Alive (9 Photos vol. 2)** * * * ### 🥬 “Crunchie” — By Helga Stentzel A few lettuce leaves become ears, paws and a nose, and a green bin gets a resident. Helga Stentzel calls him “Crunchie”, part of her Edible Creatures series. More: **Made You Smile (10 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Helga Stentzel on Instagram** * * * ### ⭕ “Circles” — By Spencer Byles near La Colle-sur-Loup, France 🇫🇷 Byles made Circles (photo: Leo Fry) for A Year in a French Forest, in the woods near La Colle-sur-Loup. He kept the exact sites private, so walkers came across the sculptures by chance. **💡 Ephemeral Art Fact:** Byles says his sculptures are ephemeral and meant to go through changes until they disappear. More: **When Nature Become Art (8 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **Spencer Byles’s website** * * * ### 🪵 Driftwood Forest Figure — By Debra Bernier of Vancouver Island, Canada 🇨🇦 Bernier follows the grain, cracks and bends already in the wood. Here a woman’s figure appears in the trunk, while the twigs above her head become a crown. Her Shaping Spirit studio describes her as working from the rainforests of Vancouver Island. More: **19 Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier** 🔗 Follow **Debra Bernier on Facebook** * * * ### 🍇 “Gonfleurs de raisin” (Inflaters) — By MiniMiam The scale flips completely. Tiny workers pump up raisins, and the grapes behind them are what you get when the job is done. MiniMiam is the food photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle; they made this scene in 2016. **💡 Name Fact:** MiniMiam began in 2002 with a commission, when the pair started using tiny model-train figures to tell stories with food. “Miam” is French for “yum.” More: **Need a Smile? Start Here (8 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **MiniMiam’s website** * * * ### 🐶 Dog and Cat — By Brian Mock of Aloha, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸 Screws, sockets, forks and gears give the dog its solid body, while thin rods make the cat look lighter and more cautious. Mock’s portfolio shows sculptures made from recycled scrap metal. **💡 Nerd Fact:** Mock is a self-taught welder. His official biography says he drew, painted and carved wood before he started sculpting with recycled metal in the late 1990s. More: **See Eight Times Scrap Metal Found a Pulse** 🔗 Follow **Brian Mock on Instagram** * * * ### 🕳️ “Mélancolie” — By Albert György, Photographed in Geneva, Switzerland 🇨🇭 Albert György’s bronze Mélancolie became famous through photos taken on the Geneva lakefront. The figure sits bent forward on a bench, with the middle of its body missing. More: **Being Human (10 Photos)** 🔗 Visit **Albert György’s website** * * * ### 🤲 “Give” — By Lorenzo Quinn Two giant white hands cup a young tree on the grass of a park. **💡 Nerd Fact:** In 2020, Excellence Magazine reported that Give joins a man’s hand and a woman’s hand around an olive tree, as a message of peace, and that Quinn and his gallery gave one to the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta. Quinn’s own site documents Give installations in Florence, Palermo and Pietrasanta in 2020 and 2021. More: **When Nature Becomes Design (12 Photos)** 🔗 Follow **Lorenzo Quinn on Instagram**

## Eight artworks where **down** stops making sense A stone hangs from a rope without touching the ground. People fall sideways across a Paris wall, an apartment block opens into empty space, and an upside-down duck dangles by one foot. These eight works use balance, forced perspective and painted shadows to make gravity feel briefly optional. * * * ### 🪨 Floating Stone Illusion — By Sha’ban Abbas at Cairo International Airport, Egypt 🇪🇬 One stone-like form hangs above another, joined by a taut rope that seems to carry the entire weight. Egyptian artist Sha’ban Abbas created the optical illusion in 2008 for Terminal 3 at Cairo International Airport. Photos of it often circulate online with invented miracle stories; a Dismislab fact-check traces the image back to the airport sculpture. More: **Sculptures With Unique Creativity** * * * ### 🏙️ “Suspended Figures” — By STRØK in Paris, France 🇫🇷 Figures drift, tumble and run across the blank side of a building while their long shadows point in different directions. STRØK, also known as Anders Gjennestad, painted the wall on Rue de la Glacière in the 13th arrondissement in May 2016, ahead of a solo show at Galerie MathGoth. The figures come from his own photographs, and as he told Brooklyn Street Art, they look like they are falling until you tilt your head. More: **STRØK in Paris** 🔗 Follow **STRØK on Instagram** * * * ### 🪽 “Flight” — By Tatyana Fazlalizadeh in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸 A woman rises high above the street, with a deep painted shadow making the leap feel physical. Tatyana Fazlalizadeh painted _Flight_ in 2022 with Mural Arts Philadelphia at 1228 Spruce Street, as part of a series that imagines flying as liberation, escape and transformation. **💡 Artist Fact:** Oklahoma City-born Fazlalizadeh is best known for _Stop Telling Women to Smile_ , a street art series she began in 2012 that pairs portraits of women with their responses to street harassment, and which she turned into a book in 2020, Wikipedia notes. More: **“Flight” in Philadelphia** 🔗 Follow **Tatyana Fazlalizadeh on Instagram** * * * ### 🦆 “Bounce back” — By Jack Lack in Emden, Germany 🇩🇪 An upside-down duck hangs by one foot, feathers compressed as if the fall ended a second ago. Stuttgart-born Jack Lack created the mural for Hit the Trog, the August 2026 graffiti event on the concrete walls of Emden’s Trog, and describes it as a reminder that falling may be unavoidable, but the response is a choice. More: **New Beloved and Clever Street Art** 🔗 Follow **Jack Lack on Instagram** * * * ### ❄️ “Arctic Circle House” — By Shozy in Salekhard, Russia 🇷🇺 The center of the apartment block appears to have vanished, leaving rooms and windows suspended inside a white void. Shozy painted the anamorphic facade for the 2022 YAM(ural)AL festival at 8 Gubkina Street. **💡 Place Fact:** Salekhard was founded by Russian Cossacks in 1595 and is, as Russian Life puts it, the only city in the world that lies directly on the Arctic Circle. More: **Arctic Circle House From More Angles** * * * ### 🤸 “Simple Acrobatics 2.0” — By Artez in Bristol, England 🇬🇧 A red shirt and gray trousers first read as one impossible human knot. Look longer and two figures emerge, curled together in a rolling pose across the wall of the Tobacco Factory. Artez painted the work for UPFEST 2026. **💡 History Fact:** The Tobacco Factory was built in 1912 for Imperial Tobacco and stopped producing tobacco in 1986. Local architect George Ferguson bought the derelict building in 1993 and saved it from demolition, according to the venue’s own history. More: **12 Murals by Artez** 🔗 Follow **Artez on Instagram** * * * ### 🕴️ “Leaning Stone” — By JPS A sharply dressed figure leans at the exact angle of a broken concrete slab, as if both man and stone have agreed on a new direction for down. JPS uses the shape of the found surface to complete the illusion. More: **Street Art by JPS** 🔗 Follow **JPS on Instagram** * * * ### ❤️ “Falling in Love” — By The Rebel Bear in Glasgow, Scotland 🇬🇧 Two figures drop headfirst past a small red heart on an almost empty wall. The tilt of their bodies creates the fall, while the title turns the familiar phrase into a literal moment at 16 Candleriggs in Glasgow, where Street Art Cities documented it in 2024. More: **“Falling in Love” by The Rebel Bear** 🔗 Follow **The Rebel Bear on Instagram**

## **Ocean art** from the shoreline to the street A bunker rises from the waves with a painted face. A shark swims across an entire building, a character peeks over the edge of a beach, and a fishing boat battles a storm on a wall. These ten photos bring the ocean into public art through real water, painted waves and the people whose lives are tied to the sea. * * * ### 🌊 A Face in the Tide — By Näutil Waves wash around a painted face on a coastal bunker. The painted face follows the bunker’s curved wall, making it seem to rise straight out of the sea. More: **Life and Poetry by Näutil** 🔗 Follow **Näutil on Instagram** * * * ### 🦈 Au temps des mégalodons — By SEYB in Savigné-sur-Lathan, France 🇫🇷 SEYB sends a shark straight toward the street, beneath shafts of painted underwater light. The building-sized scene is “Au temps des mégalodons,” a mural in Savigné-sur-Lathan. 💡 **Megalodon Fact:** Smithsonian Ocean dates megalodon to roughly 23 to 3.6 million years ago and says it grew up to about three times the length of a modern great white shark. 🔗 Follow **SEYB on Instagram** * * * ### 🏖️ A Face Above the Waves — By Ian Mutch at Cape Le Grand, Australia 🇦🇺 A few lines in pale sand turn the edge of the beach into a character peering over turquoise water. 📷 Photo by **Christian Fletcher**. More: **See 6 Beach Drawings by Ian Mutch** 🔗 Follow **Ian Mutch on Instagram** * * * ### 🦀 A Hermit Crab Finds Shelter — By Näutil A painted hermit crab shelters beneath a helmet-shaped shell on rough concrete. Its red claws, yellow legs and metal-gray shelter make the bunker feel unexpectedly inhabited. More: **More Coastal Art by Näutil** 🔗 Follow **Näutil on Instagram** * * * ### ✋ A Ship in the Palm of a Hand — By Jim Vision A giant hand holds a tiny ship above turbulent blue water. The change of scale makes the vessel look fragile, with orange light flaring behind its sails. 🔗 Follow **Jim Vision on Instagram** * * * ### 🌊 Visie en Vertrouwen — By Naomi Rozalina King in Rotterdam, Netherlands 🇳🇱 Fish swim through a purple portrait while curling waves form the figure below. “Visie en Vertrouwen” connects the port, nature, city and people in one brightly colored mural. 🔗 Follow **Naomi Rozalina King on Instagram** * * * ### ⛵ Storm Boat — By Soria Torres Gustavo Alonso, Weak Palencia & Marte Stu in Uruapan, Mexico 🇲🇽 A fishing boat pushes through black-and-white waves between bright graffiti letters. The sloping hull and heavy clouds turn a long wall into a rough stretch of open water. 🔗 Follow **Soria Torres Gustavo Alonso on Instagram** , **Weak Palencia on Instagram** , **Marte Stu on Instagram** * * * ### 🦈 Blue Shark Boat — By Xanoy An upturned boat becomes a shark resting in the grass. Xanoy uses the pointed hull for the snout, then adds an eye, gills and a toothy smile. More: **See Xanoy’s Blue Shark Boat Before and After** 🔗 Follow **Xanoy on Instagram** * * * ### 🆘 Plastic SOS — By NME in Teignmouth, England 🇬🇧 On a coastal wall, a painted child raises a white plastic bag marked “SOS.” The sea beyond the wall makes that small distress flag hard to ignore. More: **Street Art by NME** 🔗 Follow **NME on Instagram** * * * ### ⚓ Gabriel — By Djoels in Ondarroa, Spain 🇪🇸 A man concentrates on a miniature ship while a storm and an octopus tentacle fill the wall behind him. Djoels based “Gabriel” on a retired fisherman who now builds model boats. More: **See More of Djoels’ Life at Sea Mural** 🔗 Follow **Djoels on Instagram**

## Some art needs **a passerby** to finish it. A man leans in close to a marble statue. Another shows his phone to a bronze one. Nobody planned these photos, but the art was ready for them, and so were a cat on a real chain and a road waiting to be cut open. * * * ### 🤫 Whispered Secrets The statue’s hand is raised to her cheek, close to her mouth. All it took was someone willing to lean in and listen. His half-open mouth suggests it was worth hearing. * * * ### 🐾 Cat on the Chain — By JPS Someone fixed a rusty chain to this wall for a practical reason. JPS saw a tightrope. His stenciled cat walks down it with its tail up, as calm as any real cat on a fence. 💡 **Artist Fact:** When Colossal featured JPS in 2014, it described the UK stencil artist’s work as mostly inspired by pop culture, horror films and comic book heroes. More: **40 Stunning Street Art By Creative Genius JPS** 🔗 Follow **JPS on Instagram** * * * ### 🐈 Watch Out for Jumping Cats — Kitakami, Japan 🇯🇵 The Japanese text warns drivers that cats may dart out. The three flying silhouettes suggest a much bigger problem. Spotted beside a road in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture. 💡 **Japan Fact:** Japan’s best-known warning figure is a person, not a cat. Shiga Prefecture says the child-shaped tobidashi-bōya signs started in Higashiōmi and are now found all over the country. 📷 Photo: @houchouzamurai * * * ### ✂️ Cutting the Road — By Roadsworth The dashed lines were already there. Roadsworth only added a pair of painted scissors, and now the street looks like a sheet of paper halfway through a craft project. 💡 **Artist Fact:** Roadsworth is Peter Gibson. Art Public Montréal says he began painting Montreal’s streets in 2001, first prompted by the lack of bike lanes and the city’s car culture. More: **Roadsworth: The Visionary Street Artist** 🔗 Visit **Roadsworth’s website** * * * ### 📱 Scroll Buddy The bronze man on the bench has spent years looking down at his lap. Someone finally gave him something to look at, and now he seems to be reading along. * * * ### 🪨 Painted Cat Rocks From a distance, it’s a pile of rocks. Look again and six of them have ears, whiskers and eyes, curled up together like cats napping in the sun. More: **#caturstones on #caturday** * * * ### 💐 Best Friends An elephant leans out from behind a rusty beam and offers red flowers to a rat about the size of its toenail. The beam suggests it was hiding there for a while, working up the courage. * * * ### 😴 Pipe Break — By Ibon Mainar in San Sebastián, Spain 🇪🇸 A pipe sticks out of the wall for no clear reason. Ibon Mainar gave it one: a tiny painted man lying on top of it, arms and legs hanging, taking a break from whatever he was supposed to be doing. 📷 Photo: Ibon Mainar More: **Street Art in San Sebastián by Ibon Mainar**