Author Archives: Mary C

along Rruga Myslym Syri

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Rruga Myslym Syri is a fairly busy street in central Tirana, lined with shops and small businesses. Either on this street or in nearby alleys and small streets there is some street art. First, two small pieces by Franko (aka Franko Dinaj), a local artist.

mural painted by franco on a wall in Tirana, of two young boys, backs to painter, one wearing a red jacket with Albanian symbol, the other wearing a blue jacket with yellow Ukranian map on it

mural of a young person with mask partially covering the face mask is made using Ukranian flag, shooting a sling shot

below: Man carrying bike, a mural by Artez with the title: “Mos Paragjyko – Do not Prejudice”

large mural of a man carrying a bike over his shoulder

below: Calligraphy and circles, an artwork by Davide DPA

a Davide mural, calligraphy as element, concentric circles, red background

back part of Davide calligraphy based mural

“Personii ge kam perballe eshte fija e humbur qe me ndihmon ta gjej veten”

below: A big green dog by MOTS

mural of a green dog, sitting

below: Unsinkable stencil with a few famous people like Einstein and Laurel & Hardy, and many not so famous people.

black stencil on white wall with heads of many famous people, Laurel and Hardy, plus word unsinkable

below: Playing basketball on the wall.

black stencil of two people on a white wall
mural of a child riding on the back of a character that is half fish and half submarine

below: A woman in blue

small blue portrait of a woman painted on the side of a metal sidewalk box

below: This woman is probably advertising a women’s hair salon but I liked the look of it just the same.

black and white drawing or painting of a woman with a lot of curlers pins in her hair

k

honey bears

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I don’t think that these characters are actually called Honey Bear but that’s what I started calling them as I found more of them on the streets of Paris. I’m not sure if they even have a name.

I can remember my parents buying honey in bear shaped bottles. After a quick google search, I now know that this bear shaped bottle was first used in 1957 for Dutch Gold Honey, and was design by Ralph and Luella Gamber. They never patented the idea and it was copied by many other honey producers and vendors.

The street art bears are the work of fnnch, an artist based in San Francisco USA. If you take a look at his instagram page, you will discover that this bear comes in hundreds of variations! There is even bear merchandise. I only saw 6 variations…. These are the ones that I saw.

Bowie Bear

street art bear in the shape of a bear shaped honey bottle with David Bowie lightning flash over one eye

Red Wine Bear

two graffiti pieces on a wall, a honey bear with a glass of red wine and a tile portrait

Martini Shaker Bear

Cool Heart Shaped Sunglasses Bear (tapping his foot!?)

Spray Paint Can Bear

Avocado Bear

rue des deux boules

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painting on a wall on re des deux boules that looks like a pastel portrait of a woman showing her hand as well

below: 3-D blue man face with rainbow bubbles by Gregos.

3 dimensional mask, painted blue, of a man, with many red, yellow, blue, and green, bubbles or circles above the head, street art by gregos

below: More 3D heads, this time it’s Mr. Serieux with 5 green stars, Mr. Affreux, Mr. Soleil with his yellow rays of light, and Mme Lune with an orange crescent moon that looks like an orange banana or a piece of canteloupe.

4 faces, 3 D, made of plaster, painted, on an outside wall, street art, labelled as Mr. Serieux, Mr. Affreux, Mme Lune and Mr. Soleil.

below: Small cat skeleton graffiti by Mr. Byste

small graffiti of a cat with cat skeleton showing

below: The cafe may be missing an A but it’s got a heart, if you can work your way through the maze to reach it.

cafe and chinese restaurant on rue des deux boules, with street art painting beside it, a red heart inside a black and white maze

below: It’s all about the Journey, by studiojonesie, aka Amy Jones

two street art painting, on the right are blue and white flowers on link background with the words it's all about the journey painted underneath. on the left is a person upside down with spray paint can in hand, and word loon

below: It looks like a naked man climbing a mountain of rocks, a long uphill journey.

street art painting of a white silhouette naked man climbing a mountain of multi coloured rocks, with a star at the very top

below: Three little pink and red female forms by Wild Wonder Woman.

three little paste ups on a wall, female form in pink or red, one in middle has a flower in it
portrait of a man that looks like Stevie Wonder, in grey shades, on blue background, street art, black man with short hair and wearing sunglasses, smiling
street art of a man with a red mask over his eyes, behind the bars of a window

stencil graffiti, potrait of a man with the profane words le foutur en marche

below: Rue des Deux Boules is a short street, only one block long. At one end is rue Bertin Poiree where you can find these two little 3D objects stuck to the wall – a gymnast standing on one hand and a striped octopus.

portraits on Rue Lambert

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First, there was this small portrait by Morèje, aka Jérôme Gulon. His street art pieces have mosaic frames made from tiny multicoloured tiles. Back in 2015, he made a series of portraits to honour the people who died in the Charlie Hebdo shooting. These can be seen in a blog post from 2016.

small hand drawn portrait of a young man surrounded by a frame made of many small tiles in different colours

The rest of the portraits on Rue Lambert are part of Rue Meurt D’Art, projects by Jean-Marc Paumier including these; the one on the left strongly resembles the man in the above portrait.

two portraits, with text, on a wall on rue Lambert in Paris, one male and one female, both by Jean Marc Paumier

below: “voyer quelle aurore se leve, un souffle et tout est efface” [see what dawn is rising, one breath and everything is erased”]

portrait of a woman, exterior, collage, street art

below: “Le poete est un voleur de feu” [The poet is a thief of fire]

portrait of a young man on a Paris street

below: “Revons c’est l’heure” [Let’s see it again].

portrait of a man with mustache and bushy beard, black ascot tie and blue jacket, street art, with text, rue meurte d'art

below: “Prenons donc notre place sans la mendier ” [let’s take our place without begging]

portrait of a man, exterior, street art,

below: “L’art est le plus beau des mensonges” [Art is the most beautiful of lies]

street art portrait in blue and brown

Translations were done using Google Translate, therefore there may be errors.
Photos taken June 2022.

Polaroid Guy

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On a little dead end street near Gumpendorfgasse u-bahn station, there is a small series of murals. The most prominent one, is of a man in a black striped long sleeved T-shirt taking a picture with a polaroid camera.

blog_polaroid_guy_mural

To his right are a few images that look like they are the resulting polaroids – part of his collection perhaps.

a small dead end street with street art murals on the buildings on the left side

These images were painted by Jana and JS, a couple who have been painting murals together for many years.

mural on a wall that looks like 3 square polaroid photos. Two are of young women with blond hair standing in front of apartment blocks, and the third is a man who is also taking a polaroid picture

mural that looks like two polaroid pictures. on top is a woman taking a picture, on the bottom is a portrait of an older Asian man in a red cap and red jacket

Photos taken June 2022

three murals on Talimhane Sokak

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In a small area where Resit Efendi Sk. ends at Talimhane Sk. in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul, there are three large murals.

below: Two Polish artists, SEPE (aka Michal Wrega) and chazme (aka Daniel Chazme), painted. If you follow the links to their instagram pages, you will see that SEPE’s work is with faces and figures while chazme’s style is very geometric.

large mural on a sand coloured wall, 4 groups of people approach a central building made of many box like sections, each group from a different side

below: A stark mural in black and white showing vehicles falling through an opening in the sky is the work of M-City aka Mariusz Waras (painted in 2014).

a black and white mural by m-city showing jeep type vehicles with white stars on the sides that are piling up after falling through an opening in the sky

close up of part of a black and white mural by m-city showing jeep type vehicles with white stars on the sides that are piling up after falling through an opening in the sky

below: The last of the three murals is this blue bird with orange feet. It was painted in 2018 by Ukranian artist Alex Maxsiov. It is titled, “Turkish Tea” – perhaps because this bird (like the seagulls seen around Istanbul) has landed on a table with a glass of tea and a plate with unfinished food on it.

a mural of a blue bird with orange feet and beak, on a table, a glass cup of tea is there too
close up of painting of blue coloured bird with orange beak, on a mural

Photos taken early June 2022

Kamenne Namestie

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… is a public space in Bratislava that is mostly parking lot. It is also home to a few murals.

below: Mural by tankpetrol, painted in 2018 as part of that year’s Bratislava Street Art Fest

a man in grey clothes walks past a kiosk selling drinks, snacks, and such things. behind it is a building with a large mural on the side. in the mural, a hand is holding a photo of part of a face on what looks like a ripped piece of paper. the eyes and nose are visible. the mural was painted by tank petrol

close up of face in a mural, a hand is holding a photo of part of a face on what looks like a ripped piece of paper. the eyes and nose are visible. the mural was painted by tank petrol

below: This mural was created in 2020 by Cart’1.

mural, a character in a white puffy suit is using forced air to hang blue wall paper. paper has pattern of words ego and vanity in white

below: The blue wallpaper has a pattern that is made of the words ‘vanity’ and ‘ego’ repeated hundreds of times.

close up of character in cart 1 mural about wall papering in blue

below: ‘Rozjimanie’ by Fin DAC

large, tall, mural of a red woman, title of Rozjimanie, by Irish artist Fin DAC. bottom part of mural is obscured by cars in a parking lot.

large, tall, mural of a red woman, title of Rozjimanie, by Irish artist Fin DAC.

 below: Daor and Dano, painted these two partial faces

two womens faces on a wall, painted mural

below: Above the coffee shop this statuesque woman, seemingly carved from stone, reaches towards the birds.

below: čo nás ľudí robí krásnymi [loosely: what makes us people beautiful] by Sasha Chagina and Jano Wajcko Vajsabel. It is a promotion by DM, i.e. an advertisement. But it looks so much like a street art mural! You might not agree with it’s inclusion on this page but you’ll have to admit that it has blurred the line between “commerical” and “artwork”.

large mural of a large group of people, a very diverse group, crossing at a crosswalk

on Christophgasse

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in the Margareten district of Vienna…

below: A collaboration between Dutch artist nilsRVA (aka Nils Westergard) and local Viennese artist emilone (aka emanuel jesse) produced this peaceful looking sleeper.

below: The woman on the right with the curly hair was painted by Paola Delfin.

below: Some more emilone pieces – unfortunately with some graffiti added.

below: Down beside the man in the baseball cap, there is text, p.phobia. Is this a “signature” of the person who painted that man? The righthand side of the artwork is more emilone.

The painting are from 2014 and 2015. The photos were taken June 2022.

older women

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This mural, a large photograph, has not weathered all that well. It’s title is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and the artist is Bifido. On her website, Bifido says this about the artwork: “This work should have been called “selfportrait”, as it express how I’m feeling in this moment in the sight of the world. Working, talking, scoping, breathing Tirana atmosphere, I really realized, for the very first time, how it feels to be a woman caught in the grips of this male chauvinist society, to be a woman physically and mentally oppressed by men. As the work progressed, the sense of it changed revealing, maybe, the real reason that. I come back home, to Italy, more aware of something that makes me feel heartbroken, hoping one day something will change.” Please take a look at her website, especially if you want to see the photo in its original form.

By now you may have guessed that the word older in the title of this post has nothing to do with the age of the woman in the mural but in the condition of the mural itself. The Bifido work above is from either 2018 or 2019. Of the same vintage, is a mural by HazardUK

It’s title is “Motra Tone Revisited” which refers to a famous painting, “Motra Tone” also known as ”The Albanian Monalisa”, that was painted by Kole Idromeno (1860-1939).

below: This is a picture of that famous painting (found online, credit: public domain, wikipedia). She hangs in the National Art Gallery in Tirana.