Changes at Broadview and Eastern

Posted on May 27, 2023 by Mary C

This row of old two storey row houses has been vacant for years. Recently the developer that owns the properties provided a couple of Toronto artists the opportunity paint the exterior. This is the result.

If you look carefully, you can see that Nick Sweetman and Luvs (aka Moises) have painted the word CHANGE across the front of the buildings. As a theme for a mural on a redevelopment site in a city bursting at the seams with such sites, change seems very appropriate.

below: I’ve played with the colours a bit to highlight some of the letters. You should be able to see C, H, and A across this image.

But the mural is more than colour and letters. There are three animals featured here – pigeon, raccoon, and coyote – all of which have adapted to changes and now thrive in urban environments.

below: A blue pigeon

below: A pinkish marroonish reddish raccoon

below: A coyote with a dead leaf and new buds.

Funding provided by Streetcar Developments

below: The houses to the north….

Photos taken 25 May 2023

South Avenue scenes

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Mary C

Murals and graffiti seen along South Ave in Rochester.

South Avenue in Rochester New York, older brick buildings

below: Conor Harrington Untitled (Fight Club Series)

black and white mural by Conor Harrington of two men fighting, a bit of red blood

below: Floating in a pink sky over a sea of imaginary snakes and fish

mural of a person reclining in a cloud in a pink sky hovering over a sea of snakes and fishes

below: “You’re a Shining Star no matter who you are”. A jar full of shiny positivity by local artist Shawn Dunwoody.

street art mural, on yellow brick wall, a large mason jar with words shining star on it, text on mural says you're a shining star no matter who you are

below: A group of flowers with faces as their centers.

mural on wall, flowers with many petals and each flower has a face in the center

below: Maladjusted Mike is stuck on a pole. Apparently he’s from Seriously Disgusting Comics.

below: No room for Fascism

below: A pink Neptune-like sea creature ruling over his underwater worlds, by Bile, 2013

below: Part of Nova’s shapes and colours.

below: “LIFE in abundance comes only through great LOVE”

below: Whirls and swirls of colour in an abstract painting by Mike Ming, 2013

below: A fox and bunny by Mr. PVRT aka Justin Suarez

below: Adam Francey’s fantastic detailed mural with birds and faces and a couple of words – seek, understand.

below: “Big brother is watching you and he’s bored”.

below: Avocado face, by Stefan Fella

below: Walking white teddy bear

below: The old and the new – root beer and birds.

below: A large egret? (or shorebird of one kind or another) and frog. Do egrets eat frogs?

on the side of a store, a large mural of a stork and a green frog

sculptures on te sidewalk on south ave in rochester

Photos taken May 2023

The End

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Mary C

of endangered animals in Paris – animal portraits by a nameless stencil artist (pochoiriste) who signs his work The End

below: Orang-outan (orangutan) vs bulldozer.

below: Colourful bird, La calliste multicolore or in English, Multicolored tanager. It lives in the the mountains of Colombia.

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, a bird, the multicoloured tanager from Colombia, by The End

below: Lynx

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, boreal lynx

below: Rhino and jockey in a piece titled “Race of Life”

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, a rhino or rhinocerous, with a jockey riding on its back

below: Bengal tiger

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, bengal tiger

below: A closer look at the tiger

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, close up look at the tiger's face

below: Panda

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, black and white panda

below: Bald eagle

coloured stencil street art portrait of an animal, bald eagle in flight, carrying a package in its beak

below: Lion

under the Hunter Street Bridge

Posted on September 30, 2022 by Mary C

In Peterborough Ontario the Hunter Street bridge crosses the Otonabee River. The west end of the bridge is in downtown while the east ends at James Stevenson Park. It’s in the park that you’ll find the paintings.

Back in 2015 and 2016 two of the arches under the Hunter Street bridge were painted. Nogojiwanong is an Ojibwa word for “place at the end of the rapids” and it was their name for the area that is now Peterborough.

Hunter Street bridge fromJames Stevenson park, grass in front, picnic tables under the arches

Facing the Nogojiwanong mural, and not visible in the above photo, are three animals – deer, beaver, and lion. Now the town is referred to as Electric City. Why? Because on May 24, 1884 Peterborough was the first town in Canada to have electric street lighting on downtown streets. Power was provided by the London Street hydroelectric water plant, also built in 1884.

arch under a bridge, street art painting of jumping deer with magenta antlers, a beaver, a log, and some leaves,

The murals on this arch were painted by Kirsten McCrea, with the help of Vicky Jackson (at least that’s what it looks like in the bottom right of this photo).

a street art painting of a lion with a curly mane and long tail, painted by Kirsten McCrea in yellow and black

from a mural in Peterborough Ontario by Jill Stanton, a picture of bloodroot plant, leaves, flowers, and roots under the ground

Bloodroot is a plant native to the Peterborough area. It gets its name from the fact that it bleeds red when the stems are cut. According to the text in the mural (bottom right, below), bloodroot propagates through a process called myrmecochory which is seed dispersal by ants. The seeds have external “appendages” that are rich in food that ants like. Once this food is consumed, the seed is discarded and can germinate.

This mural was painted in 2016 by Jill Stanton with the help of Andrew Ihamaki.

Photos taken September 2022

boxed in Tirana

Posted on August 18, 2022 by Mary C

below: Hippity hipster rabbit with sunglasses and tatts.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, a hipster with rabbit head, wearing sunglasses and with tattoos on his arm

below: Sargent Pepper theme, character in green with drums – Ringo Starr from the Beatles.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, Sargent Pepper cartoon character in green and playing drums, like Ringo Starr

below: A second Sargent Pepper character but this time it’s George Harrison in yellow. I didn’t see the other Beatles but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are in the city somewhere.

below: A child rides on the back of a white goose as it flies in front of a boat. The boy, in the red hat, is Nils and he has been bewitched by an elf so that he is only a few inches tall. The goose is his transportation and together they have adventures. Nils saves the goose and some ducks from a hungry fox; he also rescues a baby squirrel from a hunter. The Nils books were written in the early 1900s by Selma Lagerlof (Swedish), the first woman to win a Nobel prize in literature.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, large white goose flying over a wooden boat

below: Beavis and Butthead from the 1990s animated TV series.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, television characters from the 1990s, Beavis and Butthead, sitting on a red couch

below: Green Frankenstein.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, portrait of Frankenstein with green face

below: Blue woman with a feather

below: His arms are covered with tattoos but the face has been defaced (or was very strange to begin with?) so I am having trouble figuring out who the character is.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana,

below: Angry bird on the right, standing beside another hipster rabbit. The words stencilled on the box, “Nidermarrja e Dekorit Bashkia Tirane”, roughly translates to Decoration Enterprise, Tirana Municipality. There is a Dekori – Bashkia Tirane instagram page that features some of the artists whose works are found Tirane.

two painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, the one on the right is a red angry bird from the game

below: Chuck Norris

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, portrait of man with text that says Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice

below: Quentin Tarantino.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, portrait of Quentin Tarantino

below: A tiger growls at the passing traffic

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, tiger with open mouth

below: An older man with many birds in his beard, inspired by a poem by Edward Lear:
” There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.”

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, man with large grey beard with birds in it

below: A rooster on a cat on a dog on a donkey in the night. This time it is a story that is referenced here, “The Town Musicians of Bremen”. Although the story dates from the 12th century it was first published in 1819 by the Brothers Grimm. It is the tale of 4 older animals no longer useful on their farms who meet up and decide to go to the city of Bremen to be musicians. They never get there but they have other adventures instead (you’ll have to read the story to get the details!)

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, silhouettes of animals stacked on top of a donkey. A rooster sits at the top. Cat and dog in the middle, night time

below: Another story – here it is Peter Pan and the Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, flying off to Never Never Land.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, yellow box with black silhouettes of Peter Pan and the three children flying through the sky

below: Bob Marley in front of Hops.

painted sidewalk box on a sidewalk in Tirana, portrait of reggae musician Bob Marley

Spirit Stories under Old Mill

Posted on July 16, 2022 by Mary C

In Toronto, subway tracks cross above the Humber River at Old Mill station. The concrete pillars that support the subway bridge have been covered with many watery blue First Nations themed murals.

Philip Cote Anishinaabe mural of water and spirits on concrete pillar

below: The artist, Philip Cote, described the story behind this image on the ArtworxTO website (see link); like all cultures, the Anishinaabe have an origin story. In the beginning there was just Spirit. “And that spirit decided to send signals out into the universe and waited for a response. And when no response happened that spirit called the signals back and said, “As you come back to me, create light in the universe”. And at that moment they had light and dark in the universe. And that is the beginning of the Anishinaabe cosmology. Everything for Anishinaabe is made of light and dark. Everything we look at has a spirit, everything, the ground, the rocks, the sand, the trees, the birds, the plants, everything is… and even our sun and our Mother Earth and the moon, they all have a spirit.”

The blues of the water, the Humber River, were painted by Kwest. Water is the Underworld in Ahishinaabe cosmology and the Guardians of this Underworld are the fish. Another artist, Jarus aka (Emmanuel Jarus), painted the fish.

Philip Cote Anishinaabe mural of water and spirits on concrete pillar, large grouper fish in the water surrounding the central medallion

Most of the paintings have a well defined circle. This is the boundary between water and earth, between the spirit world and the physical world. But there are connections between the two worlds – all living things are connected and we are all connected to the Spirit World.

Philip Cote Anishinaabe mural of water and spirits on concrete pillar, a mountain of ice in the background

Philip Cote Anishinaabe mural of water and spirits on concrete pillar, a male and a female figure

Philip Cote Anishinaabe mural of water and spirits on concrete pillar, an otter swimming in the water, looking below the surface

Philip Cote Anishinaabe mural of water and spirits on concrete pillar, a turtle shaped animal with a bear head with open mouth trying to catch fish

new murals on South Wood Street, Chicago

Posted on August 20, 2019 by Mary C

A couple of stretches of concrete wall in Pilsen have recently been opened up to street artists in Chicago. One of these is on South Wood Street immediately north of the railway tracks (by West 15th Street). This past week, August 2019, a group of artists painted the wall. This is a selection of the murals that now adorn that wall.

below: Some of the new murals

a person walks past a wall covered with many murals beside a street, South Wood Street

below: As you emerge from under the bridge, this is the first mural that you see on the west side of Wood Street.

a mural that is partially under a railway bridge, metal supports for the bridge in the picture,

a mural on South Wood Street, a person with a wide brimmed hat carrying a ghetto blaster on her shoulder

below: Peace mural by @sob_e (aka Eliza Riley Delgado)

two murals on a wall beside a street, one has the word peace

below: Warrior City Tribe by Mero

warrior city tribe mural on a wall on Wood street in Pilsen

two murals on a wall, both with birds

below: Breaking down walls and letting the rats and vermin out.

two murals on a wall, painted like hole in the wall with rats, cat, and skunk

below: Two alligators (Crocodiles?), one break dancing and one stepping out in a hoodie and bling.

mural on a concrete wall in Pilsen, two alligators or crocodiles, one in a hoodie and one standing on one front leg and smiling

two murals on a wall, one is mostly red and has a wizard cap with a star on it and the other is mostly yellow

below: Sponge Bob Square Pants tries his hand at singing while Bart Simpson spins.

mural on South Wood street in pilsen illinois, a dance scene with an angry sponge bob square pants singing while Bart Simpson is the D J with two turn tables, a man is trying to dance

a small tree in front of two murals on a wall

below: On the left is a mural by Yo Loco

two murals on a wall

below: by @All_CITY_COWBOY, helicopter, music, and mayhem in the city.

a mural by @all_city_cowboy, helicopter, shadow silhouette figures

below: With the green lizard character standing by

two murals on a wall, one with green lizard character

Perry Street, Phibs

Posted on December 8, 2018 by Mary C

In Collingwood (Melbourne), on Perry Street, there is large mural painted by Phibs in 2015. A portion of the bottom of it has been tagged over. I only have two photos of it (taken December 2018), each is roughly half of the mural.

On the right side:

upper part is part of a mural by phibs in blues and greys of fish, drawn with lines and circles, the bottom part is a large blue tag.

and on the left side.

a street art liion in blues, stylized, also a fish, on a wall under a window and beside a door, by phibs in 2015, on a street in Melbourne Australia

This is a screenshot from google street view (filmed August 2017) which shows the right hand side of the mural as it once was.

screen shot of google street view of the phobs mural on perry street in melbourne

Link to Phibs’s website

little things on Barcelona walls

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Mary C

Barcelona Spain, April 2018,
pasteups, stickers, stencils and other little pieces of graffiti.

below: The green creature (with Ore on its tail) seems to want to eat the heart. The tiger appears on walls in many Spanish cities although sometimes he’s just a black and white head. He’s the creation of Bloo. Last, an orange crab with eye lashes on one eye.

some pasteups and other small pieces of graffiti on a concrete wall. A tiger, a heart, an orange crab.

below: RAF Urban, young boy

paste up of a boy's head and shoulders by raf urban

below: Another face, this time a woman looking up. She’s not quite obscured by the paint around her.

yellow arrow, pointing to a pasteup of a womans face on a wall

below: Pointed

a stencil on a wall, a hand with index finger pointing, points to a metal door that is covered with a mural

below: “Lo importante esta en tu cabeza” on empty cans. As it turns out, this the name of an album by the group La Gran Orquesta Republicana. Rough translation is: The important is in your head.

empty cans covered with black and each with a blue letter on them, the cans are put together on a wall so the letters make words.

below: More cans on walls. This time they say “mensajes de amor en tiemps de guerra, mensajes de paz con la mente guerrera”. [messages of love in times of war, messages of peace with the warrior mind]. This can art is the work of an anonymous couple. Many examples of their work can be seen on instagram with the hashtag #llaunesbcn

empty cans covered with white, with black letters, one per can, on them. The cans are mounted on a wall in with letters forming words that say mensajes de amor en tiemps de guerra, mensajes de paz con la mente guerrera

below: Funny Bone and a little hairy chested, hat wearing, tattooed fellow with love on his tummy (or lower).

stickers on a door that has a red tag on it.

below: Güelcom was an Argentinian movie, a romcom from 2011. Because of my poor Spanish as well as the rip in the paper, I can’t tell what the second word is.

pasteup of a woman with blue hands reaching out for her face, also the words, guelcom

below: A black and white paste up.

pasteup of a man's face, wearing black sunglasses, also his face is covered with black lines

below: Mowcka “uniendo tus partes” and others

stickers and paste ups on a wall

below: Very, very with symmetry, as a red rose lies on the sidewalk.

stencil, in purple, words mucho mucho with the second one being uder the first, and upside down, also a stenciled red rose lying under the words, arranged such that the flower looks like its lying on the sidewalk,

below: Smile! Anthropomorphic rabbit photographer in blue

blue rabbit with a camera

… and red

red rabbit with a camera

below: somiatruites, Catalan for daydreamer

small painting on a gold coloured wall, exterioe, six green arms with fingers stretching out from a central reddish face
below: Utility box. JERC = Joventuts d’Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Young Republican Left of Catalonia). They support independence for Catalonia which is the part of Spain that includes Barcelona.

utility box with painted political statements graffiti

below: The Hulk. Even he is locked out.

The Hulk

below: Watering can and plant pot faces.

2 small pictures on white board on outside wall

below: Another collection of small paste ups on a wall. There’s that tiger again. A blue unicorn and a very large insect share the upper left corner. That little black and white figure in the bottom left is a flying peanut, a character by Hadsawit that really gets around.

graffiti pasteups on a wooden door

many pasteups on a wall

below: The Raven, or at least a large black bird

stencil, black bird eating something

metal utility box on a sidewalk beside a stone wall, drawing of the upper part of a man, in black line drawing.

old wood door covered with blue tag and a sticker with a red flower

street art animals, Bristol

Posted on December 26, 2017 by Mary C

More Bristol street art
This time, focusing on those featuring animals

below: A debonair lion stands in the doorway, by Alex of lucas-antics

a lion standing in a doorway, by lucas_antics, green vest and green hat, holding a cane, tail curled up and a white mouse on the tail

below: Another mural by Alex covers the front of The Little Shop on Cheltenham Road. This time, she has painted bunny rabbits and pineapples.

bunny rabbits and pineapples on a blue store front, The LIttle Shop on Cheltenham ROad in Bristol

close up of mural - bunny rabbits and pineapples on a blue store frnt, The LIttle Shop on Cheltenham ROad in Bristol

below: A red dinosaur

street art mural, animals, red dinosaur, with some text graffiti too

below: A bird mural by Aspire

street art mural of a bird, blue and grey and black

below: Another Aspire bird, a robin on a tree branch. Beside it is an orange telephone box by D7606 (instagram)

a robin on a branch, mural, on green background, on a wall beside another street art piece of an ornge British telephone box

below: Bite the hand that feeds you. Someone is missing an arm!… it looks like it might by Ronald McDonald’s arm?

a graffiti fox, standing on two legs, with words, bite the hand that feeds you.

graffiti, cat head,red lips with green tongue sticking out, plys yellow triangle and blue circle

pink pink graffiti on a brick wall beside sign that says Princess Road

below: The ice cream in the cone is looking horrified as the teeth and beak of a yellow bird-like creature hovers above him. There is also an owl that was painted by Dscreet (Australian). The words between the bottom two windows say Burning C which is a reference to Burning Candy Crew, the group that Dscreet once belonged to.

a yellw bird creatre with a long beak, an owl and an ice cream cone

birds on a wire, silohuettes on blue background

blue cat like ceature with gold crown, sitting in window sill with two clay flower pots in front of it

Eyes on the Streets

and feets on the ground. Graffiti, street art and murals seen while wandering the streets and alleys of our colourful world.

Tag Archives: animals