below: Warburton Lane in central Melbourne was full of stickers and paste-ups including this happy little octopus with a zigzag smile
below: This pile of animals by Kaffeine – with a pink pig in a jaunty vest on top – covers a double door and more
below: About the graffiti on the left – one of the characters that often appears in Mr. Dimples graffiti such as this one, is the fellow with the funny rectangular head – with a button for one eye and a stitched X for the other.
below: A D7606 crayon writes something on the wall while two big eyes watch. But I’m worth it!
below: “Until the wind from the west brings you back again” is in the middle, to the left of a very red T-bonez from Urban Ninja Squadron (peace man!). On the other side there is a cat collage on sheet music by chacha_doune (aka Cha). It’s difficult to see but the train headed your way has “God Save the Queen” written on one of its front corners – That paste up seems to be a collaboration between D7606 and Voxx Romana.
below: White chickens
below: That’s the biggest carrot that I have ever seen! … and the skinniest ankles!
below: … Safety pins and a lot of piercings! This crazy pink haired punk emu is full of holes! Painting by John Murray.
below: Meet Nancy – another John Murray emu
below: This is Effie; she’s obviously related to Nancy!
below: A little bit real in the midst of a lot a fantasy. By Lukas Kasper.
below: More mixing of reality and fantasy – human, animal, and robot with a disturbing outcome.
below: High red shoes and not much else
below: mmm
below: A lone fisherman surrounded by barbed wire.
below: Angry suburbia
below: mmm
below: Mr. Dimples again
below: Neftnik’s young woman wears a green outfit with leggings that are blue with red polka dots.
below: That’s a bomb?
below: Up, up, and away – that’s one way for a ladybird to fly away home!
below: A jumble of slaps
below: Peppa Pig, Nemo, a happy flower, and a banana with a face… and more.
Kiefernstrasse translates to Pine tree street… it is a street in Dusseldorf that has history. It is lined with apartment blocks that started life as homes for workers in the local factories steel works in the late 1800s. Some were damaged during the war. In the mid 1900s they became home to squatters and other “left wing” groups. Now many of them have been fixed up and/or covered with large colourful murals.
below: He’s hiding behind a tree now – a mural that M05K and Johanna OLGA painted in 2013
below: Bare feet on long skinny legs stick out of pink pants.
below: At street level, groups of strange characters in black outfits are standing around. Except for the little one, they are all wearing hats shaped like pyramids.
below: There are quite a few signs that help tell the story of Kiefernstrasse. The headline on the poster below is ” 1992 Wandbilder sind lebendige Kunstwerke” (= Murals are living works of art) and the article talks about 1992 and how it was the year that Klaus Klinger, Daniel Pulido, and a group of youths painted “Everything’s Bananas” at number 37. This was the first mural on the street; it no longer exists.
below: Daniel MacLloyd painted this large blue bird.
below: This gable is covered by a marine scene – including turtles swimming in the water – was painted by Ami One
below: Bright orange faces!
below: The Dusseldorf monkey is also here.
below: And again!
below: A bright red door, surrounded by….
below: … a long red dragon winding its way through golden clouds.
below: Käferhouse, or Beetle House, by Till Martin Köster and Christian Bolte, 2008. Insects galore! beetles, ants, roaches, bedbugs…. including some with human faces on their backs.
below: One of the many interesting smaller artworks found among the larger murals is this pair of kids in the playground riding their elephants and playing at war, or protest, or being social justice warriors… your choice. Google wants me to believe that it is a Banksy but I am not falling for it.
below: Another social commentary artwork. This time a girl has plenty to eat (and takes a picture of it) while the person beside her goes without.
below: A white unicorn with laser vision – the little white sign painted into the mural says “Laser Rainbow Unicorn & Robocat Rider”. Apparently cats riding unicorns in space is not an unusual theme. The other little sign says “Kevin Gucci” – is that the artist?
below: Strange things are happening on the balcony! There’s even a sheep…. but wait, that’s not a real balcony, instead the artist has employed what is known as “trompe-l’œil style” – it’s painted to look like a wooden balcony structure.
below: At street level, under the balcony seen above, is an alcove for a garage entrance – but it seems like a green police van is parked there already! I wonder what the gnome mechanics are up to!
below: 2007’s addition to the street was a (mostly) monochrome mural that is part puzzle pieces and part little figures. Ben Mathis was responsible for creating the ‘grid’, while MaJo Brothers painted the figures such as this robot holding a cracked egg. Was it dropped? Or is it hatching? 2007.
below: Splotches of blue
below: The characters (animals) in this mural are Marsupilami. They first appeared in the Belgian comic book “Spirou” in 1952 in a story below: The characters (animals) in this mural are Marsupilami. They first appeared in the Belgian comic book “Spirou” in 1952 in a story written by André Franquin. In the story, a man delivers a mysterious package from South America and as it turns out, the package contains a baby Marsupilami. Franquin continued writing about their adventures until the 1970s. In the 1980s the characters were re-invented and found themselves in TV episodes and video games.
below: The next two paintings flank a doorway, one on either side – an equestrian statue (i.e. a man on a horse) and a woman from time gone by but with anachronistic cans of spray paint in her hands.
This image shows another of the articles documenting the history of the area. This one describes an event in 1919 where a train was robbed outside Dusseldorf by a gang of about 30 men, led by “A communist from Kiefernstrasse” known as Steil. He was subsequently shot by the police and died from his wounds.
below: Stencil, boy with a large helmet – ready to be an astronaut. Once upon a time there were a few more details visible in the helmet. This ‘Space Travel’ was made by Seileise aka Tim Ossege.
below: Everyone’s painting these days!
Another poster tells the story of the first Streetfest here in 1982 where the greengrocer’s shop was turned into a cafe with a borrowed sound system.
below: It almost looks like a giant crossword puzzle.
below: Neptune swims upside down
below:The Reds are reaching out, wanting to run? looking for something?
below: He doesn’t look very happy.
below: Jesus carries a goat
below: On an upper wall, a golden Buddha sits and meditates.
below: “Love will tear us apart” more than once.
below: Together in one place, four little pieces by JoinyStreetArt (round white face), sm111le, Karl Heinz Swaggert (hairy fellow on the left), and Metraeda (pink cat). If you have been following this blog, you will probably recognize some of the names and their corresponding styles.
below: Bad Goat, with a strand of green vine and a third eye
below: “Nothing else matters” actually refers to a football club.
This post first appeared in my Toronto blog back in 2019. I am posting here because I have learned that this mural has been painted over.
In Toronto, just south of St. Clair West, Runnymede Road runs under the CP train tracks. In the summer of 2017 the wall on the west side of the underpass a mural was painted by Christopher Ross (aka GAWD). It is a collection of animals, mostly in shades of pink and blue – dragonfly, pigs, birds, and more. Most of the animals are in pairs.
At one end of the mural, this little engine sits on a tree stump.
Sometimes there are silver linings when buildings get demolished. Until recently, this wonderful mural was difficult to get a good look at. Now that there is a vacant lot next door I was able to get a much better picture of it.
The title of the mural is “The Original Family” and it is based on an Anishinaabe creation story. The artist, Philip Cote, has been telling Anishinaabe stories through his mural painting for at least twenty years, including a series of images on the concrete supports of a bridge at Old Mill subway station (see Spirit Stories Under Old Mill in this blog).
Once construction starts on this new building, the mural will become partially obscured again.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
below: Hippity hipster rabbit with sunglasses and tatts.
below: Sargent Pepper theme, character in green with drums – Ringo Starr from the Beatles.
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.
below: Beavis and Butthead from the 1990s animated TV series.
below: Green Frankenstein.
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.
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.
below: Chuck Norris
below: Quentin Tarantino.
below: A tiger growls at the passing traffic
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.”
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!)
below: Another story – here it is Peter Pan and the Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, flying off to Never Never Land.
Eyes on the Streets 