Having fun with English on Antwerp walls.
below: Appealing peeling orange peels – the orange is a-peeling.
below: GreenPeace has a green piece of pizza… or are those green dots green peas?
Photos taken October 2023
playing with words
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Tag Archives: murals
painted on the parking structures
Parking garages, especially large structures, can usually be described as boring and ugly, i.e. they aren’t great to look at. Downtown Tampa has a large parking structure that was decorated with street art murals back in 2015.
below: William F. Poe Parking Garage on North Ashley Drive is now home to “Stay Curious” a series of murals by artists Tes One (aka Leon Bedore) and Bask (aka Ales Hostomsky), with contributions by the Vitale Brothers.
below: The text says “Stay Curious”
below: Nearby is a Marriott Hotel (at the corner of North Franklin and East Tyler) and this is what they did to their parking garage.
below: Another corner of another garage
below: It’s not a mural or a painting but it’s a colorful and fascinating way of covering the exterior of a parking structure. This is DOTS, by sculptor and artist Christian Moeller and it consists of 119 aluminum alloy discs. Each disc is almost 6 feet across and weighs about 40 pounds. They cover the parking part of a new University of Tampa residence building.
After a quick google search on parking garage art, I have decided that this has become a “thing”. Very trendy by the looks of it.
Photos taken April 2022
downtown heroes and a chicken too
Seen in Tampa
below: A mural by Audrey Jennifer and Matt Kress
below: This mural was painted in time for Super Bowl LV which was held in Tampa, and featured a Tampa team in the game. Sport and music combined with a star from each – Ray Charles on the left.
below: And on the right, Number 12 for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, quarterback Tom Brady.
below: He even wore a mask for Covid! This portrait of Tom Brady was painted by Kyle Holbrook.
below: Tampa Bay also has a hockey team!, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Number 45 for the Buccaneers is linebacker Devin White. This “Champa Bay” mural was a collaboration between Kyle Holbrook and Ania Amador.
below: “All for Love!” says the rooster (chicken?) on the side of Branscomb Hall at The Portico (part of Hyde Park United Methodist Church) although the title of the mural is actually “For the Love of THIS City”. It was painted by Michelle Sawyer and Tony Krol who work together under the name Illsol.
below: It features local wildlife living in harmony… like alligators and herons and … chickens? Apparently Ybor City chickens are famous?! This one looks a little grouchy.
Photos taken April 2022
on a Bushwick corner
On St. Nicholas Ave where it meets Scott Avenue….
A number of artists created this tribute to David Jude Jolicoeur, who rapped as Trugoy the Dove in the trio De La Soul. He passed away in February 2023 at the age of 54. It was painted during the 2023 Bushwick Block Party this past summer and involved a number of artists (Enjoy Hads, Six Million Dollar Steve, Mr. Makro, Brandy, and Sure78 and more? )
below: On one of the walls there is a portrait of Biggie Smalls (1972-1997) also known as The Notorious B.I.G., a rapper and hip hop artist who was born and raised in Brooklyn. It was painted by Danielle Mastrion
below: Up high on the roof, figures by stik, holding hands and looking down at passers by.
below: “La Bodega” was a collaborative effort by Zack Curtis and Danny Cortes
Photos taken August 2023
Inti, Aurora and the Heerlen sign
A title that succinctly describe this scene:
below: “Creed” by Chilean artist Inti
A woman, Madonna-like? or in a Muslim head scarf?….. holding an olive branch which is a symbol of peace, but she’s wearing an ammo belt around her waist.
Aurora refers to the buildings covered in the brightly coloured stripes, a work by the Spanish artist collective Boa Mistura. It includes the test, “In het hart van elke winter leeft een trillende lente” which translates to “In the heart of every winter lives a vibrating spring”. The artwork covers 228 apartment units and is probably the largest mural in Europe.
In front of the apartment complex is a large 3-D sign spelling the name of the city, Heerlen. When it was first installed, it was orange. Now it has been enhanced with some DazeTwo ravens and crows at one end ….
…. and the ending letters were decorated by Amber Delahaye with other elements from nature such as mushrooms, butterflies, and flowers.
NOTE: The quote on the buildings is taken from one by Kahlil Gibran which says: “In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn”
Photos taken October 2023
More Heerlen murals were in the previous post, “more Heerlen birds”
more Heerlen birds
There are many murals and other great street art works in Heerlen. There are too many for one blog post so I have tried to find a way to show them in small sections that make some sort of sense. My previous post (the workmen and the black birds) contained photos of the ravens or crows that DazeTwo features in most of his work so in this post I will continue with more bird themed murals.
below: Two snuggling bluebirds painted by Daniel MacLloyd
below: A massive heron with a collection of items that help represent Heerlen, a mural best seen from the other side of the railway tracks, or better yet from a train as it enters the city. The “Heerlen Heron” was painted seven years ago by Vincent Lancee and Dave de Leeuw.
below: Another collaborative effort, this time DazeTwo teamed up with fellow Heerlen artist, Ivan Sanda (aka MF Ivan), to produce an image of a woman whose head is also that of a raven.
below: High above the street a yellow bird in a cage. The canary in the coal mine? by Collin van der Sluijs.
below: Dzia’s little blue chicken on Willemstraat.
below: And last, a quick bird head in the semi darkness under a bridge.
Photos taken October 2023
Platanenweg ten + one
The “If Walls Could Speak” festival in 2019 was an Amsterdam Street Arts (ASA) project whose aim was to create 10 large murals, each on the end of a row of apartments on Platanenweg in Amsterdam Oost. These are the ten murals.
below: First, “In Case of Lost Childhood, Break Glass” by Leon Keer.
below: This mural is a Sjem Bakkus & IVES.one collaboration and is titled “De appel valt niet ver van de boom.” (in English: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree).
below: A mural by British artist Dan Kitchener of a Japanese Geisha as well as a street scene on a rainy night.
below:aka Painting by Studio Giftig (aka Niels van Swaemen and Kaspar van Leek) – a bare footed woman in mid-air with a few pigeons.
below: A bird with pink, green, and turquoise feathers is keeping an eye on the balcony. It was painted by Dopie.
below: Lots of arms and hands holding boxes in a mural with the title of “Carrying Belongings” by Case Maclaim.
below: A boy under a tree with a creature (dragon?) in his hands. The text says “When it comes to settling disputes, compassion is more useful than magic”. It was painted by German artist Hera (one half of the artistic partnership, Herakut).
below: The symbol of Amsterdam, the three white X’s on a black stripe with a red background. It is based on the city’s coat of arms which features a red shield with a black band and three silver St. Andrew’s crosses. The same design is found on the Amsterdam flag. Mural was painted by Kash (aka Friso Kasher) and Chuck (or Chuckone)
below: This girl and her little pink heart are part of a large mural by Julieta XJF, “Wherever you come from, here you are welcome.”
below: Three of the buildings with the murals on them.
below: “Beter een goede buur, dan een verre vriend.” (English: “Better a good neighbor than a distant friend.”) is the title of this mural by Smug One. 
below: Although it wasn’t part of the 2019 festival, this mural by DFace is across the street from the others. “I feel so incomplete” reads the text. It is actually a few years older than the other murals that I have shown here.
under a Heerlen bridge
There are two murals, bright eye catching red helping to hold up a bridge in Heerlen. They were both painted by Brazillian artist Finok, aka Raphael Sagarra, in 2014. The first mural is painted in mostly white, red, and green… three masks, a fish, and a chicken-like creature.
On the same bridge, across the street, is another Finok mural. It too is on a red background. Is the fish about to eat the white headed guy? Or like a genie, has he just been conjured from the fish’s mouth? Whatever the backstory is, the white headed guy looks rather frightened.
photos taken October 2023
Ybor City murals
Ybor City is an historic neighbourhood close to downtown Tampa Florida. It was founded in the 1880s and was home to a large immigrant population, many of whom were employed in cigar making factories. The cigar industry, and the city, flourished from the 1890s to the Great Depression of the 1930s when demand for cigars dropped.
below: Viva Ybor! Painted by Chico Garcia in 2012. It features a portrait of Vincente Martinez Ybor who brought the cigar making industry to this part of Florida.
below: Faded paintings of Ybor City scenes
below: The 1920s – with old cars
below: Historic buildings
below: The far righthand side of the mural
below: Rolling cigars
Photos taken in April 2022
Bushwick bears, bees, and other animals
below: Bees with pink and blue translucent wings on a brick wall with a bear keeping a watchful eye on them.
below: Honeybee
below: A mural by Hiraku with cats
…. or perhaps humans in cat costumes. Love and peace and a frilly tutu.
below: More cats, cats climbing up the wall, signed by eunice.music (aka Eunice Brito) and kosuke_james
below: A concerned looking cat – maybe the ball and chain around his leg is going to be a problem?
below: The yellow and red background pattern was painted by 7 Line Art Studio (aka Duel Ris) and I suspect that the dog was added later by someone else.
below: A second dog, this one in bold shapes and bright primary colours.
Photos taken August 2023
Eyes on the Streets 