French Artist Turns Urban Spaces Into Mind-Boggling Graffiti Optical Illusions

Armed with a simply can of spray paint, French artist SCAF uses his imagination and mountains of talent to turn abandoned urban spaces into three-dimensional graffiti masterpieces.

Looking at SCAF’s expertly spray-painted trompe l’oeil graffiti artworks, it’s hard to believe that he is a completely self-taught street artist. He never studied art and started experimenting with graffiti in abandoned factories 18 years ago, after being inspired by a colleague at school. He has come a long way since his early days, as you can plainly see, but he continues to practice his skill in abandoned places, like factories, houses and manors, because he feels like his art adds value to such derelict edifices.

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Florist Turns New York Trash Cans into Beautiful Vases Full of Color

If you live in New York City, chances are you’ve already stumbled across a most peculiar sight – a public trash containing a large, colorful arrangement of flowers, making it look like a giant vase. They have been popping up all around the Big Apple, stopping people in their tracks and putting a smile on their faces.

The unusual flower vases are the work of Lewis Miller, a local floral designer who uses leftover flowers and decorative plants from weddings and other events to add a bit of color to the grey, gloomy sidewalks of NYC. He and his team at Lewis Miller Design look for the most attractive garbage cans in the city and get up early in the morning to fill them with dozens of beautiful flower, eventually turning them into huge vases. Following a popular Vogue article on this unique project, Miller and his team have come to be known as the “flower bandits” of New York.

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Amateur Artist Turns Apartment Building into Urban Art Gallery

Dmitry Bochkarev, an amateur artist, from Moscow, Russia, has turned an ugly communist-era apartment building into a colorful art gallery, by covering the walls, staircases and doors with various painted artworks.

While most graffiti artists sneak around to find places where they can exercise their artistic talents, amateur artist Dmitry Bochkarev asked people’s permission before he began painting on their walls and doors. It all began 17 years ago, after Dmitry experienced clinical death. He had a vivid dream that helped him discover his talent for painting, and from then on he started painting the inside of his apartment building, in Moscow’s  Biryulyovo district. Until then, the place was just a grey reminder of the Soviet era, and a victim of littering and ugly graffiti. But once colorful cartoon scenes and nature-inspired landscapes started appearing on the walls, it all stopped. Not even vandals have had the heart to ruin Bochkarev’s artworks, and neighbors say it’s the best thing that ever happened to their community. Residents started smiling to each other again, and they became so proud of their art-covered building that they even organize viewing tours for friends and family.

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Artist Creates Large Scale Portraits by Chipping Away the Plaster Off of Derelict Buildings

Can beauty be created out of destruction and chaos? Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto believes that it can, and offers his incredible chiseled portraits on the side of buildings, as proof.

23-year-old Farto, aka Vhils, grew up in Seixal, on the outskirts of Lisbon, and became interested in graffiti art during the late 1990s. Apparently, at some point that just wasn’t enough for him and he started looking for other ways to express his creativity through urban art. He came up with subtractive art, which involves creating detailed portraits by breaking away pieces of walls, by using various techniques. His amazing works have been chiseled onto various derelict buildings around Europe and featured in exhibitions alongside pieces by world-renowned street artists the likes of Banksy. The young artist hopes his “faces in the city” portraits will inspire people to see beyond what meets the eye.

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An Art Eggcident in Leeuwarden

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if giant eggs started falling from the sky, right in the middle of your city? Of course you haven’t, but Hank Hofstra has and he decided to show the whole world.

Dutch artist Hank Hofstra was tired of looking at boring old Zaailand, the main square of Leeuwarden and one of the largest in the Netherlands, and decided to do something about it. There had been lots of topics on making the landmark more appealing, but nothing had really been done about it. Remembering an old Dutch saying, “To lay down the first egg, you have to start with the first egg”, Hofstra decided to lay the first eight giant eggs, himself.

After meeting with local authorities and companies involved in the Art Eggcident, the artist and his team spent two days spray-painting the eggs, each one around 100 meters in diameter. As you can expect, the giant sunny-side-up eggs immediately drew the attention of passers-by, but reactions were very different. Hours after the Eggcident’s completion, 80% of people who saw it said it was hideous, but now, weeks later, 80% of people say it’s brilliant. Shops around Zaailand Square definitely appreciate Hank’s work, since it bought in tons of tourists and boosted their sales.

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Ben Wilson’s Tiny Chewing Gum Masterpieces

English urban artist Ben Wilson has made it his mission to make the streets of London more colorful, by painting every piece of old chewing gum he can find on the pavement.

Over the last six years, Wilson has been roaming the streets of London, looking for pieces of chewing gum to turn into miniature works of art. Spitting a piece of gum, rather than throwing it away in a bin, or at least using a tissue is definitely the wrong thing to do, but fortunately, an artist like Ben Wilson can turn the whole situation around, using his talent.

Wearing a paint-covered coat and carrying his trusty paint kit, Ben spends most of his days looking for suitable pieces of gum to turn into artworks. He needs them to be a bit old, so that they lack any moisture, then heats them up and applies lacquers. This makes a much better surface for his acrylic paints and hardens the piece of gum. He paints his own designs, but also gladly accepts commissions from passers-by or institutions like the Royal Society of Chemistry, who asked him to paint 118 themed chewing gum artworks, one for each of the known elements.

Each of his beautiful pavement masterpieces takes between a few hours and days to complete, depending on the level of detail. So far, Ben estimates he has painted around 8,000 pieces of gum throughout London, and he doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon, although his passion got him into trouble, a couple of times. He’s been arrested twice, but the charges were eventually dropped, since he wasn’t the one who threw the pieces of gum on the pavement, in the first place.

Ben Wilson’s chewing gum art have made him quite popular around London, and even in distant South Korea, where he was featured on a television show.

 

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Creative Poster Urban Art Spotted in Berlin

This may not be the weirdest thing you see today but I’m sure it’s one of the most inspiring ways of dealing with junk like excess posters.

I hate it when too many posters gather on top of each other, and no one cares to clean them up. I’m thinking I may not be the only one, since someone took matters into their own hands and decided to deal with this poster problem themselves. Instead of pealing away the paper blocks, they decided to carve them into beautiful works of urban art. The artist is unknown, but this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Ypu can find this masterpiece somewhere in Berlin.

 

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Fairytale Urban Art Spotted in the Ukraine

It’s amazing how many incredible artistic wonders go unnoticed, simply because they’re so well hidden that no one knows about them.

This particular artwork is set up at the 13th floor of an Ukrainian apartment building, in Kiev. It’s really hard to describe, and even looking at the amazing photos below, it’s hard to understand the meaning of this installation. The man who took the photos described it as the entrance to a fairytale land, that made him feel like he didn’t belong there. So he just quickly took some photos and quickly got out of there.

To protect the tenants of this Kiev building from some unwanted attention, the photograph didn’t reveal the address of this abstract masterpiece. Intricate colorful moulds cover the walls of this 13th floor, from floor to ceiling, and  the light coming from the ceiling windows creates a truly fantastic atmosphere.

via holy-mozart

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