Street Art - Street Smart, got to make you smile

Sunday was one of those champagne days of life that you try and store in your mental photograph album of life to flick back to when days are grey and cheerless.  A day we spent on the boat on Sydney Harbour with a group of friends.  Summer seems endless at the moment with still enough heat here for endless swims off the back of the boat and that blissful sensation of sitting in the sun with salt drying on the skin.  We were moored off a beach underneath the old Quarantine Station at the top of the Harbour, with lunch that great standby of British picnic food, Coronation chicken complete with a glass of Rose and a great sail home.   Difficult to pick up and go to work, school and normal routines of the week – but fortunately my days are brightened by the imagination and brilliance of the artists and creators who have created two separate forms of street art in Sydney.

How can you not smile at these Rhinos that are dotted round Sydney CBD as part of Taronga Zoo’s Wild Rhinos sculpture trail to raise funds for their Black Rhino Conservation Programme? -https://taronga.org.au/wild-rhinos

North Sydney Council is also bringing a smile to my face every time I see one of their brilliant new look traffic signal boxes.  They are taking these boring, green, rectangular boxes that are such a mundane part of the urban streetscape that you never even really notice them and with the help of local artists, Karen Atkins, Jessica Birk and Ad Long, turning them into colourful works of art that bring interest and zing to the street. http://www.northsydney.nsw.gov.au/Community_Services/Arts_Culture/Public_Art/Colouring_our_Habitat

THE BEFORE VERSION

Jessica Birk

Jessica Birk

Karen Atkins

My particular favourite is this envelope box that is addressed to the Neutral Bay Senior Citizens Club, it has cheered my day every day I drive past it, the colour and wit make me smile.  

Ad Long

Ad Long

The downside is that I am incandescent with rage about the fact that some Goth of a Vandal has decided this would be a suitable site for their pathetic self promotion graffiti.   Go and look for a green traffic signal box next time, there are plenty around, rather than ruining a piece of art.  Fortunately it’s too nice a day here to be cross for long and what better than a geometric rhino to make my day and if this detail from Karen Atkins' take on Sydney Harbour doesn't make you smile then nothing will.

Karen Atkins