Huatoki Plaza

Huatoki Plaza was a retail building that was removed to expose the covered stream beneath it. New Plymouth made a reasonably boring urban space for people to ignore. One day, an artist put up a paste-up image of a face to try to make it better. It probably did because these days, the Plaza has several artists' work on various buildings that face it. I've sketched one of the buildings a few times and currently has artwork by Phil 'Suspect' Jones. His studio is actually in the Plaza and his murals are all around town.

James Lane

This tall and thin building forms half of James Lane and two sides have street art on it. You can see a biplane on top and the bottom has a intricately painted wooden fence alley scene. I thought that the alley scene is a pretty good job but a friend said that maybe the artists did too good of a job. The fact that it's painted very well may give it a bit of resistance to being painted over with something new and prevent the natural image rotation that usually comes with urban art. Of course, the buildings making up the lane might not be that earthquake safe. If they end up needing replacement, it sort of makes the artwork time limit argument irrelevant. It's unlikely that any new building will have wall space put aside for spray cans. 

(Here's roughly the same scene, but from a slightly different angle done in 2012. Spot the differences between these two pictures.)

Street art brings birdsong to Karangahape Road

The streets around Karangahape Road were taken over this weekend by the All Fresco street art festival.

I spent a sunny hour and a half on Poynton Street (by the fire station) drawing Charles Williams, aka Phat 1, working on this piece on the facade of an art deco apartment. If you've ever seen Charles' work you'll recognise his signature style of enormous luxuriously painted (sprayed) native birds like this Tieke/Stitchbird. The bird's song is represented by a colourful floral design by Lady Diva that wafts up the street towards Pitt Street bringing the whole street to life.

The tiny figures seen on a cherry picker off to the left are Misery and Tomtom flat-out on an enormous piece growing up the wall of a lift shaft. If you're Monday morning commute takes you around the streets of K-rd your morning will be that bit more colourful.