From Epic to Ridiculous (15 Photos)

Some art makes you feel tiny. Other art turns a detail into a joke.

A fence shadow becomes a roller-coaster track, while an eagle spreads its wings across a tunnel ceiling.

These 15 artworks range from a giant hand rising out of a beach to a drainpipe with two plastic eyes.

More: When Art Makes the Impossible Look Real

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💧 The Water Carrier — By Juandres Vera and Tardor in Riola, Spain 🇪🇸

From the intended viewpoint, the paving appears to open into a rocky stream, with a woman holding a wooden bucket in the water. Juandres Vera and Tardor created the painting as part of a 2025 project bringing images of nature into Riola’s public spaces, around Plaça Mestre Sant Francesc and Carrer Sant Cristòfol. Painted shadows and distorted perspective give the flat tiles their apparent depth.

More: A Hidden Spring Beneath the Street in Riola, Spain

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🌙 “Clustermoon” — By Jon Foreman at Freshwater West, Wales 🇬🇧

A crescent of carefully arranged stones curves across the sand at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire, with Jon Foreman crouching beside it for scale. Small white stones trace the inner edge, while blues give way to purples and yellows farther out. In his account of making Clustermoon, Foreman dates the work to May 5, 2025, says it took two days, and confirms that the arrangement is handmade.

💡 Nerd Fact: In a 2020 interview, Foreman said he rarely draws out a design in full before beginning. He also described staying to watch the tide erase his work and trying to photograph the moment the water reaches it.

More: Art in Nature With Stones and Leaves by Jon Foreman

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👂 “Ear Brick” — By Michael Beitz in Brooklyn, New York, USA 🇺🇸

A single brick has a human ear, small enough to miss. Saatchi Gallery identifies Ear Brick as Michael Beitz’s 2001 intervention in Brooklyn. In his explanation of the Brick Pieces, quoted by Boing Boing, Beitz describes replacing missing bricks with handmade ones incorporating casts of his own body parts. The small additions invite people to consider their bodies as part of the city’s structure.

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🐶 Dog — By WOSKerski in Penge, London, UK 🇬🇧

Two enormous eyes, a lolling tongue and uneven ears fill the brick wall. A bright yellow circle sits behind the head. WOSKerski painted this dog in Penge, southeast London.

More: 9 Times WOSKerski Made UK Walls Feel Like Glitches in Reality

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🐘 Giant Straw Elephant — By Musashino Art University Students and Local Residents in Niigata, Japan 🇯🇵

An elephant towers over the group gathered at its feet, with rice straw forming its broad ears, tusks and textured hide. The festival’s official gallery identifies it as a 2018 work at Uwasekigata Park in Niigata. Since 2008, the Wara Art Festival has brought together Musashino Art University students and local residents. Its construction process combines student designs, frames built by local craftspeople, and straw supplied and woven by farmers.

💡 Nerd Fact: Rice straw once provided farmers with winter income: when snow prevented fieldwork, they made sandals, decorations and other household goods from it. According to Niigata’s official account, the straw-art project began in 2006 to find a new use for this agricultural by-product as traditional uses declined.

More: Wara Art Festival in Niigata, Japan

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🦅 “Flying Eagle” — By SPAIK in Ibiza, Spain 🇪🇸

SPAIK painted a patterned eagle across the curved ceiling of a concrete road tunnel, its wings following the arch above passing traffic. Brooklyn Street Art documented the finished mural and the artist at work, identifying it as Flying Eagle, painted for BLOOP Festival in Ibiza in July 2016. It was created for the festival’s “No Fear” theme.

More: Underpasses That Became Secret Art Worlds

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🕺 Go Grandpa Go Grandpa! — By Costwo in Zurich, Switzerland 🇨🇭

An older man appears to break-dance out of a painted corner, with both soles pushed toward the camera and one hand planted on the floor. Costwo stretches the shoes, arm and shadow across adjoining surfaces so the pose lines up from one viewpoint. Global Street Art documents the work in Zurich.

💡 Nerd Fact: DJ Kool Herc extended instrumental breaks by switching between two copies of the same record, turning passages lasting seconds into several minutes for dancers. As documented in Christie’s account of his early parties, he called these dancers “break boys,” shortened to “b-boys.”

More: Go Grandpa Go Grandpa!

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🎢 Roller Coaster Shadow — By Tom Bob in Long Beach, California, USA 🇺🇸

At first, it is just the curved shadow of a fence. Tom Bob adds a black roller-coaster train and passengers with their hands in the air, and the shadow becomes the track. His post of the work places it in Long Beach, California.

More: Street Art by Tom Bob

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😱 Shocked Drainpipe — By Vanyu Krastev in Bulgaria 🇧🇬

A hole in the corroded pipe forms an open mouth beneath two plastic eyes. In a 2017 interview with Deadline News, Vanyu Krastev explained that he began after discovering eyebombing.com and created Eyebombing Bulgaria to spread the idea.

More: Someone Gave the City Eyes and It’s Perfect

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🖐️ “La Mano” — By Mario Irarrázabal in Punta del Este, Uruguay 🇺🇾

The woman sitting on the thumb gives the scale: the fingers behind her still tower over her. Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal finished the hand on Playa Brava in Punta del Este in February 1982. He imagined it as a drowning hand, a warning to swimmers. It is also known as Los Dedos (The Fingers) and as Hombre emergiendo a la vida (Man Emerging into Life).

💡 Nerd Fact: Ten years later, Irarrázabal raised another giant hand, this time inland. Mano del Desierto, inaugurated in 1992, stands 11 meters (36 feet) tall in Chile’s Atacama Desert, about 60 kilometers from Antofagasta.

More: Giant and Tiny Sculptures (9 Photos)

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😨 Panicked Pole — By Vanyu Krastev in Bulgaria 🇧🇬

No mouth was painted here. A dark, jagged gap in the rust does the job, and two googly eyes above it turn a plain metal pole into someone who has just seen something they shouldn’t have. Vanyu Krastev told Bulgarian National Radio that he places most of his eyes in Sofia, where he lives and works, and that he tries to make people in a hurry smile, at least for a while.

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🌊 “Ocean Atlas” — By Jason deCaires Taylor in Nassau, The Bahamas 🇧🇸

The swimmer on the left gives the scale: this kneeling girl rises five meters from the sea floor to the surface. Ocean Atlas depicts a local Bahamian girl carrying the weight of the ocean above her. Jason deCaires Taylor installed it off the western coast of New Providence in 2014.

💡 Nerd Fact: The figure weighs more than 60 metric tons. Because of its size, Taylor had to assemble it underwater in sections, using a new technique.

More: Most of Her Is Still Underwater (8 Photos)

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🍒 “Spoonbridge and Cherry” — By Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 🇺🇸

A dessert spoon big enough to bridge a pond, with a cherry to match. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen designed it as a fountain-sculpture for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, and it was installed for the garden’s opening in 1988. The whole piece measures 30 by 52 by 13 feet, and the cherry alone weighs about 1,200 pounds.

💡 Nerd Fact: The cherry is a fountain too: filtered water comes from the tip and the base of its stem. Hot summer sun and 18 hours of water a day take a toll, so in 2009 the Walker Art Center sent the cherry away to have its surfaces recoated.

More: Only in America (11 Photos vol. 3)

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🍴 Dinner on a No-Entry Sign — By Clet Abraham in Paris, France 🇫🇷

A little black skeleton-like figure leans over the white bar of a no-entry sign with a knife and fork, as if the bar were dinner. The French-born artist Clet Abraham, who lives and works in Florence, cuts his stickers in advance and adds them to real traffic signs. He places them so that the sign still does its job.

💡 Nerd Fact: Not every city laughs along. Clet was once fined 400 euros for vandalizing street signs.

More: Street (Sign) Artist CLET in Paris and Bretagne, France

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✋ “Mano del Desierto” — By Mario Irarrázabal near Antofagasta, Chile 🇨🇱

Here is the desert hand from the Nerd Fact above, seen from the air. A whole row of parked motorcycles lines up beside it, and the riders standing next to them look like toys. Irarrázabal built it in ferrocement beside the Pan-American Highway in the Atacama Desert, and it opened on March 28, 1992.

💡 Nerd Fact: Even a hand in the middle of the desert needs looking after. Chilean building-materials company Cbb has organized maintenance and clean-up days at the sculpture.

More: The Mano del Desierto Artwork File

📷 Photo: Marcos COMUNE / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)