Need a Smile? Start Here (8 Photos)

Eight works that make you smile

A real dog walks up to a bronze tug-of-war in a park and joins in, teeth first. The rest of this collection works the same way, with a quick joke or a small, kind gesture.

More: Need a Smile? Start Here (8 Photos)

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🐕 Tug of Dog

In the bronze scene, children pull one another along in a line while a bronze dog tugs at the last child’s dress. Then a real dog in a harness walks in and goes straight for the statue dog’s tail. Public art gets a guest performer.

💡 Nerd Fact: Bronze keeps a record of touch: Getty’s guidelines for bronze sculpture note that repeated touching of raised areas can remove patina and expose bare metal.

More: Clever Dog Art (10 Photos)

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❤️ Passing Heart

One figure leans out of an upper window and lets a red heart drop. Another reaches up from the window below, arms ready to catch it. Both windows, shutters included, are drawn in black on a patch of peeling plaster.

💡 Nerd Fact: Heart-like shapes appear in ancient art, but their link to love and affection developed much later, Harvard Art Museums explains.

More: Playful Streets (8 Photos)

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🔌 “On-Off” — By Escif in Katowice, Poland 🇵🇱

A giant light switch covers the side of an apartment block at ul. Mikusińskiego 5 in Katowice’s Wełnowiec district, and the person at the base shows the scale. Escif painted it in April 2012 for the second Katowice Street Art Festival.

💡 Nerd Fact: The switch is set to “on.” Regional daily Dziennik Zachodni pointed out that drivers can spot it from Józefowska Street on the way toward Siemianowice Śląskie.

More: Street Art by Escif in Poland

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🐈 Decorative Cat Signal — Zelenogradsk, Russia 🇷🇺

A red cat sits, a green cat walks. In Zelenogradsk, a seaside town in Russia’s Kaliningrad region, decorative cat signals were installed in the pedestrian zone by Kotofeynya Square on Kurortny Prospekt, where the silhouettes switch every 30 seconds.

💡 Nerd Fact: The town’s first cat signals went up on a city street in March 2019 but were removed at the traffic police’s request. Local entrepreneurs then paid for the replacements in the pedestrian zone, Kaliningrad.Ru reported that April.

More: Cat Lights in Zelenogradsk

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🎸 Breaking the Bar — By Clet Abraham

A tiny black figure swings an electric guitar down onto the white bar of a no-entry sign, rock-star style, and a crack is already showing. The sign still means no entry. The joke simply sits on top of it.

💡 Nerd Fact: Clet, a French artist based in Florence, designs special stickers for traffic signs so they are funny and provocative without distracting from the sign’s original purpose, Huck explains.

More: Street Art by CLET

🔗 Follow Clet Abraham on Instagram

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🍩 Homer and the Doughnut Balloons — By Oakoak

A black silhouette of Homer Simpson drifts up a concrete wall, holding eight pink doughnuts like balloons, with a shadow painted below him. Oakoak made it in 2016 and also released the idea as a screen print, “Flying Donuts Homer”.

More: Street Art by Oakoak (12 Photos)

🔗 Follow Oakoak on Instagram

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😄 A Laughing Portrait — By Kether in Málaga, Colombia 🇨🇴

A woman in a purple and orange headwrap laughs with her eyes closed and gold hoops in her ears, above a bank of yellow orchids on a café wall in Málaga. A visitor posing by the doorway smiles back.

📷 Photo: Natha Vargas

🔗 Follow Kether on Instagram

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🫰 A Finger Heart and a Slingshot — By NOYNA and Gide1 in Kyiv, Ukraine 🇺🇦

On the left, a hand makes a finger heart, with the words “Love is the light inside us” on the wrist. In the middle, a slingshot pulls back a red heart in its band, with a crosshair above it and a video-game health bar in the top corner. The two artists signed the wall at each end.

💡 Nerd Fact: The pair also painted a mural for firefighters on the State Emergency Service building in Kyiv in 2023, Artists at Risk Connection reports.

🔗 Follow NOYNA and Gide1 on Instagram

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Which one is your favorite?