Found a Face (12 Photos)

By Vidar
A roadside pole with pixel bead Bender features beside a tree with googly eyes and bark shaped like lips.

The street was already halfway there

In Utrecht, two upper windows and a curved strip of brick were all it took to make a whole building grin. These twelve works turn familiar street objects and buildings into faces.


Tree trunk grown around a brown metal railing by a river in Bulgaria, with two googly eyes stuck on the top rail by Vanyu Krastev and a cut branch stub as the nose.

👀 Googly Eye Tree — By Vanyu Krastev in Bulgaria 🇧🇬

Vanyu Krastev stuck two googly eyes on a railing, right above a tree that has grown around the metal bars. A cut branch stub becomes the nose, and the swollen bark around the middle rail reads as a pair of lips. The tree did most of the drawing.

💡 Nerd Fact: Krastev calls his project eyebombing: small plastic eyes glued to objects he finds in his home city of Sofia, with the goal of humanizing the streets, Laughing Squid reported.

More: More Eyebombing by Vanyu Krastev

🔗 Follow Vanyu Krastev on Instagram


Red wall-mounted fire hydrant connection with two round caps on a stone wall, used as the big eyes of an E.T.-like figure whose cut-out brown body is stuck to the wall below it.

👽 Phone Home

The two round red outlets of this wall-mounted hydrant connection already looked like enormous eyes. A cut-out E.T.-like body stuck to the wall underneath does the rest, and the hydrant stays exactly as it was. The title borrows the alien’s famous line from the 1982 film.


Two gray utility boxes of different heights in tall grass in Olsztyn, Poland, painted by Adam Łokuciejewski and Szymon Czarnowski with black cartoon eyes and one long line that wraps around both boxes like an arm.

🤗 Utility Box Hug — By Adam Łokuciejewski and Szymon Czarnowski in Olsztyn, Poland 🇵🇱

About 20 lines of black spray paint give two gray utility boxes eyes, a grin and one long arm, so the taller box seems to pull its shorter neighbor close. Their different heights already made them look like a pair.

More: Street Art in Olsztyn, Poland


Smiling plastered building facade by JanIsDeMan on Bonistraat in Utrecht, Netherlands, with two white upper windows as eyes and a curved strip of brick showing through the plaster as a wide grin.

😁 Smiling Facade — By JanIsDeMan in Utrecht, Netherlands 🇳🇱

The two upper windows already sat where eyes should be. Below them, JanIsDeMan’s long crack and curved strip of brick showing through the plaster turn the wall into a broad grin, with his signature just below it. The temporary work was documented on Bonistraat in Utrecht.

More: 8 Happy 3D Artworks by Jan Is De Man

🔗 Follow JanIsDeMan on Instagram


Black-and-white portrait of an older man with a white beard wrapped around a dome-shaped recycling container by Mentalgassi, with a cyclist passing behind it on the street.

♻️ The Bin With a Face — By Mentalgassi

Mentalgassi wrapped a black-and-white portrait around a dome-shaped recycling container. The dome becomes the man’s head, and his eyes, nose and white beard follow the curve, so the bin seems to watch the street go by. The collective regularly prints faces on huge sheets of paper and pastes them onto glass containers, poles and fences, The Crystal Ship festival in Ostend notes.

💡 Nerd Fact: Mentalgassi is a trio of Berlin street artists who have worked in public space since 2006 with ordinary materials: photographs, paper, scissors and glue, according to Fotofestiwal in Łódź.

More: Mentalgassi from Berlin


Brick gable wall in Utrecht, Netherlands, painted by JanIsDeMan as a smiling face, with two large round eyes and a dark crack-like line as the grin, a small orange box with cartoon eyes below and bicycles parked on the right.

🙂 Smiling House — By JanIsDeMan in Utrecht, Netherlands 🇳🇱

JanIsDeMan painted two big round eyes on this brick gable and let a long, dark crack across the wall form the smile. The eyes look down at a small box below, which got a pair of eyes of its own. He made the piece in 2020 on Esdoornstraat, at the corner of Leliestraat.

💡 Nerd Fact: The face was only meant to last about two weeks. Residents had asked JanIsDeMan for a mural based on drawings and clay pieces by neighborhood children, and he painted this one “for fun” before starting on the commission in November 2020, DUIC reported.

🔗 Follow JanIsDeMan on Instagram


Before-and-after photos of four rooftop air-conditioning units painted as robot faces by Tom Bob, with the round fans as eyes, red triangle noses and black grid mouths, plus a close-up of one unit.

🤖 Air Conditioner Robots — By Tom Bob

The twin fans on each unit already worked as wide eyes. Tom Bob added red triangle noses and black grid mouths, and a row of four cooling units became one robot family.

More: Creative Genius Tom Bob (33 Photos)

🔗 Follow Tom Bob on Instagram


Black spray-painted skull by Achilles filling the corner of an abandoned room in Athens, with two arched windows as eye sockets, a dark nose-shaped opening between them and teeth painted on the floor.

💀 Window Skull — By Achilles in Athens, Greece 🇬🇷

Two arched windows become the eye sockets, a dark opening between them forms the nose, and a row of teeth runs across the floor. Achilles used the room’s existing openings so this corner of an abandoned building in Athens reads as one large skull.

More: 4 Street Artworks by Achilles in Athens, Greece

🔗 Follow Achilles on Instagram


Small workshop facade with cartoon eyes in two upper windows and white teeth and a pink tongue painted around a dark doorway.

😋 Hungry Workshop

The two upstairs windows look down at a doorway full of teeth. A pink tongue fills the lower half, making the whole workshop look ready to gulp down whoever comes through the door.


Gray roadside pole turned into Bender with pixel bead eyes, a yellow grid mouth and an antenna by Pappas Pärlor.

🤖 Bender on a Pole — By Pappas Pärlor

A gray pole is a good starting point for a robot. Pappas Pärlor added Bender’s yellow eyes, gridded teeth and little antenna in pixel beads, letting the pole itself supply the metal head.

More: Pixel Street Art by Pappas Pärlor

🔗 Follow Pappas Pärlor on Instagram


Blue public litter bin with two large white eyes and a cookie resting on the rim of its open mouth, an intervention by Timm Schneider.

🍪 Cookie Monster Bin — By Timm Schneider (Ich bin Kong) in Wiesbaden, Germany 🇩🇪

A cookie is already waiting on the rim. Timm Schneider gave this blue bin two oversized eyes, turning its ordinary opening into Cookie Monster’s hungry mouth. It is part of his They Live series.

Photo: Timm Schneider, credited in the preview of Streetart in Germany.


Cracked spherical concrete bollard with a small googly eye added by Vanyu Krastev, its broken edge forming a Pac-Man-like open mouth.

🟡 Concrete Pac-Man — By Vanyu Krastev in Bulgaria 🇧🇬

The broken concrete already had a mouth. A tiny googly eye makes this round bollard look like Pac-Man, while the smaller spheres behind it could almost be the next things on the menu.

More: More Eyebombing by Vanyu Krastev

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