Only in America (14 Photos vol. 2)

October 14, 2026

By Vidar

More Art That Could Only Happen in America

In a field outside Amarillo, ten Cadillacs have stood nose-down in the dirt since 1974, and people still turn up with spray cans. In Bend, Oregon, someone taped googly eyes on a bronze deer, and the city ended up paying to take them off. This second round runs from a Philadelphia museum to a Venice Beach basketball court.

More: Only in America (14 Photos)

🙂 A Smile in the Forest — By Hampton Lumber in Oregon, USA 🇺🇸

From the air, a hillside near Willamina smiles back. David Hampton laid it out with forester Dennis Creel in 2011: larch trees turn yellow in the fall to make the face, while dark Douglas-firs form the eyes and mouth.

💡 Forest Fact: The face was laid out by hand. Planting crews used a rope to plot the circle and measured out where the eyes and mouth should go.

More: A Forester Planted a Smiley Face in an Oregon Forest

🗽 Lady Liberty’s Lighter — At the Statue of Liberty in New York City, USA 🇺🇸

One cigarette and a low camera angle are all it takes. From the right spot, the torch of a 151-foot statue turns into a lighter, and he doesn’t even have to lean in.

💡 Torch Fact: The flame he is borrowing is not the original. The 1886 torch was swapped out during the 1980s restoration and now sits in the Statue of Liberty Museum, and the torch has been closed to visitors since debris from the 1916 Black Tom explosion damaged it. Bartholdi’s own name for the statue was Liberty Enlightening the World.

More: Fun With Statues (26 Photos)

🦍 “King Kong” — By Carlos Alberto GH in New Rochelle, New York, USA 🇺🇸

Kong peers around a skyscraper while his huge hand spills out onto the sidewalk, so anyone who stands in the right spot ends up in his palm. It was unveiled in spring 2022 at New Roc City Plaza, and the Public Art Archive lists it in the New Rochelle Council on the Arts collection.

💡 Technique Fact: Carlos Alberto painted Kong with house paint from Home Depot, applied through a sprayer. His two New Rochelle murals were paid for with funds from ArtsWestchester’s ReStart the Arts program.

More: King Kong in New Rochelle

🔗 Follow Carlos Alberto GH on Instagram

⚾ Perfect Timing — Harmon Killebrew Statue at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 🇺🇸

The bronze Harmon Killebrew on the plaza outside Target Field is frozen mid-swing, and this boy stepped straight into the bat’s path. For the sculptor, Bill Mack, Killebrew posed for hundreds of photos.

💡 Baseball Fact: That swing has numbers behind it. Killebrew, nicknamed Killer, hit 573 home runs and went into the Hall of Fame in 1984.

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🦈 Matawan Shark — By Tattoo Bob in Matawan, New Jersey, USA 🇺🇸

Teeth painted around a low arch of the NJ Transit bridge over Matawan Creek turn the opening into a mouth, and the still water adds the lower jaw. The red 1916 on the brick points to the summer a real shark came up this creek.

💡 Shark Fact: The July 1916 attacks on the Jersey coast killed four people, and two of them died in Matawan Creek, not on a beach.

More: Street Art Inspired by the New Jersey Shark Attacks of 1916

🪢 Indiana Jones Rescue — By Nate Baranowski in Bay Lake, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

A man on the walkway holds a real rope, and at the other end an adventurer in a fedora dangles over a torch-lit temple drawn in chalk. Baranowski made it for EPCOT’s Festival of the Arts, where the crowd walks right past the edge of the pit.

💡 Nerd Fact: Baranowski, a Chicago-based street painter, got hooked on street painting while earning his BFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

More: 3D Chalk Art by Nate Baranowski at EPCOT

🔗 Follow Nate Baranowski on Instagram

🪓 The Tin Man — By Tom Bob in Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸

Before: a plain green post on a street corner. After: a silver Tin Man with an axe across his body and the one thing he spent The Wizard of Oz looking for, a red heart. Tom Bob, a New York-based artist who grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, turns this kind of forgotten street furniture into characters.

More: Creative Genius Tom Bob (33 Photos)

🔗 Follow Tom Bob on Instagram

💋 “Marilyn in Manhattan” — By Zimer in New York City, USA 🇺🇸

Marilyn Monroe lounges across a gray wall in a red halter dress, one hand in her curls, while the dress pours out into Zimer’s red graffiti shapes. Zimer’s own post places it at The Ridge Hotel, 151 East Houston Street, on the Lower East Side.

More: Cinema on the Streets: 17 Murals That Look Like Movie Stills

🔗 Follow Zimer on Instagram

📱 Benjamin Franklin — By StudioEIS in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸

Someone has put a phone in Ben Franklin’s bronze hand, and the delegate behind him leans in as if he wants to be in the selfie. Franklin is one of 42 life-size bronzes in Signers’ Hall at the National Constitution Center, where visitors are invited to pose next to the framers.

💡 History Fact: Two famous names are missing from the room. Jefferson and Adams were abroad as ambassadors, in France and England, during the Constitutional Convention, so neither of them signed the Constitution.

More: When Sculptures Come Alive (9 Photos vol. 2)

🔗 Visit StudioEIS’s website

🦌 “Big Ears” — By Joe Halko, Googly Eyes by Jeff Keith, in Bend, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸

A bronze doe and her fawn stand in the roundabout at Simpson Avenue and 14th Street, both staring through big plastic googly eyes. Bend warned that the adhesive could damage the art, spent $1,500 removing eyes from eight sculptures, and then local man Jeff Keith said he had put some of them on with duct tape.

💡 Nerd Fact: Halko’s Big Ears has stood at this roundabout since 2001. Before he became a full-time artist in 1976, Halko worked as a taxidermist.

More: Playing With Googly Eyes (8 Photos)

😎 The Dude in Sand — By Damon Langlois in Port Aransas, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Round sunglasses, a long beard, a robe and sandals: The Big Lebowski’s Dude reclines on the beach with one hand behind his head, carved entirely from sand. Langlois made it for Texas SandFest in Port Aransas.

More: Imagination Took Over (8 Photos)

🔗 Follow Damon Langlois on Instagram

📷 Photo by Padre Island Madre.

🐊 A Cowgirl Rides an Alligator — By Naomi Haverland in Great Falls, Montana, USA 🇺🇸

A cowgirl in red boots rides a snapping alligator and casts a fishing line with a star-shaped lure, under a hanging sign that just says YEE-HAW. Haverland painted it for the Great Walls Great Falls festival in August 2026, and KRTV reported that the only brief was a western theme.

More: Careful, Some of These Bite (8 Photos)

🔗 Follow Naomi Haverland on Instagram

🚗 Cadillac Ranch — By Ant Farm in Amarillo, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Ten old Cadillacs stand in a row with their noses buried in a field west of Amarillo, under so many layers of spray paint that the bodywork looks soft. The art collective Ant Farm planted them in 1974 for Amarillo tycoon Stanley Marsh 3.

💡 Paint Fact: The graffiti is part of the deal. When the director of the Amarillo Art Center objected early on, Marsh answered that he didn’t care and saw the paint as proof that people felt the place was theirs. The whole row was dug up and moved two miles west in 1997 to stay ahead of the growing city.

📷 Photo: Marcin Wichary / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

🏀 “Black Mamba: Kobe Bryant Tribute” — By Chris Carlson and Nate Baranowski in Los Angeles, California, USA 🇺🇸

Kobe’s face sits in a burst of red and orange while a black mamba coils out of the frame and seems to slide off the wall. The Nike-commissioned tribute went up next to the Venice Beach basketball courts in January 2025. Carlson lists it on his website as Black Mamba: Kobe Bryant Tribute, a 20-by-40-foot anamorphic wall painting.

💡 Mamba Fact: Kobe took the Black Mamba name after watching Kill Bill in 2004 and used it as an alter ego for what he did on the court.

More: Street Art Americans Will Recognize in One Second (14 Photos)

🔗 Visit Chris Carlson’s website