From Epic to Ridiculous (9 Photos)

September 9, 2026
By Vidar
Split image showing the giant rice-straw elephant from the 2018 Wara Art Festival in Niigata, Japan, and Vanyu Krastev’s googly-eyed drainpipe in Bulgaria.

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

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

These nine works range from giant sculptures to a drainpipe with two plastic eyes.

More: When Art Makes the Impossible Look Real


A group posing beside the giant rice-straw elephant made for the 2018 Wara Art Festival at Uwasekigata Park in Niigata, Japan.

🐘 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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Three-panel before-and-after view of Tom Bob turning a curved fence shadow into a roller coaster full of cheering passengers in Long Beach, California.

🎢 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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Jon Foreman crouching beside Clustermoon, a large crescent of carefully arranged colored stones at Freshwater West in Wales.

🌙 “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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A cast human ear embedded in a brick wall in Michael Beitz’s Ear Brick intervention in Brooklyn, New York.

👂 “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.

More: Made You Smile (10 Photos)

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SPAIK’s Flying Eagle mural spreading patterned blue wings across the curved ceiling of a road tunnel in Ibiza, Spain.

🦅 “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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Dog mural by WOSKerski with huge eyes, uneven ears and a lolling tongue, painted in front of a yellow circle on a brick wall in Penge, London.

🐶 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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Anamorphic pavement painting by Juandres Vera and Tardor in Riola, Spain, showing a woman holding a wooden bucket in a rocky blue stream, with Tardor kneeling beside the artwork.

💧 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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Anamorphic mural by Costwo in Zurich, Switzerland, showing a break-dancing grandfather appearing to emerge from a painted corner, with both shoe soles facing the viewer and one hand on the floor.

🕺 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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Two googly eyes attached above a gaping hole in a corroded drainpipe make it resemble a shocked face in Vanyu Krastev’s Bulgarian street intervention.

😱 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: Googly-Eye Street Art by Vanyu Krastev

🔗 Follow Vanyu Krastev on Instagram


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