Couldn’t Leave It Alone (8 Photos)

Some things are too tempting to leave alone

A gap in a wall gets LEGO. Two bins get faces. A drain becomes an alligator. These eight interventions start with something ordinary and add just enough to make you stop.

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📖 “An Evening of Adventure” — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸

Turn a flowerpot upside down and it becomes a lampshade. Add a chalk base, a pool of light and a mouse with a book, and a patch of sidewalk becomes somewhere to spend the evening. Zinn calls the reader Nadine.

💡 Character Fact: Zinn’s official biography lists Nadine, “a mouse of adventure,” among his most enduring characters, alongside Sluggo and Philomena, a flying pig. Zinn’s own record dates this temporary installation to June 8, 2021.

More: Happy Art by David Zinn

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🐊 Alligator Grate — By David Zinn at the Detroit Zoo, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸

A square metal grate makes an oddly convincing alligator back, with Zinn’s chalk head, paws and curling tail drawn around it and a slightly put-upon expression on its face. He posted it on August 6, 2018 as an “Alligrator sighting at the Detroit Zoo,” and the zoo is in Royal Oak, Michigan.

More: They Look Alive (19 Photos Of Art by David Zinn)

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🏛️ “Dandelion” — By Michael Pederson

Two tiny posts, a length of rope and a sign give this dandelion the full museum treatment. It is still growing out of a gap at the foot of a wall. Now it has visitors’ rules.

💡 Artist Fact: Pederson places his plaques, signs and miniature architecture around Sydney under the name Miguel Marquez Outside. The dandelion piece is archived in the Plants section of Pederson’s own website.

📂 Artwork File · Sourced factsDandelion — Michael Pederson, SydneyMichael Pederson · 2015 · Sydney, AustraliaMiniature rope barrierPlease Do Not Touch1A miniature museum-style rope barrier protects a single dandelion beneath a “Please Do Not Touch” plaque.Artsy2Colossal featured the work in its coverage of Pederson’s interventions across Sydney on 20 October 2015.Colossal201516 Oct“Installed today” · artist’s Tumblr201520 OctPhoto published · Colossal201630 NovDescribed · Vice201727 SepPhoto, courtesy of the artist · ArtsyRead the full file →

More: Clever Art by Michael Pederson

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💃 Dancing Fence — By Oakoak

Two pink faces are enough to make the bent bars look like a pair of dancers. The rust and peeling paint remain. A damaged fence has acquired rather good posture.

More: Lovely by Oakoak (10 Photos)

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🍺 “Closed Forever” — By Oakoak in Ghent, Belgium 🇧🇪

A blank stretch of brick becomes a bar, complete with stools, bottles and a defeated Barney Gumble. Unfortunately, it also comes with bad news written on the wall. Ghent’s cultural service records the work at Dok Noord 13, made for Sorry, not Sorry 2019.

More: Wrong but Right: Art by Oakoak

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🗑️ Two Bins, Two Moods

One looks worried. The other is winking, tongue out. The lids and wheels are still there, but taking out the trash now comes with an audience.

More: Too Cute

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🧱 LEGO Wall Patch — Dispatchwork

The wall has lost a chunk. The replacement comes in red, yellow, blue and green, with a few numbered bricks mixed in. Even the rusty drainpipe gets a brighter backdrop.

💡 Project Fact: Jan Vormann’s Dispatchwork is open to anyone: the project’s website lets people add their own brick repairs to a shared world map. More than 200 installations have been made this way, and Vormann has turned down sponsorship from LEGO manufacturers.

More: What If LEGO Could Repair the World?

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🐈 A Cat in the Crack — By Ememem

Pale tiles turn a missing patch of pavement into a cat beside the curb. A thin line of tiny tiles follows the crack from its face. Ememem, a mosaic artist based in Lyon, France, fills damaged pavement this way and calls the practice “flacking.”

💡 Name Fact: The pseudonym is a sound effect: it is a nod to the noise Ememem’s moped makes when the artist heads out on a repair.

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