The Street Grew a Personality (10 Photos)

By Vidar
🐙 Bollard Octopus — By Lumen Street Theatre in Limerick, Ireland 🇮🇪 / Which artwork hit you the hardest?

The city was minding its own business. Then the objects started acting alive.

A fence leans in for a kiss. A wall lamp becomes a firefly. Bollards, cabinets, cameras and even a weed acquire expressions, bodies and moods. These ten street interventions use what was already there, so the ordinary object does half the storytelling.


A bright blue bollard painted by Lumen Street Theatre as an octopus, with pink-and-blue tentacles spreading across a sidewalk in Limerick, Ireland.

🐙 Bollard Octopus — By Lumen Street Theatre in Limerick, Ireland 🇮🇪

The bollard becomes a head while blue and pink tentacles spill across the paving stones. The fixed street object now looks ready to crawl away.

Created for Lumen Street Theatre’s Riverfest Limerick street-art scavenger hunt. More: Painted Octopus in Limerick · Lumen Street Theatre


Tom Bob's Light My Fire: before-and-after views of a green cartoon firefly painted around a real wall lamp, with a wider view of the brick building.

✨ “Light My Fire” — By Tom Bob

The light was already there; Tom Bob supplied the insect. Painted wings, eyes and a bright green body turn an ordinary wall fitting into a firefly with a glowing abdomen.

More: More Street Art by Tom Bob

🔗 Follow Tom Bob on Instagram


Oakoak turns bent bars of a weathered purple fence into two small figures leaning in for a kiss.

💜 A Fence Leans In for a Kiss — By Oakoak

Two rusty bars bend toward each other, and two tiny pink faces turn the old fence into a couple. Oakoak adds almost nothing, but the street suddenly has a love story.

More: Clever Street Art by Oakoak · Oakoak’s website

🔗 Follow Oakoak on Instagram


Street art by EFIX featuring Maggie Simpson, with a real metal wall ring integrated as her pacifier.

🍼 Maggie’s Metal Pacifier — By EFIX

EFIX paints Maggie Simpson around a small metal ring, placing the real fitting exactly where her pacifier belongs. The object is tiny, but it makes the whole character click.

More: EFIX’s Clever Art

🔗 Follow EFIX on Instagram


Two electrical street cabinets painted with simple black cartoon lines so they look like one is hugging the other.

❤️ Even Electrical Cabinets Need a Hug — By Adam Okuciejewski and Szymon Czarnowski in Olsztyn, Poland 🇵🇱

Two plain utility boxes receive worried faces and one long painted arm. Suddenly the larger cabinet seems to be comforting the smaller one.

More: Made You Feel

🔗 Follow Adam Okuciejewski on Instagram


Sibling Pep Talk by David Zinn in Michigan: a tiny green chalk character stands on cracked pavement with a real flowering weed as living hair.

🌱 “Sibling Pep Talk” — By David Zinn in Michigan, USA 🇺🇸

A tiny chalk figure stands beneath a huge, living hairstyle. Zinn uses the real weed growing from the pavement as part of the character, letting nature finish the drawing.

David Zinn’s artist biography explains his improvised chalk, charcoal and found-object method. More: Street Art by David Zinn

🔗 Follow David Zinn on Instagram


Anglerfish Trap by SKURK at Rå Skole in Bergen, Norway, using a real staircase and lamps as part of the creature.

💡 Anglerfish Trap — By SKURK in Bergen, Norway 🇳🇴

The staircase becomes a mouth and the lamps become the eye and glowing lure. SKURK makes the building look as if it has been waiting all along to reveal a deep-sea creature.

See SKURK’s original post. More: Anglerfish Trap

🔗 Follow SKURK on Instagram


CCTV Droid street art by Murdoc in Sydney, Australia, using a real CCTV camera as the droid's head above a black painted body on a white brick wall.

📹 “CCTV Droid” — By Murdoc in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺

A real security camera completes the head of a painted science-fiction droid. The object was already watching the street; the intervention simply gives the surveillance a body.

Read an interview with Murdoc. More: Star Wars Street Art


Snow illusion by P183 in Russia: a snowy courtyard and a vertical lamppost combine to form a giant pair of glasses.

👓 Snow Glasses — By P183 / Pasha 183 in Russia 🇷🇺

A few dark lines in the snow join a lamppost to form a giant pair of glasses. The illusion exists only from the right viewpoint and only until the weather changes.

RFE/RL included this illusion among P183’s works. More: Street Art by P183 / Pavel Pukhov


CANNOT by Biancoshock in Lodi, Italy: discarded concrete pipes transformed into a giant broken camera.

📷 CANNOT — By Biancoshock in Lodi, Italy 🇮🇹

Discarded concrete cylinders become the lens and body of a giant broken camera. The painted word “CANNOT” turns the construction debris into a dry visual contradiction.

Brooklyn Street Art documented the intervention. More: CANNOT by Biancoshock

🔗 Follow Biancoshock on Instagram

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