During my walk through Old Town I spotted this electrical transformer in a patch of cacti. It was artfully painted to fit right in!
I love how a little imagination can change a dull, boring object into an inspired piece that fits into greater beauty. Very cool!
Here’s a warm, colorful mural on a building in Little Italy. It depicts a mother and child.
I saw this artwork while strolling down the sidewalk. Thought you might enjoy it!
Flowers that are several feet across are growing in downtown San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood. They’ve grown out of an artist’s paintbrush and onto a wall!
Check out another photo from the amazing, colorful mural I recently walked past and enjoyed. It’s a shame this public art is set back a bit from First Avenue and not immediately obvious to those driving past. To experience it best, you have to pull into a gas station’s parking lot.
Here are more photographs of that cool mural from the previous blog post. There’s a whole school of colorful fish in full view beside that gas station!
A gigantic shark was recently spotted swimming in the blue water next to a San Diego gas station’s parking lot! Here’s the photographic proof!
Okay, what you see is actually a very cool mural. And the shark is just a small portion of it. This awesome mural on a long wall by the gas station contains a bunch of surprising, colorful images! Check out the blue gravel path at the foot of the wall, enhancing the underwater effect!
Wondering where this public art can be found? In Little Italy, just north of downtown. Head up First Avenue and look to the left just before Elm Street. You can’t miss it!
This is a part of a very long mural decorating the north side of Interstate 8 in Mission Valley. It’s called Kids being Kids.
I took this photograph from across Camino de la Reina, not far from the Union Tribune building. I got a bunch of pics, but this is the only one that captures the artwork’s color and energy. Perhaps I’ll try again some other day.
UPDATE!
I took some more pics…
In downtown San Diego, on Kettner and A Street not far from Little Italy and the Santa Fe Depot, you might spot this old advertisement painted on a building wall. It promotes Dr. Pepper and Hires Root Beer. According to some googling I’ve done, the colorful artwork was revealed when an adjacent building was demolished. Looks to me like this building was a soda bottling plant years ago.
This large mural on the Arte Building on Sixth Avenue has become iconic in downtown San Diego. It was painted in 1989 by artists Kathleen King and Paul Naton and conveys a strong pro-multicultural message. Time has somewhat faded the once bold mural, but it still catches the attention of those venturing through the heart of the city.
Street art flourishes on the sidewalks of San Diego. Many electrical transformers and utility boxes have been creatively painted to represent colorful scenes both real and imagined. Most have a primitive or folk art vibe. I’ll snap lots of photos for this blog!
Here’s a box downtown at Sixth Avenue and Elm Street that features an airplane and space shuttle zooming above clouds between planet Earth, the Sun and the Moon. At least, that’s what it looks like to me!
Here’s another photo of the fantastic mural shown in my previous post. It provides a wider view. This outstanding example of super cool street art can be found on the outside wall of Pokez, an artsy vegetarian Mexican restaurant in downtown San Diego.
The mural’s design is jam-packed with brilliant color, urban style and symbolism, and feels both organic and futuristic. It reminds me somewhat of the spray-painted “space art” you see occasionally being created by street performers in Seaport Village, the Gaslamp, or Balboa Park.
And here’s yet another pic:
