Sunday, December 16, 2018

Ann Arbor Street Art

This mural, located in an alleyway leading to a parking lot (with dumpsters), is one of my favorites!
Now that I've been back home for a few weeks, it's time to post some photos of the street scenes of our rather colorful town. I have no idea if the murals and other street decorations here in Ann Arbor are unusually numerous, but they definitely make it a lot of fun to walk around, especially downtown. The murals I've included today are in the campus area near Liberty and State Street in Ann Arbor.



Between commercial buildings on Liberty Street, these walls have slowly been filled with graffiti. People are always there
taking photos -- for example, this photographer with a whole wagon-load of equipment!

Decorated window of a high-tech company. Note that this photo is also a selfie!
Many local utility boxes are creatively decorated. This one is on State Street.
Farther from home: the trash barrels at Ford Lake in Ypsilanti
are amusingly decorated with stencils of little bees.
Our bird walk at Ford Lake was a success: Len took this photo of a small falcon called a merlin that was stretching its claws.

I'll be sharing this post with Colorful World's mural collections when the blog comes back online (it’s on vacation now). Last month, I posted photos of the most famous of the Ann Arbor murals, also in the same area of town:

Five authors: Woody Allen, Edgar Allan Poe, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, and Anaïs Nin. (Blog post here)

16 comments:

Unknown said...

Very cool murals! And I love the falcon. I rarely click fast enough to catch the birds before they fly off.
Mary (CactusCatz.com)

kwarkito said...

I really do like the giant ants !
and congratulations for the falcon's picture

Tom said...

...a fabulous collection. The first one reminds me of the song, 'the ants come walking one by one.'

Iris Flavia said...

Ohhhh ants, bad (or in retrospect rather funny) memories.
Interesting that Hermann Hesse made it on the wall.

Debbie at Travel with Intent said...

A great collection of murals. I like the ants, and the hot air balloons. I could happily spend time wandering around the area.

biebkriebels said...

Creepy ants on the wall!

s.c said...

Great murals and a nice way to update otherwise gloomy parts of town.

Mae Travels said...

I commented on one of the other participants in Mural Monday, and wanted to add this thought here as well:

I've been distinguishing in my mind between a mural and a graffiti. Murals, I thought, were painted with the permission and often with the sponsorship of the owner of the space, and were usually pretty ambitious and well-thought-out. Graffiti are painted on any wall the "artist" chooses, often with haste and with less skill : though there are some pretty skillful graffiti artists, even the ones that paint on railroad or subway cars and on other spaces where they are really not wanted. And occasionally a town will reserve a wall for anyone who wants to paint, trying to channel graffiti makers from defacing walls where their work isn't welcome.

mae

Jackie McGuinness said...

What a great collection!

Sami said...

Great collection of murals Mae. I love the giant ants and the bin with the bees is very cute. Thanks for participating.

Pam said...

Good for Ann Arbor, the murals look fine.

dee Nambiar said...

Some great finds there. Nice to see some art from Ann Arbor. The ants are very eye-catching. They reminded me of some ant-sculpture I spotted at the Oakland Zoo a few years ago. They were very attractive too.

Sherry's Pickings said...

i love street art/murals! i think every city and town in australia has them now. fabulous stuff. have a great festive season. cheers sherry xx

Jeanie said...

Some good murals there. I love that big monster wall that's filled with color and the writers, too. That's very A2!

Linda said...

These are fun to see! I love street art.

rhapsodyinbooks said...

I love street art too! Thanks for sharing!