The Scenic Sidewalk: A Catalog of Street Art

THE SCENIC SIDEWALK (www.thescenicsidewalk.com) is a catalog of local and international street art, curated by Sandra Bark, a book editor and writer who lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The photos were taken in cities across the U.S. and in Europe, Asia and South America.

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A note from the editor:

The images on this site represent a very small portion of the startling art you can discover in cities around the world. In these places, where the sky comes in squares and ribbons instead of broad stretches, there are other rewards, like people who paint their feelings in public spaces.

Much of the street art on these pages was shot with a basic digital camera in New York City and Brooklyn, because I live here. Others were taken while wandering around in Bogota, Paris, Miami and San Francisco, and other cities. I also have some kind, talented and observant friends who have taken to sharing their finds with me. Their contributions are noted as “dispatches”—check out the Buenos Aires dispatch and the photos from Lima and Valencia.

There are a lot of artists out there in the world who, even as they make it into galleries and museums, still think the view from the sidewalk is worth a little wheatpaste and effort. And so, if you pay attention when you walk through the urban tangle, you may get to see some truly inspiring/inspired pieces by artists like Judith Supine, Mariano Molina, Swoon, and Ellis G., and others I have yet to put a name to.

Surprise is an important element in my appreciation of this form; so is transience. The pieces are there to be discovered, but were not necessarily there the day before, and may not be there tomorrow. If you find something wonderful, and then walk down the same street a few weeks later, it will have either evolved or been covered over completely.

Some of these renderings, like the Parisian cardboard dragon in the very first post, likely don’t exist anymore at all, as they were drawn not on solid walls but on materials that were themselves transient.

These pieces are striking on their own, and many of them could be successfully displayed behind glass on clean white gallery walls. We can see and admire them online, as well. But they are best viewed in their natural habitat. Their placement on the city streets, unexpected and within our reach, makes them both intense and immediate. They draw their potency not only from their artistic merit or political messages, but from their stark exhibition and random placement, and the resulting interplay between viewer and piece.

You are walking down a busy street and your eye falls upon a shadow. But it isn’t a shadow: it’s an etching of a woman with ankles chained in barbed wire, or a collage of eyes and faces. What is this? you wonder. Why is it here?

Unlike some other art, which begins with a vision and winds up on the auction block so some lady in West Palm Beach can have a painting that matches her pool, this stuff is here for you. But only if you notice it.

—SB