Well this was one of my favourite posts. And since I'm in the mood for spreading a little love for a poor old neighbour, that often gets a rough ride, I thought we'd take a little trip back in time.
Ready?
Let's hop in our time machine and set the dial to summer 2012......
Where are we?
A beautiful European square?
The busy streets of London?
Wrong....these are all photos from a beautiful sunny Sunday morning in......
Blackpool!
And if you haven't been for a while I'd highly recommend a trip as things have changed quite a bit. You can still find Kiss-Me-Quick hats and sugary sticks of Rock - and alongside these you'll find interesting sculptures, sunny piazzas and up-market coffee shops - plus super shiny new European style trams to ride.
But my trip was for a very particular type of sight-seeing - to visit Blackpool's third annual urban art festival 'Sand, Sea & Spray'.
43 artists were invited to the resort to create amazing urban art. Site map in hand, off we went to find us some Sunday morning art!
These were at the end of the North Pier...
We love the combination of masculine & feminine where fighter jet meets chintzy wallpaper!
The eyes really seemed to pop out in many of the works all over the festival.......
You can really get a sense of the scale of the tableaux here....
I sneaked a few photos of an old Merry-Go-Round.......
.....and some arty photos of the pier.
Next stop on our map was a car park tucked just behind the famous Winter Gardens. It was around 10 am by this point and a few bleary eyed artists had started to emerge (from their partying Blackpool style the previous night)......they were the ones with the biggest projects!
I liked this man's funky bike....only afterwards did I realise it was Peter Stringfellow!
(well his lookalike anyway....)
These works were on panels mounted onto the walls of the Winter Gardens.
Then we headed down to Deansgate where we found these lovely little fellas had come a long way!
They were keeping the artists company whilst they created these.....
And just down the road we tracked down artist Agent Provocateur who's little Bobzilla motif we had followed all around the festival.......
Like here on the Pier......
and here on Deansgate.....
and on all the posters......
and this man left his van parked a bit too long with Bobzilla about......
Only joking! The van's owner was there happily watching Agent Provocateur as he worked.
And finally we made our way home after a wonderful morning of urban art......taking in one last and most impressive work on our way!
That last work is by artist Inkie who had flown in from L.A. to take part in Sand, Sea & Spray.
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I didn't make it to see this year's exhibition but there was talk that Banksy himself had been in town.
After this cheeky little fella appeared......
But it turns out it was really by artist Otto Schade
who also painted that ribbon guy with two heads, back there.
I love street art...not graffiti....street art.
There's loads in Bristol, where my sister lives, and I really love how it brightens up the city and creates a really forward, artistic, inventive atmosphere.
What do you think of street art?
Is there anything you've seen that you've just had to photograph?
Or street art you see every day that inspires & gets you thinking?
