That’s this post, really. We’ve been away all week, discovering Shropshire with friends who’ve moved there. Getting to know this county and its landscapes, its industrial history, its towns and villages is a work in progress for us. But it’s left me only with time to throw together a quick response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artists Challenge: Work in Progress.
We’re all Works in Progress – all our lives. But children especially so. Fierce concentration here, and enjoyment too …
Hard at work with bucket and spade.
Slightly older children can hold their own with adults when it comes to demonstrating proficiency – in this case sheep-handling at Masham Sheep Fair.
Sheep-handlers young and old at Masham Sheep Fair
Over in the city, street art out-numbers sheep. Here are two works in progress: the first in Valencia, Spain, the second near Brick Lane, London.
And finally, two shots from India that I remember well: the house opposite my hotel in Puducherry, whose construction was a work-in-progress from about six, till late… it’s up there as my featured photo … and a metalworker hard at work producing figures inspired by the nearby temple at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu.
I was in London last week. And the highlight – apart from being with family of course – was a day mooching round Spitalfields with fellow blogger Sarah of Travel with Me fame. We’d planned to meet, and I’d appointed Sarah as Tour Guide. Good plan. She knows Brick Lane and the area well.
We started in Spitalfields Market, and immediately spotted Morph, well known to all British children and their parents of a certain age (1970s) through the TV series Take Hart. He and his acolytes are making guest appearances throughout central London this summer for the charity Whizz-Kidz.
Coffee next. You’ll never be short of a refreshment stop round here, though the one shown here wasn’t ours. We chose somewhere cosier.
Spitalfields was once the heart of the Huguenot community in London – Protestant refugees from persecution in 17th and 18th century Catholic France. They brought their skills as weavers with them, and formed a community here, which still has the houses from that era at its heart. For many, these houses have now become a desirable address.
We chanced upon the Town House Gallery here, and rather wished we’d stopped here for our coffee and cake. Another time.
Spitalfields has gone on being an area welcoming those seeking a fresh life away from persecution and poverty, more recently Bangaldeshi citizens who’ve now made their own mark on the area.
All the same, it was street art we’d come for, and that meant Brick Lane, and the streets round and about. Sarah’s already posted about our walk, and as so many of you already read her (and if you don’t already, you should – link above) I’ve tried to choose different images from those she shows: click on any one to enlarge.
You don’t even need a spare bit of wall:
We didn’t just have street art to keep us amused. There was filming going on. A documentary? A drama? We don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out one day.
Then under a railway bridge …
… a promising back street – a couple of street artists preparing the ground for a new work. I’m just going to show you the preparations in action. We popped back a couple of hours later to inspect progress, but were underwhelmed.
A lunch stop, then we retraced our steps. Don’t forget to look up! We were intrigued by the lines of broccoli we kept on coming across, above eye level, but they remained a mystery.
Should we instead have stopped here for lunch? We’d both have settled for Italian food. Or Korean. But that particular fusion?
Just a couple more images, of passers by oblivious to their surroundings. Which we certainly weren’t. A day full of interest. A day well spent. Thanks Sarah!
Oh, hang on. This bit’s for Jo. We found the all-important cake shop, but it wasn’t a coffee-stop too. We contented ourselves with gazing through the window, and I got an oddly surreal image of us both, with Sarah having another woman’s head superimposed on her own.
Well, Thessaloniki has a long and distinguished ancient history taking in Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman civilisations. And what do I show you first? Street art – and one graffito. From the sublime …
It was in Berlin that I first really discovered a love of Street Art. Maybe it’s because I got some background understanding by going out for the afternoon with Dave, of Alternative Berlin Tours. I learnt the difference between graffiti, street art, stickers and transfers, and something of the political anger and activism that can inform so much of it: particularly near the former Berlin Wall. This has now been re-invented as The East Side Gallery and I don’t show anything of that here because many of its images are so well known. Here are some examples we saw in Dave’s company, or exploring later on our own.
Having done Street Art Module One in Berlin, I was ready a year or so later to do Module Two in Valencia, It was here that I met an irrepressible type who peoples doorways and random bits of street furniture, painted by David de Limón.
Our tutor introduces us to David de Limón
And it was here too, as we once had in Seville, that we encountered street artists doing their day – or occasionally night – job.
Here are a few more:
I like the way that the windows become part of the fantasy here.
And here’s one just for Past Squares …
And we’ll have a whistle-stop tour of Spain and view a few more:
Catalan independence is always the story in Berga …
… whereas relaxing over a drink with a friend is more Seville’s style
Granada’s a place to relax too.
An ancient city with Arabic, Jewish and Christian roots, Tudela has embraced street art too
Maybe this is my favourite image of all, a bit of fun created from damaged plasterwork in Seville:
Another Past Square for Becky, and worth another outing, I think.
Although – hang on – no. My real favourite has got to be in Manor House Gardens, Hither Green, because the artist appears to have designed this image with my granddaughter in mind.
With thanks to Patti for providing us with a chance to wander city streets this week in quest of images that amuse, provoke and stimulate us. It’s the perfect moment to join the Photographing Public Art Challenge too. As well as Monday Mural. All this and Past Squares and Monday Window too … This is taking multi-tasking to a new level.
The header image comes from the top floor of an apartment block in Málaga.
I told you about the railway line in Premià de Mar the other day. Nowadays, a number of underpasses beneath the road and railway link the town to its beaches. And quite a few of them are painted with scenes of the town, and with life above and below the surface of the ocean.
Palm trees march along portions of the shoreline, so let’s begin with an image of one from an underpass:
And here’s the main square, with the parish church of Sant Cristofol.
There’s more street art, some of it more interesting, in the streets above. I’ll save those for later.
It was back to work as usual for Team Barcelona on Monday, so we left them to it and came to Valencia.
It’s lovely to be back, revisiting old haunts from last November, and making fresh discoveries. Pottering down streets in long-established communities is the best: grand imposing doorways; delicately wrought balconies; elegant stucco. Or these days, street art. Here are a few examples I snapped this afternoon.
Berlin is the home of street art and creative graffiti. If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll already have glimpsed the East Side Gallery: though that is planned and curated.
Away from the city centre, street art is so much a part of Berlin life that walking tour companies vie with each other to show visitors the edgiest and grittiest current manifestations of this vibrant art form. Even big companies climb on the band wagon. Back in the early years of this century, Nike paid for this piece.
I didn’t realise this is a Nike advert. So that didn’t work then…..
Somehow, global companies making use of a movement powered from the bottom up seems slightly to be missing the point.
Using spray cans; re-purposed fire extinguishers; transfers from images shot in night clubs, applied to city walls then doused in glitter, street artists come out at dead of night to brighten up favourite haunts. Bands of graffiti artists have thousands of followers on YouTube.
You, like me, can simply be a curious pedestrian in the streets of Berlin. Can you spot the example of yarn bombing?
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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