Reading Scenes: Street Art

Hello.  I hope your week is going well.  

It was difficult to take the artwork that has been painted on boards surrounding the site where the town's main swimming pool was located so I had to photograph it in sections.  Above is one of the sides and below are some of the details. 

Around the corner is another creative and colourful addition to this community art project.

I walked along the Oxford Road and the adjoining streets several times during our stay and I'll share some of this interesting area of town another time.  Meanwhile, thank you for your visit.  I hope you have a peaceful and happy day.

Street Art

When we're out and about in Sheffield I photograph street art that I find interesting or attractive and it's just as well I have a record of it in my photo archive as sadly this form of art is transient, sometimes due to vandalism. An artist tries to restore his/her creations or if this isn't possible the whole mural is painted over and the image lost forever. 

Many of the street artists are well known beyond Sheffield, have done commissioned work nationally or internationally and each style is different.

Here are some of the murals seen in and around the city:-

Sarah Yates's (aka Faunagraphic's) commissioned work is influenced by nature, particularly birds.

She also painted the above mural on a site overlooking the train station and near Sheffield Hallam University.  The subject is Harry Brearley, the inventor of  stainless steel. When it was vandalised beyond restoration another artist, Jo Peel, recently painted another. Jo's work is also instantly recognisable to locals.  

Jo's mural on the same building.

Jo's murals are urban landscapes usually painted in black and white, turquoise and orange.  This one is at the old Henderson's Relish factory building.  Henderson's Relish is made to a secret recipe and is also part of the Sheffield scene.  Many a cupboard contains a bottle of this sauce, including mine.

Rob Lee's murals often consist of brightly painted lines. The one above also near Hallam University area is fairly new.

Sheffield Dog Rescue Centre 

This one was painted to celebrate the Grand Départ in Yorkshire which was part of the Tour De France which started in the county in 2015 and passed through Sheffield and surrounding countryside.

Another well known artist is Pete McKee. Born in Sheffield his art celebrates the everyday life of the north of England.  The above is 'Muriel' with her shopping trolley. We have some of his framed paintings in our dental centre - probably put there to make us smile as we wait and even a tram has window decorations to celebrate this local talent.

Sheffield is called 'The City of Sanctuary' as it welcomes people from all over the world especially refugees.  If you look closely at this work done by 'CoLoR' you can see positive and negative images to illustrate this. The Art House is just one of the places in the city where craft and art workshops are happening in a welcoming environment. 

 Cafés are pleasant meeting places and also reflect the city's interest in art.

A city centre visit

The last few weeks I've been quite busy. This week I had a wander around the city as it was a bright sunny day just right for taking some photos. 

There was a statue that had recently been installed outside the train station. Being known as 'steel city' many of the street art features are made from metal and this one was rather ingenious as it was made from allen keys.

The fountains, water features and steel walkway

greet visitors to the city as they leave the train station.

Colourful posters show what goes on in the city

throughout the year.

I walked through the Millennium Gallery to the Winter Garden. The latest art exhibition Ravilious & Co. is on at the moment.  I've been twice to see  the exhibits as there's a lot to take in and I hope to go to one of the talks by the curator of the exhibition. 

The window at the end of the gallery corridor is often artistically decorated.

In the Winter Garden there are always pop-up exhibitions and activities hosted by various organisations and departments of the University of Sheffield.

This exhibition of mainly portraits and scenes were exhibited by Olivia Howland an anthropologist and artist with roots in the English traveller community. She gained her PhD in 2016 in Applied Anthropology and has been based in East Africa for the past 12 years where she lives in rural Kenya.  She built her house in 2012 on the side of a beautiful mountain.   She currently works in Tanzania and is a researcher on a project for the University of Sheffield which has given her the opportunity to meet the people and visit some of the places featured in her paintings (oil on canvas).  

The Winter Garden is one of my favourite places in the centre of Sheffield and as there is always something different going on there in the spaces surrounding the wonderful trees and plants I'll share more another day.  This week it has been decorated for Christmas.

A city welcomes the Tour de France Yorkshire

The other day we saw how our local villages are preparing for the Tour de France Yorkshire.

Today I had to go into Sheffield to do some shopping and found that the city centre was buzzing with activity. Parties of school children were being taken around to see the decorations in the streets and gardens, visit the Festival of Colour, Space and Light where there's a giant  walk-in inflatable installation in front of the Cathedral and the Yellow exhibition in the Millennium Gallery. My mind was on looking for some new clothes for a family wedding that we're going to in a couple of weeks, but afterwards I did have a wander around as I was curious to see the street art especially installed for the Sheffield Festival and the Tour de France weekend. 

There's a continental market going on with a French-themed section and it's 'spot the special bicycles game' again.

Yellow bicycles near the golden post box specially painted for the Olympic 2012 achievements of Jess Ennis-Hill, the gold medallist in the heptathlon event and another by the Lyceum and Crucible Theatres.

Yellow flowers everywhere. Some of the large artificial ones have been crocheted or have crochet centres.

There's a poem in English and French in the Winter Garden describing some of the areas in and around Sheffield that the cyclists will pass through.

The race starts off in Leeds tomorrow (Saturday) and will finish in Sheffield on Sunday afternoon before moving through other counties and then on to London.

Everything is ready.... so let the Tour begin!