When I first came to Vilnius, Lithuania, from Berlin, it seemed like there was virtually no art on the street. Then I started to see more and more little, subtle pieces spread around the city. Here are some of the photos I liked best.

Street Artist Moose uses stencils and a pressure-washer to clean images into dirty surfaces, like this concrete wall in San Francisco.

Wooster Collective has posted a video of how it’s done.

Vilnius, Lithuania, is a very pretty little town. When I first arrived it appeared to me to be almost completely devoid of tagging and graffiti. As I got further into my week-long stay however, I started to notice more and more pieces, and was struck by how pretty they were trying to be. I started to stumble across more and more flowers, butterflies and hearts. It was a very different aesthetic from what I’m used to seeing.

Here are some photos I took:

Billboards and other ads in public spaces are, in most cases, a unsightly and irritating blights on the urban landscape. In the wake of more and more advertising noise, advertisers have of course started creating bigger and bigger ads. In Toronto, many of them have, according to some, begun to post their ads in clear violation of signage laws. In response, street artist Posterchild has been stenciling the phone number for the city’s building division along with the words “hows my advertising”, in hopes of having more people call to complain.

A website, illegalsigns.ca, has also popped-up to bring attention to the practice. They estimate that 175 of the 200 large vinyl wall signs in Toronto do not have the proper permits, and are thus illegal.

Amazingly, it even seems to have worked, as at least one advertiser has withdrawn their billboard, at least for now.

Read more at The Torontoist.

The street art in and around the neighborhood of Prenzlaur Berg, where I’m staying in Berlin, has been great. I’ve been snapping shots left, right, and center, and these are my best ones so far.

There are places in Berlin where graffiti is so accepted it’s even done in daylight in crowded areas. In this case, a young father teaches his kids to spraypaint on a wall seemingly dedicated to tagging. You can’t see it in this photo, but the young kid in the blue and white shirt has just finished painting the red lines.

From Wooster

Found in the back-alleys.

Summer is coming, and that means I hope to get up to doing some graffiti photos. Here’s one I took this afternoon.