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Keith Harring was a contemporary painter born in 1958, in Pennsylvania. At an early age he was found drawing and developed the skills from his father. He started with simple cartoons drawn from Disney characters and popular books he loved. As his talent developed he found himself being drawn and inspired by public places. He lived in NewYork and became fascinated with downtown streets, subways, clubs, dance halls. His friends were graffiti artists, writers, musicians, and performers. The energy of such a life is what inspires his current work. He took social issues to heart and it is seen throughout his work. He was also inspired by the works of other artists like Pierre Alechinsky, Jean Dubuffet, Brion Gysin and Robert Henri. With all of these influencing factors Harring became determined to make his work public. In the 80’s he was inspired to draw on large advertising panels in the subway.  Because there was such a public audience here he began to draw several white chalk drawings on black matte paper and ended up doing hundreds of these drawings in the subway system. During this time he achieved international recognition. He has done several public paintings regarding social issues, including a billboard in Times Square.

This artist found his inspiration in living and in all thing that surround his New York life and his work reflects this and he was very apt at expressing his feelings in this regard. Keith Harring acomplished much in his short life. He died from AIDS at the age of 32.

Did you know that artists are making works of art in rice fields? Today with the environmentally friendly movement artists are moving into the rice paddy. Yes! Artwork is eatable!

About 600 Km out of Tokyo you can find beautiful art works made right out of the rice field. Apparently by planting four different varieties of rice in just the right way, people from the Inakadate Village are able to make incredible reproductions of famous prints by Katsushika Hokusai. These works of art took a long time to plan and their destruction comes closes and closer, as the September harvest nears.

These rice fields seem normal when seen from the ground. But when seen from a 22 meter high tower, visitors can see great works of art that have taken place. The fields have been a great boon for the local economy, drawing close to 150,000 visitors. Some people who see it for the first time wonder if the leaves of certain rice plants have been painted a certain color. The villagers then explain that no, the colors come from using different types of rice plants.

Inakadate Village started to create rice-paddy art in 1993 as a local revitalization project. No one takes credit for the idea, which seems to have just grown out of meetings of the village committee.

During the first few years the designs were simple and have progressively gotten more complicated and intricate, thereby provoking more interest from travelers and tourists in coming to see these great rice paddy art works.

Source: Hemmy

Julian Beever has an amazing talent and its all done with chalk on public sidewalks. His work appears to be 3 dimensional and seems to fool the eye, he is a true master of the 3 dimensional. He generally works out of London, but has worked all across Europe, Australia and the United States.

When people look at his work it appears to pop out at them right up from the pavement. He mainly works or large corporations and creates highly detailed imaginative pieces that have an advertising focus to them.

Watching a sidewalk artist work with chalk is really interesting, and well worth taking a few minutes to do it.

Beever has been doing 3D sidewalk art since the early 90’s and his creations now make money even though they are only temporary since they are created with chalk. Companies like Coca Cola, Sony and others hire him to create sidewalk murals on sidewalks and pavement all over the world.