Justine Dori (Dinosaurs in New York)
I was passing by the Kate Spade store on Fifth Avenue on my way to the farmer’s market the other day, and found myself walking on beautiful colored stripes painted on the sidewalk; they seemed to stream out of the store’s stripey interior – a great, simple idea. Why not paint a sidewalk, or any cement, flagstone or brick floor or patio? (Imagine New York City with its sidewalks in colors…)

Seems to me there’s lots of possibilities, from painted flagstones, like the ones in San Diego’s Balboa park…

via Happy Mundane
via Happy Mundane

via Happy Mundane

to hand-painted images, like this welcome mat in front of a restaurant called Kasa in San Francisco. ..

via Apartment Therapy
via Apartment Therapy

…to geometric patterns, like Kate Spade’s (which are essentially stenciled, using gaffer’s tape, I imagine) to endless patterns of stencils (beloved by graffiti artists) like this one on a San Francisco street…

via Stencil Archive

(…curious that all the examples I found are in California…)

For info on how to paint concrete or stone, Google “paint concrete” (there’s lots of links). Or start here.

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3 replies on “why not paint the sidewalk (or any outdoor floor?)

  1. Pamela Hovland (see About) sent me an email about painted floors “.. there’s a number of artists who use colored tape to do the same (and more). One did the large floor in MoMA’s first floor next to the sculpture garden, perhaps a year or so ago.”

    I’m on the hunt to find out about those artists. In the meantime, I stumbled pretty good instructions for stenciling a floor…
    http://painting.about.com/od/stencillingdecorative/a/floor_stencils.htm

  2. I am spending several weeks in Uruguay. In my photos and blog, am particularly focusing on scenes and images that speak to me about the culture or the community- not the historic “post card” photos. I love two photos of the Pittsburgh Paint Store because of the brilliant use of sidewalk art as a advertisement about the business. I also like this because my sister lives in Pittsburgh:)

    I wanted to attach two photos, but I don’t seem to be able to do this. Will be posting these photos this afternoon to my blog.

    Camino del Corazon “Path of the Heart”
    http://[email protected]

  3. I have been taking a class in the Village at Balboa Park, what a consciousness stopper, do I step on the maroon block or the turquoise block? Mmmm so nice!

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