….an adventure of epic proportions

While living in London, my husband decided he needed to find some street art created by the famous artist Stik. He went on the internet to locate some Stik murals that were not too far from our flat in Islington/Highbury.

Stik is a British graffiti artist based in London.^[1][2] He is known for painting large stick figures.

One of his works fetched £150,000 at auction.

We started our search for a Stik mural at Shakespeare Walk. We got on a bus and made our way using Google Maps. When we got there we found ourselves walking through a nice residential neighbourhood with a community centre and parks. We thought we might be close because we did see some street art made by children.

We asked a couple of local residents if they could help us but they were at a complete loss and had never heard of Stik. We ended up walking through Butterfield Green before getting back on the bus and heading home.

Two days later, Kevin found another area where he thought we’d have more luck. This time we got on a bus that took us further east towards Dalston. When we got there I wasn’t sure where Kevin was taking me. We walked through back alleys and abandoned lots but didn’t see a Stik.

We went back to the main street and passed a colourful gate to a city garden but it didn’t open for another 10 minutes so we walked a little further and down a dead-end street where we passed some quirky shop windows and some graffiti art on the buildings.

We returned to the Curve Garden Gate and looked up and saw this amazing mural on the wall outside the gate. Later we found out the people in the mural were famous local residents of Dalston.

Kevin was certain that we would find a Stik mural behind those doors. What we did find was an amazing garden space that had been created by the community back in 2012 to make up for the fact that Dalston had no green spaces for the residents to enjoy. Inside there was a cafe, a tiny ‘museum’ of sorts, a play area for children and wonderful pots of spring plants. The walkway inside twisted and turned around trees and plants and areas to sit and enjoy this green space.

While I was enjoying the scenery and taking photos Kevin was off looking for a Stik. When I caught up with him he looked dejected and not because he couldn’t find it. He found it buried behind scaffolding and overgrown plants. Unfortunately we could only see the bottom third of the figure. Apparently the wall it was painted on was deemed unsafe so the city covered it up for safety reasons.

The search continues…….

Thanks to Sami for hosting Monday Murals https://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com/2022/05/monday-murals-ellenbrook-ii.html and Marsha for host Photographing Public Art Challenge https://alwayswrite.blog/photographing_public_art_challenge/?wref=tp