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Stavanger, Norway: An Unexpected Destination for Awesome Street Art

New York, Berlin, Paris, Rio de Janeiro...Stavanger? it's true; Norway's second city is a hot spot for international street art, and it's something we never would have guessed until we stepped off Cunard's Queen Victoria and into the center of the city, with walls sporting Shepard Fairey and Banksy.

Stavanger seems a sleepy town, but first impressions are usually deceiving as we know all too well. It took about 10 minutes of meandering the (literally) vibrant streets before we found a store called "SHIT" and a bohemian coffeeshop packed with locals keen to tell us where to find free WiFi and where to walk to see the best graffiti.

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8,003 Miles from Portland, Oregon You'll Find...Kangaroos

Are you a traveler who's gotten over buying souvenirs everywhere you go? Maybe you're even totally done with posing for photos of yourself in front of world landmarks? Regardless, there's one sort of touristy thing we—as beyond frequent travelers—are powerless to resist, and that's waypoint signs.

You'll find these posts with arrow directions at places like trailheads, airports and heavily-trafficked plazas in urban city centres. It was at the latter we photographed this one, which takes pride of place at the entrance to Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square.

While the statue of Portlandia may only be five blocks away, the opportunity to hug a kangaroo is more like 8,003 miles away. Timbuktu? 6,726 miles. Walden Pond? 2,530 miles. Portland, Maine? 2,540 miles. It never gets old!

[Photo: Jaunted]

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Banksy Makes Mondays Suck a Little Less by Sponsoring Free Days at MOCA

Thanks to street art/movie producer/commercial success Banksy, admission to Art in the Streets, a new exhibition of graffiti and street art at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, will be free every Monday until the show ends.

The usually reclusive artist spoke out this weekend about why he was willing to sponsor Free Mondays. “I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it,” said Banksy. Clever!

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Spring Brings Fashion, Music and Art Exhibits on McQueen, Bowie and Graffiti

Okay, we are sick and tired of all the "Body Worlds" exhibits already. We're ready for a decent museum exhibit that's not full of corpses. Luckily, a number of museums are getting ready to unveil some new spring exhibitions that hopefully will put "Body Worlds" to rest.

Check out three must-visit spring exhibits after the jump.

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Buy New York Street Art to Benefit Japan This Weekend

If you're in New York City this weekend you can score some cool art, for a good cause. Toy Tokyo and TT Underground Gallery are hosting a special exhibition this weekend with all proceeds going to the Japan Earthquake & Pacific Tsunami Relief Fund at GlobalGiving.org.

There will be an Opening Reception for the exhibition held on Saturday, April 2nd, 7 PM-11 PM at the TT Underground Gallery, 91 Second Avenue New York, NY. On Sunday, the event will continue from 2 PM- 7 PM.

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Google Goes Street with Website that Showcases Graffiti

We told you how Google's Art Project brings you inside some of the world's top museums virtually through its Google Earth-like street-view technology. Take that same idea and apply it to graffiti and murals and you have Street Art View.

The site, created by Red Bull and Brazilian ad agency Loducca, shows sick street art from all over the world. Although the resolution of the shots isn't as good as Art Project, you can be the curator of this display and upload any eye-catching graffiti you see.

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The Street Art Manhole Covers of Milan's Via Montenapoleone

Via Montenapoleone in Milan. It's the Italian equivalent of New York's 5th Avenue or Avenue Montaigne in Paris, but Via Montenapoleone is a bit smaller, slightly less of a tourist draw during the low season (aka winter, so long as it's not Fashion Week). We recently took a stroll down it just to take advantage of what it's best for, which is not shopping, but window shopping. We were all set to focus our gaze on shiny patent pumps and quilted bags, but instead we spent all our time looking down at the sidewalk, and the unexpected street art right below our feet.

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Miami's Hottest Piece of Public Art is a Derelict Piano

Chalk up another one for the power of public art. Apparently, a busted-up old piano just up and appeared on a sandbar in Miami's Biscayne Bay, and the haunting piece of public art has quickly become the area's hottest site to see. Granted, you need a boat to get out to it, but if you can...the piano is there, slowly sinking and just waiting for you to twinkle the ivories in the oddest location.

The creation is actually purposefully done in the name of art, as the "artist" is a 16-year-old local whom the Daily Mail calls a "teenage prankster," even though he only did this after some actual pranksters had burnt the piano and lowered it into a canal. He and his father retrieved the instrument and gave it this new home, one that's not the object of much touristic attention.

In one way, it's littering. But in another, it's just the sort of positive PR boost Miami is needing right now.

[Photo: Getty/Daily Mail]

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Vancouver’s Coolest Public Art: 'We' by Jaume Plensa

Photo: Ted Topping

Vancouver is still basking in the afterglow of the 2010 Winter Olympics and one of the best remnants of the Games is the public art that now decorates the city’s parks and buildings. For the next few weeks (actually this the final one!), Jaunted's Vancouver Embed Tuija Seipell of The Cool Hunter will be reporting on the best of the bunch.

When I first saw this sculpture that sits on the small hill overlooking Sunset Beach, I dubbed it “Letterhead.” Without knowing its story, I felt it spoke many languages and looked friendly and open in its lacy lightness. To my surprise, I wasn’t too far wrong with this.

The sculpture is called "We" and the artist, world-renown Barcelona-born Jaume Plensa, describes it as a celebration of linguistic diversity, a fitting topic for the multicultural and multilingual Vancouver. Plensa has created the hollow sitting human figure, a “human container,” using random letters from eight alphabets—Latin, Greek, Russian Cyrillic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese. The sculpture is made of painted aluminum and it is beautifully lit from below at night.

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Vancouver’s Coolest Public Art: A-maze-ing Laughter

Photo: Ted Topping

Vancouver is still basking in the afterglow of the 2010 Winter Olympics and one of the best remnants of the Games is the public art that now decorates the city’s parks and buildings. For the next few weeks, Jaunted's Vancouver Embed Tuija Seipell of The Cool Hunter will be reporting on the best of the bunch.

A-maze-ing Laughter happily competes with The Meeting for the title of the most-photographed and most-posed-with among Vancouver’s coolest public art. Each of the 14 happy bronze-cast males is 8.5 feet tall (2.5 meters) and weighs 551 pounds (250 kilograms).

The sculptures were shipped from China, the homeland of the artist Yue Minjun, and then transported to the Morton Park Triangle at English Bay in the West End. After being lifted by cranes to their places in the circle, each figure was welded to its base.

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Vancouver’s Coolest Public Art: The Meeting

Photo: Ted Topping

Vancouver is still basking in the afterglow of the 2010 Winter Olympics and one of the best remnants of the Games is the public art that now decorates the city’s parks and buildings. For the next few weeks, Jaunted's Vancouver Embed Tuija Seipell of The Cool Hunter will be reporting on the best of the bunch.

The circular grouping of eight crouching, life-size men at Cardero Park is possibly one of the most photographed sculptures of the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale (2009-2011). I suggest you sip your iced frappuccino on the patio at the Starbucks in the adjacent Westin Bayshore hotel—the hotel where the IOC stayed during the Olympics—and watch the public interact with the artwork. The parade of people posing and taking pictures is continuous as visitors and locals just cannot resist the idea of joining the bright red men of Chinese sculptor Wang Shugang’s The Meeting.

People mimic the mens' pose, they climb on them, hug them, and they sit around them as if one of the bronze sculptures were part of their group.

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Vancouver’s Coolest Public Art: The Drop

Photo: Ted Topping

Vancouver is still basking in the afterglow of the 2010 Winter Olympics and one of the best remnants of the Games is the public art that now decorates the city’s parks and buildings. For the next few weeks, Jaunted's Vancouver Embed Tuija Seipell of The Cool Hunter will be reporting on the best of the bunch.

The massive, vibrantly blue Drop is part of the Vancouver Convention Centre Art Project. Located right at the edge of the new building, the 65-foot tall Drop overlooks the cruise ships departing for Alaska and the float planes taking off for the islands.

It is the first North American commission for Inges Idee, a group of four German artists who have created large-scale sculptures around the world since 1993. At first glance, the Drop appears to be made of glass, but its central “spine” is made of steel, then covered with Styrofoam coated with a thick, strong coat of blue polyurethane. The elegant figurehead pays homage to the omnipresence of water in Vancouver.

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