after…

the chimney stacks of this heating plant in bagnolet, paris, were transformed over a period of 2 months in 2007 by trompe l’oeil specialist frederic garcia. the largest of the water drops are 1.1m in diameter and to ensure the accuracy required he was guided by an assistant at ground level using a walkie talkie.

the skill and patience needed to do something of this scale, successfully, is incredible. but then when you spend your life doing just that i suppose the practice goes some way towards easing the pressure. when i saw this photo a couple of weeks ago it instantly brought jean marie pierret to mind, a guy i could’ve sworn i wrote a post about last year (a post which seems to have slipped from this site entirely. if you can find it i’ll be impressed), and a guy who, along with the help of 8 mountain climbers, was responsible for decorating the enormous tignes dam in france with a gigantic and awesome picture of hercules…

if the sight of that painting doesn’t impress you, bear in mind that the dam’s wall measures 181m in height, that’s taller than the blackpool tower (never thought i’d use that structure as a comparison).

pierret was also responsible for painting one of the cooling towers at cruas power station, france in 1991.

pierret was helped by 9 people (one of whom i think was frederic gracia) to paint ‘aquarius’ on the tower, a feat which required 4′000 litres of acrylic paint.

oh, just out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the following advert was actually painted onto the hoover dam? i suspect not but there’s an outside chance.

sources: 1, 2

the hollywood sign is undoubtedly one of the most well-known landmarks on earth and the fact that it exists, proudly sitting on hollywood hills advertising the world’s movie industry, has never seemed strange to most people. what is strange (to me at least) is the fact that the 50ft high sign was originally an advert of a different kind in a couple of ways. check out the photo above. up until 1949 the sign had an extra 4 letters and was created as an enormous marketing tool to help sell a housing development of the same name which sat in the hills above los angeles. eventually in 1949, after the properties were sold and the sign was redundant, control was assumed by the hollywood chamber of commerce who agreed to maintain the sign without the ‘l-a-n-d’ attached and minus the 4,000 power-hungry flashing lightbulbs.

what intrigues me more though are the numerous imitations of the structure across the globe. i managed to find a few (below) after seeing a list on wikipedia (see here), if you know of any other photos let me know. i won’t label the photos as i’m assuming you can all work out the locations from the signs.

 
(cheers to reader adam for this mammoth example in pennsylvania)

seeing these makes me wish that all communities were clearly labelled in a similar fashion, preferably at mid to high altitude using the same typeface. even better still, towns and cities should erect these gigantic adverts in neighbouring areas so as to advertise the place to outsiders.

here’s hoping.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4