Henri Neuendorf
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With an average of 150 rainy days a year, it’s safe to say that the city of Seattle, in the Pacific Northwest, is a wet place. One Seattle artist has taken it upon himself to brighten up the days of his fellow Seattleites by creating humorous street art on the city’s sidewalks that shows up only when wet, Visual News reports.
To create the hidden messages, Seattle native Peregrine Church sprays superhydrophobic solution over a stencil. In an online video, he explains, “If you spray them on something, it will no longer get wet—water just rolls right off it.”
“And I thought, ‘Hey, concrete gets darker when it gets wet,'” he adds. “‘If you took some of this stuff and stenciled it onto concrete, then whenever it rained you could make like hidden messages show up.’”
Church says that his only motivation is to make people smile. The sidewalk artworks feature an array of positive messages to lift the spirits of pedestrians when another rainy day comes around. One even lays out the markings for a game of hopscotch.
The hydrophobic coatings are environmentally safe and biodegradable. Each artwork lasts for between four months and a year depending on how many much foot traffic the area experiences.
On Twitter, the artist describes himself as being “On a quest to make the world a more interesting place.”
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