It flows down the streets, up staircases and around corners – a green carpet, unfurled like a leaf, in a city of stone. This path of grass was installed in the picturesque French village of Jaujac to celebrate the 10th year of its arts and nature trail programs. Public artists Gaëlle Villedary used an incredible 3.5 tons of natural, living turf grass.

Stretching nearly 1,400 feet, the trail brings greenery to places that have little room for nature. Though the village is set in a breathtaking natural setting of forests, hills and rivers, its public areas are fairly bare.

The artists explain, “Through the village to link natural areas on either side, a link, a path … a path connecting the heart of the village and its inhabitants with the valley. The incarnation of the wire through the ages to Jaujac is a piece of nature, a communion between Nature and Man, through Art.”

Calling to mind moss graffiti, the green carpet represents a stunning convergence of natural and urban environments. The temporary installation was completed in September 2011.

When the seasons change, there is at least one thing that you can always count on: potholes in the street. They are rough on your car, they make the whole street look awful and they are seriously annoying to drive over. Two artists are taking it upon themselves to call even more attention to these irritating problems with some fabulous art projects.

(images via: Juliana Santacruz Herrera)

Juliana Santacruz Herrera made the streets of Paris far more colorful than usual with her “Project Pothole,” in which she filled Parisian potholes with colorful twists of soft fabric.

(images via: Juliana Santacruz Herrera)

The normally-rough and bumpy ride on several Paris streets was somewhat softened by Herrera’s efforts. Even more importantly, the sight of the streets was greatly softened with these small touches of beauty.

(images via: Juliana Santacruz Herrera)

Miles away from the ugly quick slap-on patches that city crews would do, Herrera’s fabric interventions bring a bit of textural interest and bright joyful colors to the poor, neglected streets of the city.

(image via: Pete Dungey)

British artist Pete Dungey is similarly changing the dire landscape of pothole-riddled streets. But rather than stuffing them with textiles, he plants tiny gardens in the newly-formed concrete cavities. It is the ultimate combination of guerrilla gardening and street art.

(image via: Pete Dungey)

Working on the aged and sometimes treacherous bumpy streets of Britain, Dungey patiently arranges colorful plants in his pothole gardens. The tiny landscapes, he says, are meant to call attention to the imperfections of British roads.

(image via: Pete Dungey)

Most of us, of course, would go out of our way to avoid driving over such lovely little gardens. But at least if you have to suffer the indignity of driving over countless holes in the road, you can at least enjoy the sight of a few brightly colored flowers also.

Graffiti is typically seen as a destructive, unsightly problem for cities – but there are, of course, times when it is incredibly beautiful. The Coriandoli project from French artist Eltono exemplifies the very best of thoughtful graffiti and playful art all rolled up into one massive project spanning multiple rooms of the Cripta747 space in Torino, Italy.

(all images via: Eltono)

Eltono’s graffiti is not rendered in the normal spray paint or even markers – it is put to the walls in the form of double-sided tape and joyful-looking confetti (“coriandoli” in Italian). The artist got the idea after passing by a window display in a paper shop: a jaunty little bag of colorful confetti caught his eye and caused an idea to take root.

The Coriandoli exhibit is a delightful mashup of a normally-illegal, often-aggressive activity and the harmless – even adorable – act of throwing bits of colored paper into the air in the midst of a celebration. Eltono’s idea was to bring the two together in a way that no one had ever really thought to do before: he would create interactive confetti graffiti.

One room of the Cripta747 space was decorated with patterns of double-sided tape on the walls. Just before the gallery opened, Eltono removed the protective coverings from the tape strips and dumped a huge mountain of confetti in the middle of the room. From there, of course, it was only a matter of time before nature took its course and a mighty confetti war was waged.

Attendees gleefully threw handfuls of confetti at each other and at the walls, participating in an impromptu celebration while also helping to create these unique pieces of art on the gallery walls. The resulting pieces were some of the finest interactive art imaginable: they were created by the public in moments of real fun and happiness, which (we think) is the way all art should be created.

Of course, Eltono could not let gallery attendees have all the fun. Before the opening, he himself sneaked out into the streets of Torino with a bucket of glue, some stencils and large amounts of confetti to create his own celebratory graffiti. At the exhibit opening he displayed the stencils he used in two other rooms of the gallery along with photographs of his finished pieces and monitors playing the above video.

In an additional experiment (which Eltono calls “an absurd idea”) the artist ventured out to a train tunnel to play with the wind generated by the trains. Placing pre-glued papers down beside piles of graffiti, Eltono and friend D.Y.O. stood back and let the swift winds of the tunnel rearrange the colorful bits of paper into art. These pieces, too, were hung in the gallery for spectators to enjoy.

In one of the final surprises of the Coriandoli exhibit, Eltono hung 50 small DIY graffiti kits on a wall, inviting visitors to create their own amazing works of confetti art. The kits each contained a card with a double-sided tape design, a pile of confetti and instructions for use. Some attendees simply took their gift home with them, but many decided to make their own little works of art right then and there, and hang them on the wall for everyone else to enjoy.

(images via: martin reis)

Last year, Toronto citizens asked themselves a question that led to an unprecedented law: Why should we have to look at so many billboards? In April 2010, the city instituted taxes and restrictions on public advertising, but some ad companies decided to break the law – and those rogue billboards were themselves subject of guerrilla action recently when activists covered them with art.

The large-scale urban street hack was organized by Toronto Street Advertising Takeover (TOSAT) and plastered 41 illegal advertising pillars and 20 10′-by-20′ billboards with 85 prints by a variety of artists, from graffiti-style urban art to whimsical drawings of birds.

Toronto has long had restrictions on billboards, but they were complex and difficult to enforce. April’s bylaw introduced a new tax on billboards that funds art in public spaces and pays for enforcement, but according to activists, companies like Pattison Outdoor Advertising – which was targeted by the guerrilla action – continue to flout the law.

“When you walk through the city and you know you have no control over that space, it’s like walking through a mall,” said ‘Posterchild’, a Torontoist.com contributor who was involved with the project. “It’s more about feeling at home. And it’s impossible for me to feel at home in my city if I don’t feel I’m a part of it.”