Meet the Artist - Mr. Nilsen

Within the past year Mark Nilsen has been to various places and painted many marvelous street structures, utility covers, tree and subway grates, the ironwork from gates, bridges and lamp posts, architectural stone reliefs, even concrete graffiti á la "Atom loves Rosa" in the sidewalk. His paintings encompass a wide array of size and color.

As diverse as Nilsen's work is his audience. His art is hanging in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Russia, the European Union and the United States. Buyers are all kinds of different people, ranging from a kid who wants a manhole cover on his drums or college students that want to bring a souvenir to their dorm, to an art collector from Paris.

Most paintings get purchased right from the artist on the street. "The street is my studio and my gallery," Mark says standing next to his "traveling exhibition", a wooden easel he clips his work onto that collapses to a few sticks he rolls his paintings around. It's small enough to be carried on the bus and enables him to set up his "gallery" all over New York City. Though his favorite spots are in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in Times Square.

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Meet the Artist - Mr. Nilsen
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Look at Mark Nilsen's paintings»
More photos of sewer covers»

The 'Feuertelegraph' painting
next to the actual iron-cast
cover in Köln, Germany.

Detail of 'Chestnut and Fourth',
a streetscape Nilsen painted
in New Orleans, LA, USA.

Concrete graffiti from a New York City
sidewalk captured on canvas.
(Detail of Nilsen's 'Atom loves Rosa').