Shark and Sea Bird - Portsmouth, NH - Murals on Waymarking.com

This street art mural depicts the head of a massive shark emerging out of the ground and it approaches a white sea bird that is perched atop a window in the Granite State Minerals building. The building is harbor-side along Ceres Street in the downtown area of Portsmouth. The artwork was created by Shark Toof who was invited by the Portsmouth Museum of Art, to share hist talents in the urban landscape of Portsmouth.

"The summer exhibition Street a.k.a. Museum at the Portsmouth Museum of Art introduces an ongoing international art genre to a relatively conservative public audience. Visual explorations into identity, consumerism, and popular culture, as well as issues of performance, gangsta, media, site, and scale are sparks for aesthetic dialogue. Street art involves the nonart world in the art conversation, and that might be this exhibition’s greatest contribution.

Five internationally recognized street artists have been invited to create murals on “donated” walls around Portsmouth. Gallery pieces and installations are simultaneously exhibited in the Portsmouth Museum. The range of styles and personal agendas is diverse, but the and creative ability is apparent in all the artists’ work.

Shark Toof chooses the shark for his alter ego. Fifteen-foot-tall shark heads, mouths gaping with a jumble of wicked-looking teeth, oozing slimy goo, gaze with hungry eyes at pedestrians strolling along the Harbor River walk. Their neon coloring—green, red, and blue—glow day and night. Inside the museum, Shark Toof has an exuberant room-size installation of New Hampshire junk tagged in huge, neon green and pink letters. Across from that is a series of wooden panels painted in a classic comic-book style, featuring Shark Toof navigating the hostile world as a sharp-toothed hero. Tagging, phonetic spelling, and emphasizing his street name in his work connects Shark Toof directly to his graffiti roots." SOURCE