A Bugs Bunny Mural By ADRE

• A Bugs Bunny Mural By ADRE
• StayLo - The Glass House Lane Series
• Mural By OMIN At Glass House Lane
• Mural By Marie Balbinot From Brazil
• The Solar Eclipse
• About A Girl A Mural By KEMP
• Waterford Walls August 2025
• The Sister Cusack Memorial Plaque
• Temple Bar Is More Than One Pub
• The Historic Arch Courtyard At Henrietta Place
• York Street And Bow Street East
• The Hags With The Bags At The Halfpenny Bridge
• Luke Kelly Statue At South King Street
• They Misheard The Name As Chapel Lizard
• Modern High-Spec Infill Built on a Double Derelict Site

ON VIEW AT GLASS HOUSE LANE

THE LEGACY CATALOG

* In The Year 2008 * In The Year 2011 * In The Year 2017 * Henrietta Back In 2010

Bugs Bunny by ADRE

Glass House Lane, Waterford | 13 August 2025

This playful, cartoon-inspired collaboration marks a distinct shift in tone for Glasshouse Lane, highlighting an energetic crew dynamic and a lighthearted approach to urban art.

Artwork Overview & Artists

The Character (Bugs Bunny): The stylised, beanie-wearing Bugs Bunny on the right is the work of Irish graffiti and street artist ADRE (@adre_letters). ADRE is widely recognised across the national scene for his crisp letterforms and subversive, contemporary twists on classic Looney Tunes iconography.

The Background & Tugboat: The abstract graphic forms, floating cloud, and geometric pink-and-blue tugboat on the left were created by Sonny (@sonny_graffiti), signed off with a vibrant green "SONNY" handstyle in the lower corner.

The Style: The mural is an exemplary collaborative cartoon jam. Moving away from somber or photorealistic themes, the artists combine bold pop-art geometry with classic street-character illustration, transforming a standard concrete wall partition into a vibrant visual narrative.

Glass House Lane Gallery

• Cataloguing every piece and identifying each artist along Glass House Lane was an exhaustive process. Attribution in underground spaces is notoriously fluid, with conflicting accounts that require careful cross-referencing. For instance, while one mural bearing the tag Novice was locally attributed to an Irish writer, stylistic signatures and records confirm it as the work of the contemporary French visual artist of the same name.

• Glass House Lane proved to be an exceptional discovery. Whoever dismissed this alleyway as "poor quality" simply confused the raw, unregulated nature of a communal graffiti wall with a lack of artistic merit.

• In reality, the lane preserves a vibrant, authentic tension between international fine-art muralism and grassroots street culture.

The "Off-Grid" Fringe

• During the annual Waterford Walls Festival, the official programme operates on a tightly structured framework:

• Curated Placement: The festival pairs invited global artists with prominent, large-scale commercial facades.

• Formal Approvals: Concept designs require clearance through local council oversight, property owner agreements, and heritage guidelines.

• Extensive Logistics: Production relies on heavy machinery, cherry pickers, commercial paint sponsorships, and strict completion windows.

• Glass House Lane functions as the festival's spontaneous fringe. It is an open-source, collaborative canvas. Once visiting international artists finish their commissioned multi-storey murals for the day, they head down the lane with their remaining spray cans to join local writers for impromptu paint jams.

• Free from commercial briefs, bureaucratic sign-offs, and curatorial guidelines, artists paint side-by-side in pure, unregulated creative freedom.

About The Art And The Artists

The works along the lane represent three distinct disciplines within contemporary urban art:

1. High-Concept Fine Muralism

• Taquen: Employs a delicate, overlapping illustrative line technique that demands exceptional spatial discipline when translated onto rough exterior stucco.
• Neto Vettorello (The Passage): Uses sophisticated forced perspective and directional lighting to turn a flat alley wall into a deep, three-dimensional architectural portal.

2. Illustrative Textured Realism

• Laidback & HMC: Adapted their approach directly to the tactile irregularities of the wall. Laidback’s marine forms and HMC’s barn owls utilise meticulous stippling and cross-hatching, turning coarse masonry into organic shading and depth.
• Vial: Monochromatic skulls demonstrate masterclass can control, balancing soft photorealistic fades with sharp subterranean edge-work.
• Novice: Introduces a clean, vector-inspired aesthetic, using hard-edged, flat colour-blocking to produce an arresting graphic portrait.

3. Subculture Style-Writing & Character Jams

• Rems & Kyser: Precision-driven Wildstyle lettering. Executing balanced interlocking letterforms, crisp outer-glow keylines, and uniform 3D drop-shadows across jagged surfaces demands years of motor discipline and muscle memory.

• Staylo, Adre, & Sonny: Energetic character illustration. Staylo’s "sticker pack" arrangement delivers a sharp pop-art subversion of commercial iconography, converting weathered brickwork into a dense visual anthology.

Ephemeral Value

Because Glass House Lane is an unsanctioned, dynamic space, it is fundamentally transient. These layers will eventually be buffed or claimed by the next wave of visiting artists. Documenting the lane captures a distinct, unvarnished chapter in Waterford’s underground visual history—one that exists entirely beyond the margins of the official festival map.

About The Location

In the past I was told that Glass House Lane only featured "unapproved" or "poor quality" street art but I visited a few days ago and it featured some quality work. I have photographed all the art that is on display and after further research I will identify and discuss the art and artists.

Street Art and Setting

The Street Art Transformation: Historically treated as an unregulated tagging alley, Glass House Lane has evolved through initiatives like the Waterford Walls festival and independent muralists into a recognised canvas for high-caliber street art, large-scale character work, and stencil pieces.

Urban Boundaries: The lane sits in The Glen quarter of Waterford City, running along the flank of the now-vacant former Aldi retail premises.

Derelict Structures: The opposite side consists of boarded-up vernacular townhouses, overgrown boundary walls, and vacant brownfield plots illustrating Waterford’s historic inner-city urban decay.

The Road Surface Discs

• What They Are: Despite appearing like weathered copper pennies, these are crimped metal bottle caps (crown corks) embedded into the black bitumen sealant used to seal asphalt cracks.

• Why They Are There: This is a classic form of guerrilla urban intervention (similar to street kintsugi or pavement mosaics). While the bitumen crack sealant was still hot and pliable, bottle caps were pressed rim-down or face-down into the tar line.

• Visual Clues: The scalloped, 21-crimp fluted edge is visible on each disc, along with a painted yellow cap preserved near the bend. Traffic wear and environmental grime have stripped the paint and oxidised the underlying tinplate/steel, giving them a tarnished, coin-like appearance.

Street Name And History

Name and History

• The Penrose Glassworks: The lane takes its name from the original glasshouse founded in 1783 by Quaker merchants George and William Penrose.

• Birth of Waterford Crystal: This site, established between Anne Street and Glass House Lane, marked the genesis of Waterford's world-renowned flint glass industry.

• Quaker Heritage: The lane formed part of Waterford's 18th-century industrial Quaker quarter, situated alongside allied trades on Penrose Lane, Dyehouse Lane, and Meeting House Lane. A Waterford Civic Trust blue plaque on Glass House Lane commemorates the Penrose brothers.

Derelict Sites & Future Plans

• The Glen Regeneration: Waterford City & County Council has targeted The Glen and surrounding laneways under city centre revitalisation and Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) strategies.
• Vacant Retail Footprint: Following Aldi’s relocation into the core at City Square, the commercial unit and its adjacent parking structure have been earmarked for commercial re-tenanting or mixed-use conversion to alleviate inner-city vacancy.

Derelict Site Levies: The derelict domestic plots opposite are listed under municipal derelict sites monitoring to compel private redevelopment or facilitate future compulsory acquisition for urban infill housing.

International Artists

Zabou (France)

• Style & Career: Based in London, Zabou is internationally renowned for her striking, high-contrast figurative realism. She uses spray paint to blend portraits of real, expressive humans with bold color fields and graphic components.
• Key Visuals: Highly detailed portraits featuring dramatic side-lighting and emotional intensity.

VILE (Portugal)

• Style & Career: Rodrigo Miguel (VILE) is famous for his mind-bending 3D transparent/cut-out graffiti technique. Using precise shading, stencil work, and perspective tricks, he renders his name as if it were carved directly through solid concrete walls, revealing the empty background space behind them.

TELMO MIEL (Netherlands)

• Style & Career: The artistic duo Telmo Pieper and Miel Krutzmann are globally celebrated for their large-scale surrealist photo-realism. They fuse layered imagery, overlapping human forms, and dreamlike elements into a single cohesive piece.

MR CENZ (UK)

• Style & Career: A staple of the London street scene since 1988, Mr Cenz creates distinctive futuristic female portraits. His signature aesthetic blends classic graffiti lettering, photorealistic faces, neon hues, and abstract translucent flow-lines.

MR.DHEO (Portugal)

• Style & Career: Self-taught artist known for hyper-realistic narrative portraiture. His work often tackles political commentary, pop culture, and social critique with crisp lines and dramatic contrasts.

Fintan Magee (Australia)

• Style & Career: Frequently referred to as "the Australian Banksy," Magee is a world-class muralist whose work explores social issues, climate change, migration, and the working class.
• Key Visuals: Large, painterly figures rendered with soft light, atmospheric texture, and water reflections.

Dan Kitchener / DANK (UK)

• Style & Career: DANK is legendary for his atmospheric cinematic street scenes, particularly rainy, neon-soaked nightscapes of Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London.
• Key Visuals: Wet pavement reflections, glowing light blurs, and dramatic rain effects rendered with incredible speed using spray paint.

L7MATRIX (France/Brazil)

• Style & Career: Known for combining raw graffiti lettering with fine-art realism. His most famous subjects are hyper-vibrant, exploding birds and animals that seem to dissolve into dynamic splatters, lines, and movement.

Fio Silva (Argentina)

• Style & Career: Dynamic, organic murals featuring wild birds, flora, and fauna. Her style relies on heavy black line work, bold color blocking, and sweeping lines that flow along the architecture of the wall.

DAN FERRER (Spain)

• Style & Career: Ferrer’s work blends figurative realism with allegory and childhood symbolism. He often depicts larger-than-life children breaking through limitations or exploring dream worlds.

CONSE (Spain)

• Style & Career: Master of hyper-realism and portraiture. He focuses heavily on capturing subtle skin textures, deep expressions, and intimate human moments on massive scales.

SPEKER (Italy) & SILYME (Italy)

• Style & Career: Traditional graffiti writers turned muralists who specialize in technical wildstyle lettering, sharp geometric angles, dynamic color gradients, and complex letter construction.

NOL (Netherlands)

• Style & Career: Distinctive for his whimsical, retro-cartoon character designs. NOL uses bold black outlines, playful narrative themes, and bright primary colors.

ADOR (France)

• Style & Career: Illustrative, satirical, and story-driven. ADOR creates imaginary worlds populated by quirky, long-nosed humanoid characters engaged in chaotic or humorous scenarios.

KMG (Scotland)

• Style & Career: Illustrative street artist known for her cheeky, humorous, and bold character-based work that frequently pokes fun at modern society and pop culture.

WRN (Brazil) & MARIE (Brazil)

• Style & Career: Bringing South American tropical street aesthetics, rich patterns, and vibrant color palettes rooted in Brazilian urban culture.

Irish & Northern Irish Artists

DAN LEO (Ireland)

• Style & Career: One of Ireland's most recognizable street artists. Dan Leo's work is characterized by heavy black outlines, sharp geometric partitioning, and vibrant graphic depictions of animals and wildlife.

ROB HILKEN (Northern Ireland)

• Style & Career: Belfast-based artist and curator whose work focuses on geometric abstraction, color field theory, and structural symmetry that interacts with urban architecture.

SHANE HA (Ireland)

• Style & Career: Galway-born visual artist (often signing as Torc_art) whose style blends illustrative geometry, Celtic knotwork elements, and modern pop-surrealist characters.

RASK (Ireland)

• Style & Career: A veteran of the Irish graffiti scene, Rask is renowned for his technical prowess in classic lettering, complex wildstyle, and large-scale collaborative pieces.

SOAK (Ireland)

• Style & Career: Longstanding Irish writer and muralist known for versatile lettering, character design, and heavy involvement in the grassroots national graffiti scene.

STAYLO (Ireland)

• Style & Career: Focuses on contemporary lettering, bold color choices, and clean vector-like spray execution across urban landscapes.

MUL (UK/Ireland)

• Style & Career: Known for the ubiquitous "Heart" and continuous-line characters, MUL focuses on rapid, high-impact graphic iconography that interacts playfully with urban infrastructure.

OMIM (Ireland), NOVICE (Ireland), RO (Ireland), NIALLOL (Ireland), LAIDBACK (Ireland)

• Style & Career: Core contributors to the evolving Irish street art circuit. Their styles range from raw freehand graffiti and calligraffiti to contemporary character-driven compositions.

EMBER (Ireland), KONE (Ireland), KAROL (Ireland), HMC (Ireland), ANDYMC (Ireland)

• Style & Career: Represents a mix of established writers and emerging Irish crews. Expect high-energy lettering, sharp fill-ins, and complex color schemes designed to pop against weather-worn stone and concrete.

Ailbhe Larsen (Ireland)

• Style & Career: Illustrative artist whose work leans toward fine-art storytelling, fine linework, and soft, organic motifs that contrast sharply with raw urban brickwork.

Photographic Field Strategy

• Hyper-Realism & Portraits (Zabou, Conse, Mr.Dheo, Fintan Magee): Photograph these with a mid-to-telephoto focal length (50mm–85mm) to avoid field distortion and preserve exact facial proportions.
• 3D Illusion & Perspective Works (VILE, Telmo Miel): Stand directly at the artist's intended "vanishing point" (usually offset slightly from center) to capture the intended optical depth effect.
• Wide Architectural Gables (Dan Kitchener, Fio Silva): High-resolution wide-angle lenses (15mm–24mm) are essential in Waterford's tighter medieval laneways to capture the full scope of multi-story gable end pieces without perspective clipping.

Railway Stations

* Clontarf Railway Station * Docklands Railway Station * Malahide Railway Station

Examples Of Waterford Walls Murals

• Bugs Bunny Mural By ADRE
• StayLo - Unofficial Mural
• A Really Really Long Mural
• Mural By OMIN
• Mural By Marie Balbinot From Brazil
• Artist At Work
• DeLaSalle Hall Mural By Eoin O'Connor
• Mantra By Torbe36
• Mural By Sonny Sundancer August 2017
• Another Mural By Sonny Sundancer August 2021
• Mural By Dan Leo At 2 Park Road In Waterford
• Mural By Mr Cenz
• Waterford Murals Photographed in July 2018
• Mural By Alex Senna Photographed In August 2025
• A Scribble Grid In Action
• Animalitoland's Mural From 2018 Waterford Walls
• Flowers On The Street By Lula Groce
• Nerone The Artist And His Art On Display In Waterford
• Mural By Laker And Land
• Laura A Mural By Taquen
• The Same But Different By Zabou