I live near Chapel Hill, NC a city that has over 30 outdoor public painted murals on buildings and walls. Some of the murals that I regularly see include a wall with giant prehistoric turtles and a long wall with a giant pencil painted on it.
Most murals are made with paint that you can see day and night, but artist Adam Niklewicz created a new approach to murals for a public art project in Hartford Connecticut. Using water repelling Rust-Oleum paint, he created a large image of an oak tree called The Charter Oak that is only seen when it is wet.
On many days, the mural can not be seen, but when the wall is covered with water the large image of a oak tree is visible. For The Charter Oak mural to be seen, water must hit the wall directly rather than be sprinkled from above, so 5 sprinklers were set up to spray water on the mural once a day.
The tree image is inspired by a painting from 1957 by Charles De Wolf called the Charter Oak. The tree is said to be a tree that grew for thousands of years on a hill in Connecticut and contains the Charter of 1662 hidden in its hollowed-out trunk.
The mural when it appears looks like a large ghost-like tree that stays visible for a few hours, and disappears as it dries.
Image Source and Links: