Ever since moving to Palo Alto in 1990 I've enjoyed walking around its beautiful neighborhoods. Early on I discovered a couple of whimsical and very cool graphics etched into two sections of sidewalk in the historic Professorville neighborhood, site of Stanford University's first off campus housing.

Located along the Bay side of Waverly Street between Addison and Lincoln (nearer to Lincoln) are two sections of sidewalk. One bears a tropical fish and the other features a bullfrog.

There are several things I immediately liked about these. First off, other than every so often seeing someone's name crudely carved into cement, you almost never see anything really neat.

Secondly, these two graphics have a charming contour style that reminds me of those "drawing on the right side of the brain" methods. The bullfrog especially has this look. Both however make effective use of their respective cement canvasses. Their style reminds me a bit of the contour approach of "Grandma" Elizabeth Layton, an artist from Kansas whose work, taken up late in her life, gained considerable prominence in the 1980s. She was often described as "Grandma Moses on Tabasco Sauce" for the often brutal truth underlying her otherwise whimsical drawings.

I like them so much I finally decided to walk the few blocks over to them from my office today and take some digital photographs of them, which I couldn't resist tracing and coloring. If you're ever in Palo Alto, be sure to pay a visit and say hi to these two aquatic friends.