Street artist Tom Bob turns the everyday into something extraordinary

When Tom Bob first got a glimpse at the street artist community, he asked himself, “Why not me?” And he ran with it.

Known for his playful style of transforming ordinary objects into whimsical characters, the New Bedford-born and New York-based artist has accumulated a following of over 230,000 Instagram followers. Pipes, vents, parking bumpers, fire hydrants. What most people barely notice walking down sidewalks, Tom Bob sees as an opportunity to tell a story.

“I really never saw myself as a graffiti artist,” he said. “But as I got older and I saw that youth culture and that energy, I wanted to be a part of it. So why not me?”

That same question has shaped his approach to both art and life.

Sometimes the piece comes to Tom Bob’s mind immediately as an object reveals itself to him. Other times it takes him a while to sit with an idea, spending days sketching out a concept before discovering what an object wants to become. The common throughline in his work, however, is that he is always trying to chase a narrative with a universal meaning.

Walking through Brooklyn years ago, Tom Bob would pass a square boulder on the way to a friend’s house, but never thought much of it. “I walked by it a million times — and then I saw it as a piece of cheese,” he said.

But it had to be more than just cheese, and he wanted a way to make it comical. The solution? Adding Mickey Mouse beneath it, flattened by its weight. In New Bedford, a group of yellow parking bumpers between two electrical boxes became oversized Kit Kat bars, complete with a chocolate-covered child peeking around the corner.

For Tom Bob, New Bedford offers endless inspiration. The city’s aging factories, exposed pipes, and industrial architecture provide the kinds of overlooked details that become the foundation of his work.

His imagination has carried him well beyond the Massachusetts South Coast. Before traveling to art festivals around the country, he often explores cities using Google Street View, virtually scouring neighborhoods in search of objects that spark an idea before ever boarding a plane.

Chris Duval, owner of Circa Vintage Wear in New Bedford and Tom Bob’s longtime friend, describes him as a character in love with art. One of Duval’s favorite memories is his own 55th birthday party, thrown in a barn that was Tom Bob’s studio space at the time. Friends spent the evening surrounded by the whimsical creatures born from Tom Bob’s imagination.

While Tom Bob’s murals may transform ordinary objects into playful characters, the philosophy behind them is surprisingly simple. He hopes that people pursue what feels authentic, even if it seems unconventional.

“I think that’s what everyone should do in life,” he said. “Whatever they want to do or whoever they want to be, they shouldn’t listen to anyone else and follow their heart.”

New Bedford Light: How would you describe yourself as an artist? 

Tom Bob: I would describe myself as a street artist. And what that means is that I actually find objects on the street — whether they be fire hydrants, manhole covers, pipes, vents — and I turn them into fun, whimsical characters. What I do is create sketches, and then from that I cut stencils, and from the stencils I use spray paint to create the image.

NBL: How would you say you became the type of person who looks at a fire hydrant and sees something else?

TB: It’s interesting because I know there’s a term for it; I forgot what it was. You can look it up and then put it right here. [Pareidolia.] It’s when you see something and it looks like something else — like when you look at clouds and you see some images within that. 

Basically, I’ve always been more of a studio artist, and I was raised and born in New Bedford. I grew up in Dartmouth for about 20 years, and then I moved to New York City, where I lived for 30 years. And I never really saw myself as a street artist, but I really loved that community, and I wanted to be part of it.

So what I started doing was gravitating toward that type of art, whether it be murals or street art. And I just started doing more of the street art objects and it became popular on social media. That’s the thing that I kind of stuck to and people recognize me by.

NBL: So like you just said, you’re a Massachusetts native. What’s it like creating work back home? 

TB: When you grow up in a — well I don’t know if you want to call it a small town — and have other ambitions to go to bigger cities … This is where my roots are. This is where all my friends are that I went to kindergarten with. And grammar school and high school with. So I always will have a connection to the New Bedford area. 

I can create something that is locally interesting or come up with a theme that has more of a broader, worldwide appeal to it. And that’s what I try to do when I’m thinking about making pieces — is to try to have a really universal connection to what I’m making.

NBL: So your work is meant to be encountered unexpectedly, more or less, right? 

TB: Yeah. I love that part of it, with the public art. With a gallery, it’s a destination. It’s white walls. It’s kind of a formulated thing. But with public art, it’s really for everyone. And a lot of the pieces are just kind of discovered.

The thing I love about that is that it’s something in somebody’s daily life that they weren’t expecting. A lot of the pieces which I created, I try to create the emotion of happiness and a quick little dopamine hit or a smile when people view the pieces. 

NBL: What do you hope happens in the first few seconds someone views one of your pieces?

TB: They say that in galleries or museums people spend about seven seconds in front of each piece.

And on social media — which we’re in such a fast, dopamine society that we’re flicking through it so fast, so I’m very much aware of that — and they say people might spend about 2 or 3 seconds on [each post on] social media. 

So a lot of my pieces are very graphic, they’re very symmetrical, and they almost work like universal road symbols. You know when you go down the road and you see an arrow or whatever, you quickly identify it in your head, and you then know exactly what it’s telling you what to do.

With my pieces, I’m not saying that I want them to tell you what to do, but I do want to create a really quick visual image where it’s not going to take you a long time to go and spend hours looking at the thing. [Seagulls squawk nearby.] I think the seagulls agree.

NBL: What would you say is the biggest misconception about being a street artist?

TB: Well, there’s different categories because a lot of people who start out in the mural world or street art world are graffiti artists. And graffiti artists are people that go out and basically create their name. Some of it’s very stylistically identifiable so people know that that’s their tag or their image. From there, some of them branch out into doing murals or they go into more of a conceptual concept doing street art.

So it’s interesting, the terminologies, because I am a street artist. I create images on the street and it’s not as highly conceptual. But it’s a kind of a graphic style that people recognize. 

So some people say, “are you a graffiti artist?” And I’m not. “Are you a mural artist?” And I’m not. I don’t do big murals.

So it’s just a terminology thing. Because sometimes when people see you with a spray can, they identify it as a graffiti artist.

Photos by Julien Pedro

NBL: Looking back, what would surprise younger you about where you are now?

TB: What surprised me is that A) I didn’t grow up a punk rock kid. I didn’t grow up a skateboarder. I didn’t grow up angry at the world. A lot of that comes from that kind of community where you do it yourself — which I do love — just being able to not really listen to what other people are telling you and just go out and do things. And I was never that kid. I was never rebellious. 

I was a likeable kid, and I adapted to whatever environment I was in. But growing up, I was going down to Florida for Art Basel a lot and this place called Wynwood.

And a lot of graffiti artists would come down. It’s always the first week of December, and I just loved that energy. As I got older, I was like, ‘I want to be part of that community.’ So I started late in life as a street artist. That really surprised me and a lot of people when I told them I was gonna go in that direction. 

They were like, “that’s not who you are or what you do.” And it’s like anything in life, if you take interest in something and you put your time and energy into it, you never know what the outcome’s gonna be.

NBL: How would you describe the moment that you know a piece is finished?

TB: Obviously there’s a lot of planning involved in it. And in the beginning, if you’re doing it illegally, you don’t want to get caught. So you’re trying to do it faster. But then as you get acceptance and permission for pieces, you can take your time and really create it exactly the way you want it to be.

I always find that kind of an interesting challenge where, sometimes, if I create something which I think is really great in my mind, and then I post it and now it’s going out to a big, wide audience. Because once you create it, it’s out of your hands. People either are gonna like it or dislike it. And we all have an idea of what it is that we personally like. Sometimes, I might put a lot of time into something and people don’t love it. Or I might do something simple and everyone loves it. 

So it’s really interesting that sometimes when you’re a creative person, you never know what your audience is gonna be. You could actually have a mindset of, ‘I want to create something — this or that.’ And you just never know how it’s going to be accepted.

NBL: Can you tell me a little bit about the piece next to you?

TB: Yeah, so we’re at the Star Store, which used to be an old department store in New Bedford, Massachusetts back in the ’40s and ’50s. It was almost like the Macy’s of New Bedford. And my mother was a young girl in the ’40s. Her and her mother would take a trolley downtown, and they’d have a luncheon here and eat and so forth. There’s this part of my history growing up here. And this building has had different incarnations throughout the years, and in the last several years it’s been an art hub downtown.

So, you know, I had to come up. And I took a look at a couple of pieces up here. I talked to Matt [McArthur] and Fallon [Navarro] and some others about maybe doing something in the building. (Editor’s note: McArthur and Navarro are employees of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston, the nonprofit redeveloping the Star Store property.) So I was up here with Matt, and he had his dog with him — a Chow named Bear — and we were just walking around and I was taking pictures. 

When I went home, I was like, ‘I’ve painted on these [types of] vents before.’ Some of them were on their sides. I made them into flowers or there’s one in Worcester that I made which was a kind of a one-eyed monster on a skateboard.

So I figured, ‘why don’t I just make this into Matt’s dog, Bear?’ Then I came up with the designs, and then I got the approval, and I got measurements, and then I do the stencils and then came up one afternoon and I created it.

Once it’s done, now it’s a sculptural piece that’s on the roof. I’m not creating the sculpture. It’s already existing. It’s like Michelangelo’s David in that he always said that David was in the marble and he had to bring him out. That’s basically what I do, too. I see things and I turn them into something that had been existing. It’s an everyday object that people see — and I create something new out of it. 

Julien Pedro is a summer intern with the New Bedford Light, as part of the South Coast Internship designed for local students. Email Julien at jpedro@newbedfordlight.org