![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/credit-Rainworks-1024x530.jpg\")
\u2013 credit Rainworks<\/p>\n \u2013 credit Rainworks<\/p>\n
Ask anyone who lives in a rainy city and they\u2019ll tell you that you just have to make the best of it.<\/p>\n
In Seattle, one artist did exactly that by making an eco-friendly spray material that can only be seen when it\u2019s wet. It\u2019s become so popular that the city government is using it to decorate bus stops.<\/p>\n
Called Rainworks<\/a> (rather than artworks) the product is sold in tandem with stencils and is based on superhydrophobic coatings. Perceptive readers may note that these coatings represent a source of the dreaded \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d but can also rest assured that the founder of Rainworks, Peregrine Church, recognized that too.<\/p>\n Partnering with some folks in Belgium who were seeking, like Church, to make nature-based hydrophobic coatings, he and his friends began with late-night guerilla artworks that would appear the following days in the rain as hidden messages or images appearing on sidewalks out of nothing.<\/p>\n Rainwork\u2019s first social media highlight\u2014of a bucket of water tossed on a sidewalk to reveal a hidden hopscotch course, went crazily viral and spawned instant demand for the product that was then just a prototype.<\/p>\n Church used the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to fund the creation of a business to manufacture and market Rainworks products, and it\u2019s been going strong ever since.<\/p>\n \u201cSeattle has such a deep connection with rain. It\u2019s integral to the culture and the personality of the city,\u201d Church told the Seattle Times<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s also a lot of really kind, caring, passionate people here. And so I like to think about rainworks representing both of those things. Yes, it\u2019s a rainy city. Yes, we have dreary days. But we\u2019re also making the best of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Seattle Department of Transportation recently commissioned Rainworks to make series of designs on their new Beacon Hill plaza bustop, a pedestrian area where the DoT surveyed commuters to figure out what they\u2019d like to see more of.<\/p>\n ARTS AND CREATIVITY: <\/strong>\u2018This Area is Slightly Haunted but Manageable\u2019: New Signs Look Official But They\u2019re Public Art Designed to Delight<\/a><\/p>\n The answers were places to spend time with friends, more shelter from the rain and the sun, and art.<\/p>\n Rainworks came and, with likely no one understanding what they were doing given that the coating that makes the artworks is invisible when dry, sprayed a couple of sea lions, an orca, a giant wave, and a 25-foot maze around the plaza and the bus shelter.<\/p>\n