Sunny September days make good walking in the alleys days. Here are some of the walls I saw and the compositions that they make. The textures of wood and metal, bright colours as well as subdued ones, the effects of light and shadow, as well as shapes and patterns – these are some of the things that catch my eye and make me stop. Throw a little nature into the mix and the following photos are the result.
Tucked away on a garage in an alley near Brunswick and Harbord is a garage with three murals, at least two of which are the work of Aaron Li-Hill.
below: This mural is not new but I am not sure how old it is. I am not even sure if I have seen it before. I can’t believe that I found an alley that I haven’t walked before in this area, but anything’s possible. This mural is by Li-Hill for sure.
below: This too is the work of Aaron Li-Hill as you can see from the signature.
below: This seaside town scene has no signature. I like the little people, one with a surfboard, some playing in the water, and a couple hand in hand.
One more reason to wander the lanes and alleys of the city!
(With thanks to Anita for walking with me and showing me this garage.)
I’m talking to you….
Well, I’m not the one doing the talking. In fact, no one is talking, or shouting for that matter. The words are silent, present.. but quiet. They are written on the walls; scrawled on the walls. They’re rarely beautiful and they’d rarely qualify as being profound.
below: But “Sometimes it doesn’t matter”. I love the ambiguity and flexibility of the word ‘it’ in this context. Write your own story. Develop your own plot.
below: … even if the plot doesn’t make sense, like Trump himself.
below: From Trump we jump to conspiracy theories. That was easy wasn’t it?
below: I have no segue for 911 conspiracies to love. A jump in the plot?
below: Sentimental feelings – dripping with sentiment. Oh dear.
below: .. or wishes for feelings of being loved
below: Pull yourself together and get it together…. But.. but.. Buddha once said: “Life is suffering; suffering is just part of life.” Sooooo if you start suffering do you stop living? Yes, I can be insufferable, just like philosophy and psychology and a few other ologies.
below: Did I mention that sometimes the words make no sense?
below: These words, on the other hand, make sense: Bew Are! (not technically graffiti but my editor didn’t question it!)
And that’s the end. No more words. I have no more words. Fini.
Elvis has left the building.
Women in the Walls was/is a mural project where most of the painting was done on the last weekend in August. Twenty women participated to create murals in the alley behind the north side of Gerrard Street East near Craven, Rhodes and Woodfield. One van and one car were also painted.
below: Courtney Binns and Kerry Marie (kairo) work on their murals.
below: Princess Nokia
below: Caitlin Taguiboa paints her mural starting with the black and white background that will turn into ripples and reflections on water.
below: Kim adds some blue to the background of her mural.
below: The deer mural was preserved (it’s been on this wall for a number of years). You can just see the faint outlines of a salamander that @mmnador is creating. That’s Kim working on her pilots (astronauts?) in the background.
below: Rolling on the pink, background that is. Anya Mielniczek’s latest mural is a woman’s face in shades of pink and green.
below: Painting a tribute to Smokey the cat, by Stacey Kinder.
below: Up close to the central portion of a mural painted by Chief Ladybird and Auralast.
below: The words in the stripes are “One Voice”. There is a blue and a pink stripe that didn’t make it into the photo, on them is written “Powerful”.
below: A shout out to Debbie who lent her car, Lightning, to the cause. Here, a black stenciled dog adorns the back door panel – in memory of Harley.
below: Lightning is now fueled with flower power!
below: And the last, a van. It was parked behind the Flying Pony while one side was painted by Erika James….
below: … and the other by Jieun June Kim. When I went back later in the week to take pictures of the completed murals, the van wasn’t around. If you see it, let me know!
below: Hands and stylized florals
This project was supported by StART program at StreetARToronto as well as Cultural Hotspot 2017. The latter is a summer-long initiative whose aim is to encourage art, community, and culture in the east end of the city.
below: Monstawall by Monica Wickeler (aka monicaonthemoon), one of the principal organizers of the weekend.
This is another Graffiti Alley post to accompany yesterday’s hearts and love post. This time, I want to share some photos of the latest large mural in the alley, Uber 5000’s Toronto themed mural. There are lots of references to things found in the city!
below: A pair of CN towers.
below: Looking in windows with a black cat looking back out, some fish and an owl in a tree.
below: That Toronto Maple Leaf fan isn’t looking very happy – I hope that he’s not about to jump off the roof! Perhaps the Blue Jay is there to console him? The Leafs last won the Stanley cup in 1967 (it ‘s the 50th anniversary!). As for the Hubbo dog reference, I have no idea what that is about.
below: A shout out to Canada’s 150th birthday. An Uber 5000 yellow birdie flies a helicopter – with a couple of happy looking passengers!
below: The IKEA monkey in its sheepskin jacket is climbing the CN Tower. Look closely and you’ll see that someone has already made it to the top. Another little figure is on the crane!
below: One of the “nicknames” used for Toronto is YYZ which is the airport code for Pearson, Toronto’s largest airport. The YTZ in the mural is the airport code for Toronto’s other airport, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. Also in the mural is the old Sam the Record Man sign that used to be hang over the store at 357 Yonge Street, a record/music store that was in business from there from 1961 to 2007. The building has since been demolished to make way for the Ryerson University Student Learning Center. There has been talk of installing the sign somewhere near Yonge Dundas Square but as far as I know, that hasn’t happened yet.
below: A chainlink fence keeps people from getting close to the mural so taking photos of the bottom portion of the mural is difficult. I think that the area behind the fence is actually someone’s backyard so I understand why there is no access. The moose looks out over the fence.
“Cupid draw back your bow
And let your arrow go
Straight to my lover’s heart for me, for me”
(from ‘Cupid’ by Sam Cooke)
This has me thinking about taps and faucets as hearts. Is there a metaphor to be found here? “Pouring out your heart”, or maybe “Let your love flow”, or maybe just a little “love tap”?
below: Graffiti Alley has been love bombed. Hearts and unicorns by @heart_bomb bring their colourful messages of love and togetherness to the lane.
below: Nearby, elicser has a more philosophical take on love.
below: Keeping the message simple (even when love isn’t!).
I also love the three little monkeys at the bottom.
And that’s why I love to keep going back to Graffiti Alley!
Written in big bold letters – STRONG SMART UNITED
Those three words are what you see first as you walk down Lansdowne just north of Queen Street. This striking wall is the beginning of a group of murals and street art paintings that now adorn some of the walls and doors in an alley on the north side of Queen Street West. The paintings were done last weekend by a group of women artists. The walls had been primed previously by four high school students (and organized by the Toronto Police Services).
below: Shapes and colours by controlartdelete (aka Rachel Wilmshurst)
below: Emily May Roses’s women
below: Abstract houses and greenery by Jieun June Kim
below: Two kneeling women and a long necked bird with wings spread by Caitlin Taguibao
below: Monica on the Moon, “Over the mountains under the stars”
below: A colourful mural by _muisca_ (aka Daniela Rocha)
below: Unfortunately, this one has already been defaced, including the signature.
below: Desert woman theme, by mska
below: Geometric shapes, colours, and patterns, by hellokirsten (aka Kirsten McCrea)
below: Left – by originalsmilez (aka Julieta Arias).
But on the right, help! I don’t know (do you?)
below: Looks a bit like a brightly coloured Picasso – the work of huntoland (aka Renato Hunto)
below: My apologies but this another one where I don’t know who the artist is
below: … and this one as well I’m afraid
below: A elicser figure outside the door. Elicser is definitely male – was this mural already here?
below: Shades of pink with blue lips, by toest (aka Sarah Gilmore).
below: On a seriously cracked wall there is now a pink flower inside a green triangle surounded by a circle, by CVBinns (aka Courtney Binns)
below: Long flowing hair and with eyes closed, a mural by carolannapilado
below: A collaborative effort between auralast (aka Monique Aura) and chiefladybird (aka Ogimaa Kwe Bnes) – mother and child with the city beyond.
below: Also in the lane there are two urban ninja squadron paste ups by Tbonez
below: Looking east along the alley. The first road is Macdonell Avenue. Lansdowne is in the distance.
This project was supported by the StreetARToronto program, Toronto Police Services and the Drake Hotel. I talked briefly with a policewoman who was in the alley at the same time that I was – there is hope that the lane to the east of Lansdowne can be painted in the future.
Before then, a second all women street art jam and mural will be happening in Little India (1460 Gerrard Street East) at the end of August. The street art jam will be on the weekend of August 26th and 27th and will showcase the Woman in the Walls mural being painted at that time.
#womenpaintTO
Sometimes graffiti and street art have a short life span. Many taggers don’t care about what they are tagging over. Street art can also be “interactive” in that stickers and paste ups can get “added” to a piece. Anyone with a marker can have their say. On the bright side, new murals get painted and new paste -ups appear. And that is why I go back to the my favorite alleys every once in a while. This morning I walked the Milky Way again.
below: The Parkdale mural by Race Williams is still looking good.
below: The naked women are a bit more modestly dressed than they once were .
The most noticeable change is the fact that many pieces are now at least partially covered by greenery – small shrubs and tall weeds have proliferated and are looking quite healthy.
below: This lion is looking more and more like the king of the jungle even as the words faded and peel.
below: The small aliens at the top of the building are now in the shade of a fast growing tree.
below: And the larger aliens on the fence really need a hair cut now.
below: A large pink peony (at least that’s what it looks like)
below: The fence around the garden.
Previous Milky Way posts
Back to the Milky Way – Sept 2015
Walking the Milky Way – Oct 2014
On Dundas West, just west of Dufferin, there are two lanes with large murals by clandestinos.
One is the alley to the west of the Lulu Lounge where both sides are covered with fantastic paintings by fiya, shalak, and bruno smoky as well as a few others. I blogged about it just over two years ago and here is the link to the original post, “life as the shadow of vida“. Earlier this week I took another look at it – it’s still looking great and there have been no changes so I didn’t take any photos.
The other alley is nearby but on the north side of Dundas Street. Actually, it’s hardly an alley, more like a driveway which made taking pictures of the whole mural difficult. Also, if you are traveling eastbound on Dundas, you’d miss it. Here are the pictures that I managed to take:
Garrison Creek park is a small strip of green between the railway tracks an alley of garages. Many of the garage doors were painted last weekend with murals all on the theme of butterflies. There are about 30 paintings and they are the work of a number of different street artists. The project was curated by Nick Sweetman and it is part of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterflyway project; StreetARToronto was also involved.
If you don’t like pictures of butterfly murals, I suggest that you skip this post because I’m sharing photos of a lot of the garage doors! In no particular order here they are:
Artist: Cruz1
Artist: unknown (by me)
Artist: blackburn
Artist: J. McKie
Artist: C Mazzulla
Artist: wales
Artist: 2US & XYZ (not positive about that)
Artist: XYZ & MAC
Artist: (left) mska, (right) horus, tuffytats
Artist: (left) braes, (right) C. Perez
Artist: @anyamielniczek
Artist: P.S
Artists: unknown (by me)
Artist: NEDO
Artist: @smugugly
Artist: (left) FIP or FYP? , (right) Sweetman
Artist: (left) braes & wales, (right) C. Perez
as I walk Toronto 