events | as I walk Toronto

Archive for the ‘events’ Category

Halloween on Church, 2023 edition

Posted: November 2, 2023 in events, people
Tags: cameras, Church St., corrupt fruit, costumes, Donald Trump, Egyptians, fruit, halloween, masks, night, nun, party, people, pictures, posing, pumpkin head, spiderman, wigs

Photos from the annual Church Street Hallowe’en party this year:

Spider

Pride 2023

Posted: June 26, 2023 in events, people
Tags: crowds, flags, motorcycles, people, pink, pride, rainbow, signs, trans, trans flag, Yonge St.

Sunday’s Pride parade and related antics

Pride is big. By big I mean soooo many people and places happening all at once. I take pictures on that Sunday because I like mingling with the crowds, talking to people, and taking pictures of people who want their picture taken. Although I am happy to take posed shots, I prefer the candid shots. This set of photos is by no means comprehensive – that’s an impossible task. Instead it represents the people and events that I saw as I walked up Church Street, checked out the marshaling area for the parade, and then tried to find shady spots to stand to watch the parade itself (another impossibility!)… until I got too tired.

Dyke March 2023

Posted: June 25, 2023 in events, people
Tags: colours, dyke, floags, march, mayor candidates, motorcycles, parade, people, pride, protest, rainbows, signs, Steve and Larry for mayor

The crowd was enthusiastic.

The motorcycles were noisy.

The rain stayed away.

“Feels Like Home”

Posted: May 27, 2023 in events, galleries, public art
Tags: AGO, Art Gallery of Ontario, billboards, Carlos Idun-Tawiah, CONTACT, Contact photography festival, Dundas West, images, Jump Ball, Kreshonna Keane, O'shane Howard, photographs, Spadina Ave., Sunday School, Ten Toes Down

… an art project by Sunday School, a creative agency formed in Toronto in 2017 by Josef Adamu. At the moment there are billboards at a few locations around the city including here at Dundas and Lansdowne where there are 3 images.

Other photos by the group are on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Two examples are:

below: “Jump Ball” is an ongoing project that explores the relationship between basketball and the African Diasporic communities. Home is not restricted to private spaces, it is also found in unity. Here, in “Jump Ball: Toronto (2019)”, you can see carefully composed pairings of young men in vibrant Ghanaian Kente cloth or a Senegalese boubou on the basketball court (what is identity? how does basketball bring young men together?). These were photographed by O’shane Howard.

below: Another series of pictures is “Ten Toes Down”, photographed by Kreshonna Keane. This series features a ballet dancer in her home – a Black dancer in a field that is almost exclusively white. Home is not just a building. Home is the body; home is self expression.

below: This image by Carlos Idun-Tawiah can also be seen in a parking lot by 80 Spadina Ave (see above, at Lansdowne & Dundas).

Sunday School website

Sunday School’s Instagram page

Cowboys and Indians

Posted: May 26, 2023 in events, general Toronto, public art
Tags: CONTACT, Contact photography festival, Jake Kimble, photography

below: At 460 King West (at intersection with Spadina) there is a mural on the wall and a poster in the Pattison advertising space. Both are part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.

view from parking lot on Spadina, large image on wall of adjacent building

a contact photography festival image, as a large mural, by Jake Kimble showing the artist as a young boy dressed up as a cowboy with large text added to photo that says I was told that the peace was mine to keep

Jake Kimble is a Chipewyan (Dëne Sųłıné) from Treaty 8 Territory in the Northwest Territories. The original photograph is of Kimble at age 6 or 7 and it was taken by his mother. In it he is wearing a cowboy at and apparently he was on his way to the Calgary Stampede.

“I was told that peace was mine to keep.” On the CONTACT webpage that describes this installation, this text is “the statement of a promise unfulfilled or a burden to bear. The phrase implies both that peace was his, and its opposite—that he was to be the peacekeeper”.

Double Pendulum

Posted: May 19, 2023 in events, public art
Tags: art, butterflies, CONTACT, Contact photography festival, Double Pendulum, Maggie Groat, murals, Ontario Square, symmetry

There are now three large images on display at Ontario Square (on Queens Quay near the foot of York Street). Collectively, they are “Double Pendulum” by Maggie Groat who has constructed them as wheatpaste collages. They are part of this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival.

below: Butterflies constructed from other shapes and objects. Does this show the interconnectedness of all things, as in the “Butterfly Effect”?

Resilience at Cedarbrae

Posted: May 4, 2023 in events, public art
Tags: Cedarbrae, Cedarbrae Library, CONTACT, Contact photography festival, people, photography, portraits, Scarborough, Scarborough Made

“Resilience” is a photography exhibit at Cedarbrae Library.

It is the creation of Scarborough Made. This is a group founded by Alex Narvaez x Sid Naidu in 2019. It uses photography and cinematography to document positive stories about the people of Scarborough with emphasis on identity and culture.

“Resilience:
The ability to recover from challenges or adjust easily to change.

Resilience exists all around us.

We see it in the movers and shakers, the cultural change makers and creative instigators.

We see it in our neighbourhoods, from the small businesses to our healthcare and essential workers.

Resilience is what lives in our narratives and exists within our identity.

Our resilience as a community is stronger when we stick together. With it, we can overcome the challenges and build towards a better future.

The portraits you see as part of this public art installation represent the many faces that embody resilience. Pulling from both past and present works of Scarborough Made artists, we’ve created this exhibit for you to see and reflect on the humanity that exists within our community.

Resilience is us
Resilience is you
Resilience is Scarborough. ”

Artists

Alicia Reid
Ferdinand Orlain
Millicent Amurao
Nithursan Elamuhilan
Alex Narvaez x Sid Naidu

Winter Stations 2023

Posted: March 21, 2023 in events, public art
Tags: Ashbridge Bay, burlap, Conrad raccoon, Daniel Joshua Vanderhorst, Delighthouse, Lake Ontario, Life Line, lighthouse, netting, Novak Djogo, people, Ripple Hut, the (Home), winter stations, Winternet, Woodbine Beach

Winter stations 2023, as in previous years, is a collection of art installations along the waterfront at Woodbine Beach. I went for a walk along the beach one very blustery Saturday morning. There weren’t many of us there and I think that I was the only one who wasn’t accompanied by a dog.

below: ‘Delighthouse’, designed by British pair Nick Green and Greig Pirrie.

below: A shrine to the neighbourhoods of Toronto titled “The (Home)” designed by Canadian group, Scott Shields Architects

below: “Ripple Hut” designed by students from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Sciences.

below: Looking through one of the holes in “Ripple Hut” towards the curved yellow forms of “Surface Pavilion” which was designed by a Mexican team consisting of Cesar Guerrero, Ana Cecilia Garza, and Orlando Garcia .

below: “Winternet”, just burlap between wood posts. Designed, such as it is, by a team from University of Waterloo, Dept of Architecture.

below: “Life Line” – design team: WeatherstonBruer Associates – James Bruer, Nick Roland, Jacqueline Hampshire

below: “Conrad” is a large raccoon designed by Novak Djogo and Daniel Joshua Vanderhorst; it is also a memorial to Conrad the real raccoon who died at the corner of Church and Yonge Streets in the summer of 2015. Whether you love them, hate them, or are indifferent to them, raccoons are part of the Toronto scene.