as I walk Toronto

wall blobs

Posted: May 18, 2019 in graffiti and street art
Tags: black and white, Jeremy Lynch, paste up, photos, Runnymede Rd., street art, underpass, water photograms

I’ve called them blobs for lack of a better word. It’s almost as if someone’s conceptual art project was released into the wild.

below: These two blobs look a like amoebas, or other single cell life forms. Can’t you picture them swimming in a pool of muddy water?

below: There is definitely a “life form” quality to them. With a little imagination, the middle one looks like a chicken embryo inside an egg. In fact, all three could be embryonic.

below: Now the life forms have evolved a bit and developed tentacles or little stringy bits like a jellyfish has. They seem to be interacting.

Have fun with them!
I found them on a wall on Runnymede Road just south of the CPR tracks at St. Clair.

UPDATE: These blobs are water photograms produced by ‘J’ . A photogram is an image made without a camera; objects (in this case, water) are placed directly on light sensitive paper. When a light is shone onto the objects, different shades of grey are produced depending on how much light reaches that paper surface. The more light, the blacker that area of the image becomes. White areas are produced by objects that allow no light to pass through.

East Bayside

Posted: May 17, 2019 in construction, old buildings, waterfront
Tags: chairs, condos, construction, development, film, lights, LRT, offices, pink umbrellas, sand, sugar beach

The other evening I was going to try some evening photography along the waterfront starting around Sugar Beach. As I walked down Lower Jarvis, this view caught my attention – looking west along Lakeshore Blvd. It’s a view that has been changing very rapidly. I counted at least seven cranes as I stood there waiting for some of the traffic to clear.

below: Sugar Beach. Unfortunately a film crew was already here so I didn’t stick around.

below: One of the buildings to the east of Sugar Beach is a new George Brown College building.

below: Film crew trucks ready to be loaded back up

The strip of green that you see on the right side of the above photo is part of Sherbourne Common (at the foot of Lower Sherbourne Street). From here east to Parliament is now being developed as East Bayside and is a continuation of the now completed development from Jarvis (Sugar Beach) to Sherbourne. East Bayside is bounded by Queens Quay and Lake Ontario as well as Sherbourne and Parliament. 1800 residences are planned in this space.

below: Some of the condos are under construction. Same old same old; yawn. They may look a little more interesting from a distance, but at street level they are hopelessly banal. If you want to buy a condo here, there are only a few left in the two buildings known as Aqualina and Aquabella. In the latter, only 3 are available, starting at a two bedroom suite for 2.8 million. Five million dollars will get you a three bedroom penthouse with two terraces but if you want to pay an additional 1 1/2 million you get 4,000 square feet on two floors (3 bedrooms and 2 terraces as well).

below: At least the “linear park” and waterfront path is being continued eastward along Lake Ontario.

below: Work is also underway on Queens Quay East. As a frame of reference, the tall building behind the billboard is in the Distillery District. Lakeshore Blvd and the Gardiner run behind the buildings with the blue trim.

What hasn’t yet been started is construction of two office buildings that will front on Queens Quay, called T3 Bayside. They are going to be made of wood which should be interesting.

There has been a lot of talk for the past 12 to 14 years about extending streetcar service along this route. So far a lot of planning and a lot of talk but that’s it. An LRT right of way running along the south side of the street has been approved but the East Bayfront LRT project, (aka Waterfront LRT) has stalled because of the usual political shenanigans and financial hiccups. A major part of the delay has been the question of how to link an East Bayfront LRT to Union station. The present tunnel is barely sufficient for the streetcars that use it now. Just recently (April 2019) the city released a report on how to address this issue. I haven’t read it all yet (it’s 40 pages long) but the gist of it is that the city is considering two options – 1. rebuilding the tunnel or 2. building an automated people moving system of some sort and leave all streetcars out of the tunnel.

below: There is a small trench down the center of the street.

Any ideas what’s being planned for the north side of Queens Quay?

below: Queens Quay turns towards Parliament Street. The blue building is a Sidewalk Labs information centre. The land that Sidewalk Labs wants to develop, Quayside, is close by – south of Lakeshore and east of Parliament. It also includes the little strip of land between Queens Quay and Lakeshore, i.e. that answers my question above about what happens on the north side of Queens Quay. There was some rumour (plan?) about Sidewalk Labs being involved in development of some of the Portlands but is that still on? As to what their plans are or where they are at now, I have no idea. That’s probably another blog post!

today’s advice?

Posted: May 17, 2019 in graffiti and street art
Tags: eat the rich, graffiti, head, humor, humour, monopoly guy, paste up, stencil

“Stop at nothing to get a head”

But be careful…. that head could become some body’s dinner!

Contact at 401 Richmond

Posted: May 15, 2019 in galleries
Tags: 401 Richmond, Abbozzo Gallery, art, cyanotype, dry cleaners, Dupont Street, Eliot Wright, Florence Yee, gallery, Gallery 44, Hajra Waheed, Jim Bourke, Laura Shintani, Patty Maher, photography, Red Head Gallery, rice bags, Sally Thurlow, Sarah Comfort, Shelley Wildeman, Tangled Arts, Tonia Di Risio, Urbanspace Gallery

401 Richmond is a renovated industrial building that is now an arts and culture hub; it includes many little galleries. The building was built in stages between 1899 and 1923 for the Macdonald Manufacturing Company who made lithographed tinware such as biscuit tins and containers for tea and tobacco.

Many of the galleries are participating in the CONTACT Photography Festival and what follows is a selection of what is on display at the moment. A few non-photography installations have snuck in as well.

One of the galleries is the Red Head Gallery. Their exhibit, titled ‘Pentimento’, is a collection of work by some of their members. From their website: “The work presented is a diverse commentary on the idea of photography and the definition, role & relevance of the photograph, both directly & indirectly, in the act of image and object making.”

below: ‘Untitled’ by Tonia Di Risio. The photos have been printed on vinyl and then stuck to the gallery wall.

below: “Still Life with Paper’ by Jim Bourke

below: ‘Process’ by Sally Thurlow is 6 photographs of a demolition and renovation of a house (prompted by a rotting roof) and the upheaval that that causes. Each little frame is made from something from the job site including Tims cups and yellow caution tape.

The word pentimento means “a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas.” The last blog post dealt with palimpsest which is erased text that becomes visible and it seems to me that pentimento is very similar, but with pictures not words, paint not ink.

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Urbanspace Gallery, “Further Along the Road”, an exhibit of photos taken on Dupont Street in Toronto, by Eliot Wright.

below: Left: 1220 Dundas St looking west. Right: 1072 Dundas Street West. Both photos were taken in July 2016

below: Left: CP railline, west of Shaw. Right top: Creeds coffee bar, 390 Dupont St., taken from the CP tracks, July 2016. Right bottom: CP rail line west of Dufferin, August 2016

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below: Laura Shintani, Bodywashi! at Tangled Art Gallery

It’s like a car wash for people although no water is involved. Strips of translucent plastic (shower curtain material?) hang from the ceiling. After walking through the plastic you encounter the scene below.

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Gallery 44, “Developing Historical Narratives”

below: One of the images in ‘Petro Suburbs’, a series of black and white images by Hajra Waheed, also Gallery 44. The subject matter is based on old aerial photos of Dhahran Saudi Arabia, a town that the artist grew up in. It was also a gated town built for Saudi ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company). Dhahran was protected by airbases, both US & Saudi, as well as by the CIA and such. Access and privacy were strictly controlled and photography and filming were not allowed.

below: Untitled cyanotypes by Sarah Comfort, part of a series called “More Than This”.

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below: An image by Shelley Wildeman, superimposed people in the hallway.

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below: Two pieces by Florence Yee, who introduces herself on her website as: “Florence Cing-Gaai Yee is a queer Cantonese visual artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. These hang in the Space Gallery which are windows in the hallway on the ground floor at 401 Richmond.

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The last of the 401 Richmond galleries that I explored this past week is the Abbozzo Gallery where Patty Maher’s exhibit “The Sky as my Witness ” is now being shown.

below: “The Quiet Storm”

below: “Parallel Universe”. Because we are all just dots in the universe. The same but different.

below: “Land Line”.

The above photo is from a series called ‘The Liminal Field’. On her website, Maher describes the series thusly: “This staged self portrait series is an exploration of the state of liminality that occurs in midlife. It is an attempt to symbolically describe the transformation that needs to take place when moving from youth to the second half of life. The field depicted here is a construct and does not exist in real space. It has been constructed to indicate a place that is both personal an intangible. Each photo symbolically depicts an internal struggle that is necessarily part of this transition.”

As you can see, there is a a wide selection of images and ideas lurking in the galleries at 401 Richmond. Most exhibits change over every month or so – so there is always something to see.

Palimpsest

Posted: May 12, 2019 in galleries
Tags: abandoned, allan lambert galleria, Brookfield Place, CONTACT, Contact photography festival, images, Lost Territories Archive, LTA, palimpsest, photographs, Poland, post-Soviet, Soviet republics, Sputnik Photos, USSR

Palimpsest. I had to look up the word too. No, it’s not the superlative form of palimps. As it turns out, palimsest has to do with surfaces that have been reused or altered while still retaining traces of its earlier form.

What does it have to do with this blog post? It is the name of an exhibit of photos by a Poland-based collective, Sputnik Photos. Between 2008 and 2016 this group compiled their ‘Lost Territories Archive‘; this is a project that documents the “physical, political, and sociocultural” aspects of the former Soviet republics. Some of the thousands of images that they collected are on display in the Allan Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place as part of this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival. It is on view for the month of May.

below: “A sculptural model in a student atelier, Spitak Armenia, 2014”.

below: “Cafeteria at the Heydar Aliev Centre, Gobustan Azerbijan, 2016”. In 2013, to mark the 10th anniversary of the former president of Azerbijan, Heydar Aliyev, his son and successor, Ilham Aliyev, ordered the country’s 70 district capitals to each build a monumental centre named after his father.

below: “Semipalatynsk Nuclear Test Site, Kazakhstan, 2016”. The Soviet Union conducted over 400 nuclear tests at this site in northeast Kazakhstan between 1949 and 1989. The impact of radiation exposure was hidden by Soviet authorities and didn’t become known until the site closed in 1991.

below: ‘Homemade construction for growing grapes, Yerevan Armenia, 2013’. Urban farming was popular during the post-Soviet crisis in the 1990’s. Today grapes are grown in every neighbourhood using homemade constructions for supporting the vines.

below: “Anaklia Georgia, 2013” Anaklia is a village on the Black Sea. In 2011, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, announced a program to transform the village into a luxury resort. Construction began in 2012. Saakashvili’s party lost the parliamentary elections in 2013 and he fled the country. Work on this project was discontinued.

below: “Slutsk Belarus, 2013”. This image is of ‘Cultural Space’, an installation in the sugar factory Saharny Zavod. The factory was given an award for best ideological work in a contest organized by a regional committee for ‘admiration structures’.

Members of Sputnik Photos: Andrej Balco, Jan Brykczynski, Andrei Liankevich, Michal Luczak, Rafal Milach, Adam Panczuk, and Agnieszka Rayss.

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More about the word palimpsest:

In Ancient Greek, it was παλίμψηστος (palímpsēstos) and in Latin it was palimpsestus meaning “scraped clean and ready to be used again”. It was originally applied to wax covered tablets that the ancient Greeks and Romans used to “write” on by scratching out the letters with a stylus. Smoothing the wax would erase the words. Around the 6th century vellum, or parchment prepared from animal skins, became more commonly used. It was expensive. Early on, writing on parchment could be washed away using milk and oat bran but over time it would come back, but faintly. In the later Middle Ages, writing was removed with powdered pumice which was more permanent.

Along with the historical definition, palimpsest has a more modern definition. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives this newer meaning as, “something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface” while the Cambridge English Dictionary uses these words, “something such as work of art that has many levels of meaning, types of style, etc. that build on each other.”

Glass flowers

Posted: May 12, 2019 in galleries
Tags: 3d printing, CONTACT, Contact photography festival, digital painting, flowers, gallery, OCADU, onsite gallery, photography, Richmond St., sculpture, T.M. Glass, vase

Now showing at the Onsite Gallery, is an exhibit of photography by T.M. Glass called “The Audible Language of Flowers”. Glass’s work is inspired by 17th and 18th century northern European still life flower paintings.

below: On the back wall is “Clematis in a Chinese Teapot”, 2017 (The teapot is from the Gardiner Museum). The photograph on the right (with the red flowers) uses a vase from the Royal Ontario Museum, “Tulips in a Persian Vessel”, 2017.

But they are not just large photographs. They have been enhanced in a process that has become known as digital painting. This technique involves enlarging the image to the pixel level. Attributes such as sharpness, colour and vibrance are then manipulated giving the finished image more of a painted look.

below: Part of “Anemone Canadensis in an Italian Pharmaceutical Vessel”, 2017 (The ‘vase’ is from the Royal Ontario Museum).

below: Close up of some of the flowers in one of the photographs where you can see the “brush strokes”.

below: Glass has also been experimenting with 3D printing. On display are some sandstone and resin sculptures that were created from digital files, including these two.

The exhibit continues until August 18th.
Onsite Gallery is part of OCADU and is at 199 Richmond St. West.
This exhibit is part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.

yellow and bizarre

Posted: May 10, 2019 in events, locations
Tags: candle, conceptual, Distillery District, head, photographs, photography, Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart, water, wax, weeds

The merging of events, the overlap of months.
At the Distillery District, many features were made yellow in April in honour of cancer awareness month.

Towards the end of that month, some large pictures began appearing on the brick walls. An early installation for CONTACT month, May, these are Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart’s “Good Stuff Bad Stuff” which is a series of conceptual photographs attached to the exterior walls of some of the buildings.

From the CONTACT website: “a series of bizarre self-portraits that connect concepts of home and identity. The artist’s own grungy apartment and various public spaces serve as the backdrop to the photo series. Using physical experiences and found objects, the photographs in this exhibition explore the relationship between ourselves and the personal objects we buy, inherit, and throw away.”

below: I’m not sure that a candle on one’s head ‘explores’ anything… but maybe I was missing something?

And so we go off on a bit of a google tangent to see what there is for ‘candle, head’. I find candles as a Christian symbol for light in the darkness. There is also an image of a black man with a real lit candle on his head with melting wax running down his forehead, lit by his pastor “to deliver him from the spirit of homosexuality”. Searches also yield skulls as candle holders (or candle holders in skull shapes) used as a novelty item, or as method of casting spells if you believe in such things. And last, Tim Burton made a music video for “The Killers” (a group) where at the end, two people are sitting across from each other at a table, both with a lit candle on their head. In this last case there is melding of reality and fantasy as one character is a wax figure that occasionally comes to life. Whether this has anything to do with the image above, I have no idea. But I’m sure that my ramblings, although entertaining (ha!) are probably just a detour.

below: Hope floats. One of the photographs on a wall surrounded by “graffiti” ( of the fake kind). No candles here? It’s the paper boats that are burning. If there were candles, they are long gone.

below: More yellow

below: Another picture. Flowers and hands.

below: More picture. This time an ode to junk food and trashiness by the looks of it. The lion is blue but unmoved. With a fast food paper crown on her head and a cigarette in her mouth. Garbage randomly strewn but carefully placed so there is no product placement.

below: The last bit of yellow for today.

below: And one last photograph to give you some ideas of what to do with the photos of Venice that you might have, you know, the ones that look like everyone else’s. There are many more on display at the Distillery District. As I type this I am warming up to the pictures but I am still torn. Does anyone want to offer an opinion?

Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart is on Instagram

waiting on the cherry blossoms….

Posted: May 9, 2019 in locations, nature
Tags: blossoms, cherry, flowers, High Park, outdoors, park, people, sakura, spring, trees

I’m not sure what the allure of the cherry (aka sakura) blossoms is. Has it become a symbol of spring and who doesn’t like the long awaited end of winter? Is there something special about the cherry flower? Or is it more ‘exotic’ than the magnolia that flowers about the same time, or a bit earlier? Why not celebrate the lilac trees? Or other trees that blossom in the spring?

below: A couple of cherry blossoms along with some buds and partially opened flowers.

Although there are a number of places around the city to see sakura trees (14 I think), High Park seems to be the most popular place. True, they have the oldest trees and the most trees planted in one area. It has become the site of an annual pilgrimage by thousands of people to see the blossoms. Even though the ‘sakura watch’ website said that ‘peak’ blossom hadn’t yet arrived, I decided to check out High Park yesterday.

below: Lots of signs to direct pedestrian traffic to the cherry trees. The roads were closed to most cars.

below: There were a couple of school groups there for the morning. Although there weren’t too many blossoms to see, it was a beautiful spring morning and many of the kids were making the most of it.

below: An Instagram moment I suspect.

below: An engagement photo shoot

Yesterday there were many more buds and partially opened flowers than there were blossoms. By the weekend, there will probably be a profusion of white petals… as well as a swarming of people. I had to search for flowers to take pictures of but at least it was a relatively quiet and peaceful morning.

Mayday

Posted: May 1, 2019 in events, people
Tags: beer, clown, Conservatives, demonstration, Doug Ford, May day, Ontario, people, placards, politics, protest, Queens Park, rally, signs, tugadoug.com

May Day, the 1st of May. In some countries it is International Workers’ Day, or Labour Day, and is often a holiday (similar to the first Monday in September that is celebrated as Labour Day in Canada and the USA). This May 1st there was a protest in front of Queen’s Park to protest some of the recent policies announced by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his provincial Conservative party.

below: UnaFORDable DOUG and CONservative CONS

below: Cheering for a clownish Doug Ford as premier, the first clown we’ve had.

below: Let them drink beer. Doug Ford as Marie Antoinette (how did he fit into the dress?!)

below: …. and at Rock bottom prices folks!

below: Oink oink, Ford with a pink snout

below: Signs. “You know it’s time for change when children act like leaders and leaders act like children.”

below: A poop emoji makes an entrance

below: That’s a good reason to revolt!

below: Rapping to the crowd

below: Bees and trees not sleaze….and some important facts about mental health and youths in the province.

below: You have been warned! Beware! Killing two birds with one stone, Entrepreneurs at TugaDoug.com advertize their product while protesting. Follow the link to order yours for $19.95

below: Standing near the front of the crowd were these three people with their three different issues – For Ontario’s Rich Developers, concern for trees (cancellation of the tree planting initiative), and the threats to health care.

below: “Give me the birds and the bees please.”

below: Books not beer

below: “Let’s show our government that we refuse to regress.”

below: Get organized instead of panicking!

Maybe I’ll see you at the next protest?

Artscape Youngplace – student photography

Posted: April 30, 2019 in galleries
Tags: #esa_contemporary_photography, artscape youngplace, class, Ethan Wilder, Etobicoke School of the Arts, gallery, hall, images, Julia Kerrigan, Kaya Joubert, Meredith Tudor-Doonan, Owen Herlin, people, photography, Queen West, school, Shaw St., students, Tomoka Taki

I happened to visit Artscape Youngplace this afternoon just after their latest hallway gallery exhibits were hung. Showing on both the second and third floors are images produced by the graduating class from Etobicoke School of the Arts contemporary photography course. I tried to find information about the exhibit online but nothing about it was mentioned on the Artscape Youngplace website or on the Etobicoke School of the Arts website. If you know of something that has appeared online since this afternoon (29th April) or something that I missed, please let me know.

This is a selection of the pictures on display. Not all of the labels were up yet and some I didn’t get a clear picture of so my apologies to the photographers whose images that I haven’t credited here. Also, there was no criteria for selecting these images over the many others also being exhibited.

below: The finishing touches

below: By Owen Herlin. “The Last Week of Summer” on top and “Making Memories” on the bottom.

two photographers by student photographers, horizontal, one on top of the other. The top image is of a skateboarder doing a jump, in three sections, same man but in different stages of the jump

MIDDLE: Why’d you bring me here and then leave. Friends that aren’t mine. Contacts I don’t have. It’s all good but my time is too valuable right now and a lot of these interactions aren’t ( a lot not all). // writing with words in my head, overlaying over crowded memories that aren’t mine. “I want more out of life than this”!
LEFT: “Summer. It’s the start of this again, songs that will remind me of these moments above all others again. :

below: In the middle, a photograph by Tomoka Taki. It is flanked by two images by Julia Kerrigan called “Unnatural 1” and “Unnatural 2”. The opening sentence in the description of Taki’s work is: “I attempt to bridge a gap in communication between myself and older generations within my family.”