Someone seems to be posting poetry, not on social media, but as pasteup graffiti.
Look to the cornfields
Big stalks grow tall
Despite anyone around at all.
the sun could rise twice
but instead you came along
canaries dance on the wire and
sing a familiar tune
in the rain and in the snow
you’re just a little more
fish swim and birds fly
dogs howl and babies cry
your love for me I dare not ask why.
below: He may be blue but he’s smiling.
below: Preening and posing or just walking past. Saturday afternoon in Graffiti Alley.
below: It comes with words, a quote from Al Capone: “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun, then you can with a kind word alone”. A mural by Madmaxxoner
below: A series of urban ninja squadron stickers on a pole
below: A grey face on a door, part of a mural by elicser
below: Square face with a four pointed crown, drawn on orange
below: So we meet alley drinking in fact(?) at 2 pm on a Teusday (sic Tuesday) it’s cool(?) and I have a half size bottle of wine some of us are in love and some us can’t be. We break off spinning in all directions and haven’t stopped since. And on top of it all is a paranoid sticker in his pink briefs. Make of it what you will.
below: Posing at the end of the alley
below: Set-up for a selfie
below: More of someone else’s selfie, this one in the partial darkness.
below: Smoke break
below: An uber5000 painting of blue cat painting a yellow birdie with a predatory camera bearing down on them.
below: We are all human by Kaun
below: More sharpie words, this time about the atomic power of prayer. Oh dear, I googled it and it’s a thing.
below: Paper paste-up telling us to eat more or proclaiming the presence of eatmore?
A grey day. The kind of day that when it starts to rain you head to a subway station, only to have the rain stop before you get there. So you walk more. Then it rains again so you buy an umbrella and minutes later the rain stops. So you walk more.
below: Southwest corner of Yonge & Wellesley
below: Northwest corner of Yonge & Wellesley
below: Marks left behind, traces of lives once lived there.
below: Do you think that there will ever be a time when we can walk downtown without encountering construction zones?
below: If it’s a gaggle of geese or a parliament of owls, what’s a group of cement trucks?
below: A new large mural by birdo at Dundas & McCaul
below: Same mural, different angle
below: “Keep going” at the Children’s Healing Garden outside Sick Kids Hospital on University Avenue.
below: You can do anything
below: A large hole on University Ave
below: There was a Dragon Festival at Nathan Phillips Square this past weekend.
below: Friday was a rather quiet day at the festival, probably because of the weather.
below: But there was lots of different food available including skewers of octopus
below: There were also these fried potato spirals on sticks that are available at every festival and street function.
below: Hot dog vendor on Queen Street
below: Snowmen? This is “Born and Raised” designed by Studio How-to-See.
below: The tallest snowman is 5 “snowballs” high, or 17 feet tall. Oh no! The snowman in the middle has lost its head. What would Olaf say?
below: Of course early September means TIFF. King Street West closed and many people were walking or hanging out there trying their hand at celebrity spotting. We are all groupies during TIFF.
below: I wouldn’t know a famous actor or director, or anything like that, if they came up to talk to me. My attempts to follow the crowd to get celebrity pics weren’t very successful. This is the kind of photo that I ended up with – The eye belongs someone called Jason who is taking a selfie with a father and daughter. I didn’t linger long on King Street.
below: Having King Street closed didn’t help the traffic on nearby streets. Mind you, this is normal for Toronto especially around rush hour. Stand at any intersection downtown and you’ll find many instances where cars block traffic when the traffic lights change.
below: The driver knew I was there taking pictures. It didn’t make much difference.
below: Paste ups on Richmond Street. I find these mesmerizing. I love the positioning of the eye and the way that it is staring at you .
below: And my last stop that day, a quiet charcoal drawing by Olexander Wlasenko at the Arbozzo Gallery at 410 Richmond Street.
Now, all that’s left is the pink umbrella that I bought, still unused.
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.
“Stop at nothing to get a head”
But be careful…. that head could become some body’s dinner!
On a hydro pole in Graffiti Alley, facing more to the nearest wall than to the alley, I discovered an intriguing collage. It was made of a series of pictures, old-style coloured pictures of women who look like they’d be more comfortable in the 1940’s and 1950’s….they’re straight out of vintage magazines.
below: A signature on the bottom of the artwork, Mademoiselle Berthelot. She’s a street artist from Paris who recently left her mark in Toronto.
Stylish women, like this one with long white gloves, surrounded by circles (bubbles?). Circles made with splotches of paint and blue striped circles made with rubber stamps.
If you look closely, there are pairs of birds sitting together on top of sealed envelopes.
So far, this is the only piece I’ve seen by Mademoiselle Berthelot. Are there more in Toronto?
Wood cracks. Metal rusts. Paint fades and paint peels, its just what happens to paint when its exposed to the elements. Street art painted on a surface suffers the same fate. Nothing lasts forever and sometimes a mural’s life span is quite short. Sometimes other factors come into play – street art is defaced or altered in some way. Tags cover it; words get written on it. That too is the nature of street art.
below: I love what the weather has done to this woman’s face. Aging with grace and dignity. The texture of the old wood adds an element of depth and character to her as well.
below: One slat replaced. I’m sure it wasn’t the artist’s intent, but the gaps in the wood look like bars in a cage, or those metal bars you often see on windows.
below: Broken chin, but still watching the world pass by on Baldwin Street.
below: Yelling at the bushes.
below: Eyes are mysterious things. I have never been able to draw them properly and I am in awe of those who can. Even more so if the eyes communicate something, some emotion or expression.
below: I have always been intrigued by this face. A photo of the original painting hangs on one of my walls. I still find her mesmerizing. Those blue eyes still stare at the world. Is she looking through a veil? Or is she able to see through all the nonsense that the world throws at her?
below: A devilish child is still in good shape.
below: “Without money we’d all be rich”. That’s the kerb (curb) that runs along the bottom of the picture. Her whole face was not there in the first place.
below: And animal faces too!
