below: “Protect your energy”
below:A raccoon in pinks and purples, by Jeff Blackburn
below: by Nick Sweetman – two ebony jewelwings, a male and female along with a partially submerged frog with its tongue ready for action. Jewelwings are a species of damselfly.
below: GETSO (or Getsofacto)
below: A larger than life grinning Cheshire Cat by Christina Mazzulla.
below: Some people by Elicser Elliott hanging out in a doorway.
below: Love in the alley
Photos taken January 2023
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.
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Some previous years’ installations:
2017 – Flotsam and Jetsam
Winter Stations 2019
Winter Stations 2020
On the waterfront – Winter Stations 2022
‘Out and About – Windows of Time’ is a large mural by Christiano De Araujo that features scenes from the social history of Weston village. Unfortunately, the (painted) young man who is sitting on the sidewalk and playing a guitar is hidden by the (real) car parked in front of the mural.
This post is actually a continuation of today’s other post, “A Little Piece of Weston”. You’ll find other murals and street art there as well as a few little odds and ends about the Weston neighbourhood.
Happy New Year!
January 23rd is Lunar New Year as we enter the Year of the Rabbit (except in Vietnam where apparently it’s the Year of the Cat).
below: Although this mural has nothing to do with rabbits (or cats), it is found in Chinatown. Three dragons cavorting on the wall on Oxford Street, painted by sightone in 2016.
below: Blue dragon guarding the door at number 5.
Nearby there is an alley where the Chinatown BIA has sponsored some murals with Asian themes.
below: A large koi, or carp, swimming towards a pink lotus flower.
below: “Flowers of the four seasons – Autumn Chrysanthemum” by rowdyradrat.
below: Another rowdyradrat painting – this one is “Flowers of the Four Seasons – Winter, Plum Blossoms” and it features Chinese plum blossoms.
There is a railway bridge that crosses Lansdowne Ave just south of Dundas West. Along the concrete wall on the east side of the underpass is a long stretch of murals painted last year by a group of muralists and street artists. This is “Community Built”.
below: At the south end of paintings…. Ducks and loons in the water; ducks in flight by Nick Sweetman. Most people will recognize the green-headed mallard; the duck with the big black and white head is a male hooded merganser. A female merganser has a similar crest on her head except that it is brown.
Next to the ducks there are people fishing and wading in a creek. This portion was painted by Elicser Elliott.
below: Under the tracks, abstract flowers in yellows and oranges by Chris Perez
below: Black hands and white hands reaching out, by Rowell Soller
below: Kedre Brown (left) and Artchild (right)
below: Scenes on light green by Andrea Manica – a dog, a bee, and a couple of strawberries – walking in heels with coat and hat – sitting on a yellow blanket – a tent, mushrooms, and playing ball.
below: As the years go by we’ll be able to date the artworks of 2020 to 2022 by the presence of masks. That’s assuming that we won’t be wearing them again…..
below: Under a rainbow where nature thrives in a collaboration between Shawn Howe and Mo Thunder.
below: Que Rock
below: A few artists from Red Urban Nation Artists Collective had a section of the wall to paint
below: Part of the RUN Collective, is Ren Lonechild who painted the mother sasquatch with her little ones at the bottom of the stairs. Swooping and swirling around the apes and the stairs are ghostly creatures that are the work of Cedar Eve Peters
below: The view from the top of the stairs from Shirley Avenue
below: by Danielle Hyde
below: A mural with a message that the willow tree is nature’s aspirin. Willow bark contains salicin which is chemically similar to aspirin which also known as acetylsalicylic acid. The salicin chemical structure is shown in this mural by Keitha Keeshing-Tobias.
below: This project incorporated a previous public art installation on this site. Back in 1989 a number of small sculptures, or forms, by Dyan Marie were embedded into the wall of the underpass.
below: This is Leone McComas’s contribution to the ‘Community Built’ project
below: Alex Bacon painted dancers in hazy flowing shades of pink and orange.
below: Two murals.
below: Close up of the cyclist painted by Curtia Wright
below: Two brown figures by kaya joan
below: On the right – a blue woman reclines by a cluster of colourful houses. She’s got one hand on a pink lawn and her feet on a red lawn under a white-leafed tree. This mural was painted by Yasaman Mehrsa.
below: Close up view of the big regal cat by Planta Muisca as it sits on a blue mat by a bowl of papaya and a slice of lemon.
below: Welcome to Little Tibet … standing beside a white chicken by Caitlin Taguibao
below: People from the Little Tibet mural, by Kalsang Wangyal,
below: A mural by Tenzin Tsering on the right – a bonfire where “the flames of the bonfire represent the tradition of oral storytelling and act as a homage to the diverse and unique stories/voices of the people in Tkaronto.” (from her instagram page)
below: And what’s a Toronto mural if it doesn’t have a raccoon?
In the mural two pictures above, the painting on the left is the work of Jordan McKie (aka trip2thetop) The next few images are from that mural.
below: A dragon’s head at the north end of the underpass by June Kim.
below: Looking south
A Mural Routes project from 2021
June, Jordan McKie, Tenzin Tsering, Kalsang Wangyal (waz_graphics), Caitlin Taguibao, Planta Muisca, Yasaman Mehrsa, kaya joan, Curtia Wright, Alex Bacon, Leone McComas, Keitha Keeshig-Tobias Biizindam, Red Urban Nation Artists Collective (Drew Rickard, Danielle Hyde, Cedar Eve Peters, Ren Lonechild and Que Rock), Mo Thunder and Shawn Howe, Andrea Manica, Kedre Brown, ARTCHILD, Rowell Soller, Chris Perez, Elicser Elliott, Nick Sweetman.
Curator and community engagement facilitator: Bareket Kezwer
Along a wall beside the playground at 103 and 105 West Lodge is a mural painted by Elicser Elliot and Nick Sweetman a couple of years ago. It’s theme is the outdoors and it includes scenes like kids playing baseball, people reading and sitting outside, as well as people planting gardens. There are also lots of animals – a large dragonfly shows off its wings, bees fly by, squirrels hoard nuts, a robin pulls a pink worm out of the ground, and a very large hedgehog sniffs the flowers.
below: Hedgehog covered with thousands of protective spikes.
below: Playing baseball and keeping an eye on the bees
below: An encounter with a skunk
below: Playing with friends. Great dunk shot!
below: This robin has found very large worm
below: A blue dragonfly with translucent wings
below: A black squirrel and a grey squirrel and thousands of nuts!
Eight squares of positive messages.
With the strength of our diversity;
With the wisdom of our ancestors.
We look ahead to our prosperity
We create our own identity
Based on love and empathy
We firmly believe in equality
Embracing our unity; unleashing our creativity
Striving for peace and respect
These simple paintings are arranged along a fence at Kingston and Galloway Roads in the West Hill neighbourhood in Scarborough. At one end, on Galloway Road, only the back of the person is seen from the sidewalk. In the middle, the people are starting to turn so that by the other end of the line they face the street.
This was a StreetARToronto project with the help of the Boys and Girls Club of East Scarborough as well as Behind the Line
Walking up Yonge Street on a grey damp September day – from Adelaide to Dundas
below: Southeast corner of Adelaide & Yonge: the (sort of) dome shaped entrance way with the stained glass roof is under renovation.
below: Walking his bike up Yonge Street
below: Looking north up Yonge Street from Richmond
below: Looking west on Temperance Street towards a wall of glass
below: Dineen Coffee on the ground floor the old building on the northwest corner of Yonge and Temperance streets. The coffee company took its name from the building – the Dineen Building, once home to furriers W. and D. Dineen Co. (until the 1930s). The building was built in 1897 and was added to the City of Toronto Heritage list in 1973. Ceilings in it were made of bronze and aluminum plates; this was the first time that aluminum was used as a building material in Canada.
below: Dineen Building, 1927. The 2012 restoration was very faithful to the original facade.
Source: Online, Toronto Public Library Archives. Unknown photographer for the Toronto Star newspaper.
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below: Streetcars on Queen West under the redesigned pedestrian walkway.
below: Looking north from Shuter Street. Since the late 1970s, the west side of this block has been dominated by the Eaton Centre. When the mall was first completed, it destroyed any street scene that had existed there. Subsequent alterations have improved this block at street level a bit.
below: Looking north up Yonge Street from Queen back at a time when the new Eatons store at the north end of the Eaton Centre was built (at Dundas, completed 1977) but the old stores on the west side of Yonge hadn’t been completely demolished. This photo was found online on blogTO – here’s the link to their site if you are interested in the history of the Eaton Centre construction.
below: Massey Hall, Shuter Street
below: Reflections in the windows as you approach Dundas. I’m not sure what the relevance of “drunk elephant” is!
below: Tourists in the city; cameras out at Yonge Dundas Square.
There are more rainy day photos of people at Yonge and Dundas in the next blog post.
Hanging out and Yonge and Dundas and trying to stay dry
The Ex is back (whether or not you think Covid is over!)
More 2022 CNE photos on a previous post (around and around we go).
as I walk Toronto 