There’s a new dragon in Chinatown. It lives on a wall on Dundas West, just east of Spadina.
This colourful addition to Dundas West was painted by Blinc Studios Artists, Allan Bender, John Nobrega, Jesse McCuaig, Azadeh Pirazimian, Chris Brown, Frannie Potts and Mohammad Jaberi with the help of the Chinatown BIA and the City of Toronto. It must not have been an easy mural to paint – the wall is not flat but all parts of it have been covered.
Another wonderful mural to brighten up the alley!
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!
Well, not really Camden Street, but an alley that runs perpendicular to the street…. If the lane has a name I don’t know what it is. Google maps doesn’t even include it. It’s a very short alley that runs both north and south from Camden street and it doesn’t go anywhere. Both sections were painted with murals 9 or 10 years ago. Amazingly, they have survived.
Let’s start with the south side of Camden Street.
below: Mural Project, “The walls won’t know what hit them”. The mural was painted in 2006 youth from the Harbourfront and Cecil Community Centres as part of the City of Toronto’s Graffiti Transformation Project.
below: The mural is painted in a quasi cartoon style.
below: She’s upset and she’s expressing her hurt and anger with spray paint seems to be the start of the story.
below: My knowledge of slang is limited, and this is 10 years old but this sheezy is cool. It’s probably as simple as “this sure is cool”, i.e. spray painting graffiti is cool.
below: Oh no! I always laugh when I hear this expression these days… is there anywhere in Toronto where property values are going down? Okay, okay, so it’s part of the story – she’s complaining that someone has sprayed graffiti somewhere nearby, the vandalism part of the story. The angry young woman or the “sheezy heezy” guy above have been busy in her neighbourhood.
below: As you can see, a couple of things were in the way as I was taking pictures. I am not sure exactly how the plot of the mural progresses from here because I couldn’t see the whole thing. There are gaps in the story line. A few missing pages so to speak.
below: Flesh tones as dots in the face of woman who plays an unknown role in this story – the mystery woman?
below: I suspect that this is the “We’ve got to get rid of the graffiti” part of the story. Is it improper to make comments about Rob Ford and his anti-graffiti program here? I don’t want to insult the mural or the project behind it because I think that the Graffiti Transformation Project is an excellent program.
below: If there was a mural on the other side of the alley, it’s long gone.
A short walk across Camden Street to the other half of the alley….
below: You can see the taller buildings on Richmond Street West but you can’t get there from here.
And like most downtown alleys, garbage bins are a dominant feature.
below: At the entrance to the alley. There are words under the window by the sunflowers that say that this painting is also the work of the Harbourfront/Cecil Community Centre’s Graffiti Transformation Project, 2007.
below: A very low window with green arrows
below: And last, I’ll end with a weather comment because we’ve all been talking (complaining?) about it these days – someone’s a bit overdressed for this August weather although it doesn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.
Stay cool!
This blog post is about a flock of birdos, meaning that I found a lot of alley garages decorated with paintings by street artist birdo. Or maybe ‘a menagerie of birdos’ would be a more accurate description as most of the pictures were of different animals such as elephant, cat, dog, coyote, and mouse along with a number of different birds.
These photographs were are all taken in alleys behind the south part of Dovercourt Road (between Queen and Sudbury streets). The majority of the paintings that I saw were result of birdo’s work but there were examples of and I have included them in this post too.
below: Two birdo birds with eggs, with a slice of mushroom and pepperoni pizza by Shalak.
below: Howling at the moon, with a cactus and a scorpion too.
below: Blue dog, pink lava lamp
below: A rooted turtle and cool owl with sparkly shades
below: “Just a robot that doesn’t like technology”
Sackville Street, just south of Dundas, is right in the midst of the Regent Park renewal project. It is also the site of two murals. First, there is bright and colourful mural which is painted on the side of a new apartment building.
The other mural is a painting by elicser on hoardings around a building under construction.
below: With the ubiquitous Timmie’s cup on the ground.
Faces in the alley, Graffiti Alley
As March turns into April and winter sort of turns into spring.
below: Looks like someone has already started his spring cleaning.
below: He says, “See you in hell”.
She thinks, “I’m already there. You should try living beside this smelly thing.”
below: Jarus has painted a young man
below: It seems that even Lovebot needs to eat… Not sure about the purple hamburger bun though!
In the world of graffiti and street art, change is usually inevitable and sometimes interesting. One exception seems to be the alley that you can see from subway between Keele and Dundas West stations. The building on the corner of Bloor West and Indian Road is new, but otherwise little is changed. Even though most of the street art is the same as before, I don’t think that I have posted it in the past. Here is documentation of most of it.
below: King Midas still looks over the TTC parking lot at Keele station. Well, I’ve always assumed that it was King Midas although he was the guy whose touch turned everything to gold, not grey.
below: And this monkey is still asking what the noise is all about.
below: ‘Sink or Swim’ by elicser
below: A lovebot shares wall space with an Uber5000 birdie….
below: … because Everybody’s a Winner
below: Laser, not loser. Now with laser vision.
below: Ghostbusters in a hard to reach place
below: Zooks is still on her wall.
below: This turtle has seen better days
below: Guard dog at the bottom of the stairs
below: She seems to turn when the door opens, a mural by EGR art
below: He (she?) still keeps goal on the back porch.
below: This mural also has a painting of Marilyn Monroe in it along with Bruce Lee and Alfred Hitchcock. There were too many cars parked in front of it when I walked past the other day.
below: King Kong dominates this wall.
below: We Rise Up
below: War and Peace
![graffiti street art in an alley - Two black and white hearts, one with a face drawn on it. The words cloud + glare = [heart]](https://mcfcrandall.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/blog_cloud_glare_heart.jpg)
‘Demolition Site’ by Jihyun Jung,
at MOCCA as part of the CONTACT photography festival
This Korean artist visits demolition sites where he paints one of the rooms red.
Over time, he documents the changes to this room as demolition proceeds.
below: One of his photographs of a red room covers the entire wall at MOCCA.
One of the walls of the courtyard in front of MOCCA is covered with one of his photographs. It is 30 feet long. Very annoyingly, a car was parked in front of it the day I was there. It was promoting a car dealership in return for their support of an exhibit at the gallery that shares courtyard space with MOCCA. The two planters with the tall evergreens are very tacky too.
Obsolescence, by Shelagh Keeley, 2014
at The Power Plant, Harbourfront Centre
The piece covers a wall that is 25 x 40 feet in a room that is only 10 feet wide.
The large collage includes photographs taken inside an abandoned textile factory in Monchengladbach Germany.
A dictionary definition: “Obsolescence: being in the process of passing out of use or usefulness; becoming obsolete.“
One of the inspirations for this piece was Marshall McLuhan’s 1970 “Notes on Obsolescence” which opens with the lines: “When print or the motor car is referred to as “obsolete” many people assume that it is therefore doomed to speedy extinction. A casual glance at the historical record indicates the contrary. Gutenberg did not discourage handwriting. There is a great deal more handwriting done even in the age of the typewriter than was ever done before printing”.
And it ends with: “Obsolescence is a very large and mysterious subject that has had very little attention in relation to its importance.” The present paper may … thus help awareness of the role of obsolescence in sparking creativity and the invention of new order.”
Like all art, it is subjective. Like good art, it has the potential to make you want to linger in front of it and even to reflect and think.
This piece is scheduled to remain at The Power Plant until 17 May 2015.
Seen on a wall on Noble Street:
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as I walk Toronto 