Walk like an Egyptian

The Rob Ford mural at St. Clair West and Earlscourt.

A little birdie told me that a photo of my Rob Ford piece at St. Clair and Earlscourt recently ran on BlogTO.  Nice to see.  It inspired me to offer an update on the piece.

The mural (initially covered here) is now a year old and still relatively unscathed, with a couple of exceptions:

1. Last summer Rob Ford visited the Salsa on St. Clair festival, held nearby.  A few days later I found that his portrait had mysteriously been smeared with face paint. I leave you to draw your own conclusions, but the paint was easily cleaned off in a proud act of civic stewardship.
2. A couple months ago someone called Skot added some cryptic markings to the face in black marker.  I always kind of like it when people bother to mess with my work, so now it's a Things/Skot collab.

Here are the results:

Behind the scenes

Here are some 'behind the scenes' photos from various projects.  I thought you might find them interesting.

The Omar Little 'Indeed' stencil, with H:

The copyright stencil:

The Post no bills in Vancouver:

My guerilla exhibit from Nuit Blanche 2010:

The painter stencil:

The priceless stencil:

Another test for the Priceless piece:

A test from the first Rob Ford stencil:

And finally, Super Grover:

Priceless

On April 7th, 2011, Rob Ford staged a photo op in an alleyway behind St. Clair West to announce the next phase in his war on graffiti.

Photo by Tara Walton / Toronto Star

Photos by Nick Kozak / Torontoist

Globe and Mail: 
"Wielding a high-powered pressure washer and a gleeful smile, Mayor Rob Ford got his hands seriously dirty and seriously wet in launching the city's graffiti eradication initiative in an alley behind St. Clair Avenue West last Thursday.  But the final results of the mayor's efforts suggest his city-wide spray-paint purge leaves something to be desired.

A spokeswoman for the mayor's office said the wall will eventually be covered with a mural."

CityNews: 
" 'It just depreciates the value of everyone's property, it turns it into a ghetto, and that's not the kind of city I want to represent ... We're gonna go brick by brick right across the city, and we're gonna get it cleaned up and that's the bottom line,' said Ford."


So, when the mural was done I paid a visit:

Photo by Martin Reis

Photo by Mike Peake / Toronto Sun

And then this random wall made the news again:

Torontoist: Scene: Rob Ford returns to graffiti wall... as graffiti
"Unfortunately, it seems Ford doesn't grasp the psychology of graffiti especially well; immediately upon his return from the neighbourhood, everyone was taking bets on how soon some Ford-themed graffiti would appear on this wall.  Answer: we can't say exactly, but it was no more than a matter of weeks."

Toronto Sun: Graffiti artist targets Ford
"A cheeky graffiti artist recently painted a picture of a devious looking Ford on the wall, just off Earlscourt Ave. and St. Clair Ave W. ... Someone has defaced the mural with an illustration of the mayor's face in a frame.

Palacio, the chairman of the licensing and standards committee, shrugged it off as 'part of the (graffiti) culture.' ... 'They could have done something worse,' he said. 'I can live with it.' "

CityNews: Street artists take aim at Ford [video]