Reasons to love Toronto now

Page 76 of Toronto Life's June 2012 feature, "Reasons to Love Toronto Now" (not yet online)

Toronto Life featured some Rob Ford art in its latest feature article, including my portrait of Rob Ford.  The feature isn't online yet, but there is this from the table of contents...

Toronto Life: Reasons to Love Toronto Now 

That giddy feeling is back in the air—the euphoria of great expectations—and here are some reasons why: we’ve got a wildly resilient housing market; we started a 21st-century suffragette movement; our philistine mayor is inspiring art; white-linen restaurants are back in vogue; the murder rate is at a 25-year low; and, well, we could go on. In fact, we do, in our fourth annual mash note to the city

In the print edition, Reason No. 25 ("Because Rob Ford isn't so bad for the arts after all"), notes...

GRAFFITO FORD
After Ford's declaration of war on their art form, the city's spray can dissidents turned the mayoral mug into their favourite subject. Anti-Ford stencils and portraits portraying him as an "art terrorist," Humpty Dumpty and a giant, zit-covered worm. (The latter found its way into a gallery show.) Ford wasn't amused, and this spring he once again vowed to get the city's graffiti "cleaned up."

P.S. Yes, Meathead Ford is awesome (and disgusting).

Rob Ford's graffiti battle goes on

I got a wee shout-out this past Sunday (April 22nd) on CTV National News, thanks to friend-of-the-blog and prolific photographer Martin Reis.  He was interviewed on the subject of Rob Ford-themed graffiti and the launch of Ford's new anti-graffiti iPhone app.


CTV National News - Battling against graffiti (video)

Graffiti is a problem that plagues most Canadian cities and one mayor is deploying new weapons to battle against the unauthorized art. John Vennavally-Rao with more on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's tactics.

Photos by Martin Reis; images courtesy of CTV National News

That's the Rob Ford stencil from Graffiti Alley at 00:13, in amongst the many pieces that Martin has documented.  He also breaks the news of his forthcoming iPad app, which will provide commentary and a handy database of his 200+ photos of the mayoral muse. 

We'll see whose app proves more popular.  I will have plenty more to say on the subject soon.

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:

NOW: A Collaborative Project with Sean Martindale and Pascal Paquette

Photo courtesy of nowexhibition.com

The NOW exhibit by Sean Martindale and Pascal Paquette is currently on in the Salle Young Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario, part of their Toronto NOW series.  The show runs from January 21st to April 1st, and admission is free.  You can access the gallery through the FRANK entrance during restaurant hours, and make sure to also check out the Gift Shop Gift Shop pop-up shop in—you guessed it—the gift shop.

Torontoist: Street Art Shakes Up the AGO

Both artists are typically known for their street art—Martindale, for his urban interventions (such as pocket planters made of advertising posters and tree planter alterations) and Paquette, who works under the name Mon Petit Chou, for graffiti.  And yet, Martindale sees their AGO stint as a perfect opportunity for showing how street art and gallery art tend to inform, and not isolate, one another.

...

While the gift shop and FRANK installations reflect on the AGO itself, the Young gallery is bursting with commentary on Toronto today. Video projections documenting the artists spray painting the word "NOW" repeatedly using early graffiti styles, or continually painting over the work of other local graffiti artists, pay homage both to the art form, past and present, and to the complicated relationship we have with it in this city.

You may recall that I mentioned the show before, just after I finished painting the legal wall that Sean and Pascal secured for the Whitewash collaboration.  Here's the photo I took at the time:

The wall after I painted it.

And here are the results on video:

Part of the Whitewash video installation - Martindale, Paquette, et al.

Whitewash video installation cont'd - Martindale, Paquette, et al.

Some  nice work from the others in the Whitewash installation, with plenty more to come.  Make sure you drop by to see the whole show for yourself; I can testify that the opening party was bumpin'.  I look forward to watching Whitewash evolve as other artists are added to the list.

Rob Ford seen at Pizza Pizza

Last week, street art blogger and The Grid contributor Christine Estima wrote a piece about me on her blog, entitled 'All those THINGS we never said'.  Christine took some nice photos of the Super Grover and the lightswitch stencils, but there was one near the end that really caught my attention:

Photo courtesy of Christine Estima

"It turns out that The Grid has this deal in place with Pizza Pizza where their articles are promoted on flatscreen TVs in each location.  I didn't know that (I knew not eating pizza would come back to haunt me).  I was sent this photo of my article flashing across the screens at one such location."

I find this quite hilarious.

Ford resurfaces

Photo by Martin Reis

From June, 2011...

Toronto Star:
"Artist Joel Richardson says the city has painted over a popular Dupont St. mural that it paid him $2,000 to create, an apparent misfire in Mayor Rob Ford's war on graffiti.

A city spokeswoman says the railway underpass wall was returned to drab grey because Richardson's artwork was unauthorized, uncommissioned, political and may have 'referred to (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper.' "

Photo from Toronto Life

I wanted to help Ford own up to his mistake, so:

Unfortunately my mural didn't last long either.  

A few months later, Joel Richardson repainted the wall with a new mural.  But, lo and behold...

Photo by Martin Reis

Photo by Martin Reis

Photo by Martin Reis

A big thanks to Joel Richardson and his assistant for restoring the stencil, and to Martin Reis for all your great photos.

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]

Rob Ford stencil

I made this stencil during the 2010 election, and painted it for the first time a few days after Ford won.  I didn't want to make fun of his weight or call him stupid, but I did want to tweak him and provoke angst in the general public.  

Disclaimer: I did not do any of the writing in these photos.

This was the very first graffiti portrait of Rob Ford anywhere, at Queen and Dovercourt:

Photo by Michael Chrisman / Torontoist

Photo by Eric Parker

Photo by panvolta

He didn't last long in Graffiti Alley:

Photo by Francis Mariani

Photo by Martin Reis

Praying for gravy on Queen West:

The gravy boats were H's idea, but they didn't last long either.

Photo by Martin Reis

Photo by unknown

The stencils were picked up in some of the local blogs:

http://torontoist.com/2010/11/extra_extra_the_face_of_ford_the_page_of_agendas_and_the_paddling_of_ducks/
http://www.blogto.com/city/2011/01/rob_ford_gets_the_stencil_treatment/
http://www.blogto.com/news_flash/2011/02/the_rob_ford_graffiti_conversation_continues/
http://www.thegridto.com/city/local-news/the-rob-ford-graffiti-gallery/

http://www.blogto.com/arts/2011/03/the_rob_ford_graffiti_gallery/

There was also a blurb in the Saturday, January 22nd print edition of the National Post.