July 2011
15 posts
BIKES ARE SO HOT RIGHT NOW -- S'PECIALLY NEON ONES
Neon bikes, neon nails, kick ass girls and graffiti alleys all feature largely in Rye Rye’s video for her song Sunshine, featuring MIA. Looks like Vanessa and I have our fingers on the pulse boy-o! Recently, we’ve had to face a whole lot of B.S. in order to get our good bikes on the street. Now, whenever I’m feeling down about our project I turn this song up and sing out...
SAVE JARVIS
After being rescheduled twice within 24 hours, the Council Meeting to discuss the removal of the Jarvis bike lane was called on Tuesday, July 12. I arrived at City Hall with our letter to Mayor Rob Ford in hand, which I dropped off personally at his office. With little time to spare, I dashed up to the Meeting Room to show our support for the ill fated bike lane and to listen to the related...
HURON STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN
Summertime in Toronto is primo. Yet, there are days when the heat; the loud sirens; the plethora of construction sites; the pungent smells and heavy air can be overbearing. Last week I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the summer hustle and bustle and so on my ride home from work I stopped into the Huron Street community garden to take a deep breath and pause.
The Huron Street Garden...
DEAR MAYOR
We were very excited by the City’s positive response to the good bike project earlier this summer. We were happy that Adam Vaughan and Gary Crawford were so immediately engaged by our art project, and we were encouraged to hear that you also supported the project. On Councilor Crawford’s initiative, the City has provided us with over fifty bikes and has given us leeway with regards to bylaws;...
BIKE BULLIES
This week has been a demoralizing one for us. Our plants were being stolen so regularly from the good bike’s basket that the two of us gave up and substituted our breathing greenery with some cheerful, hot pink plastic peonies. We wired them securely to the basket frame and put up a sign kindly asking people not to take our flowers. The next day, they were gone; and so we resolved to give the...
GOOD ARTIST: JESJIT GILL
Who are you? My name is Jesjit Gill, and I am an artist and printer based in Toronto. I studied printmaking at OCAD, and I spend most of my time making fliers and zines, and planning events to celebrate those kinds of things. I’m currently a co-organizer of an annual small press fair called Zine Dream. ————— What is on your ipod/bookshelf? When I’m...
INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN SHEARER
—- reprinted from The White Review —-
Canada’s representative at the 54th Venice Biennale is Steven Shearer, a soft-spoken and mild-mannered Vancouver-based artist whose work delves deep into the seldom excavated, often explosive interior lives of teenaged boys.
Garage bands, long hair and grunge style are of particular interest to Shearer because they are emblematic of...
TOTES M'GOTES!!
They’re here! A big thanks to Jesjit Gill for the design and to Jeff Woodrow of Joy Apparel for silk screening two hundred bags. To get your hands on one, all you have to do is make a small donation (twenty bucks) via Rockethub.
PAINTING DAY AT REGENT PARK
We hosted our first painting event this past Sunday at the Regent Park community in the Queen East neighborhood. We partnered with Adam Molson of Daniels Corporation on this event because we see connections between our project’s community interests and the steps he and his colleagues are taking to integrate on site social housing with incoming condo developments. We set up ten...
TRIANGLES, TRIANGLES, TRIANGLES
Are triangles taking over the world? Look around you — they’re everywhere! It seems like every hip coffee shop, gallery and boutique is using the triangle in their logo. Artists are into it too: the recent ‘Double Rainbow Rainbow’ exhibition at Show and Tell was triangle heavy; so was ‘To What Does This Sweet Cold Earth Belong’ at The Power Plant; and Robert...
I’ve been house-sitting an apartment for the past few weeks. The building is one of those classic four story walk ups with art deco details. You enter the elevator, which is marked on each floor by an illuminated sign in retro script, through heavy, hinged doors that need to close all the way before you can push any buttons. My unit has a mantelpiece, arched doorways, hardwood floors and...
