This sculpture by David Hlynsky and Shirley Yanover sits on College St at the Augusta St entrance to the Kensington Market area and is a complement to the one they installed at the Spadina Ave entrance which I showed you here. It sits high atop a 20' pole surrounded by countless wires and traffic lights which tend to hide it a lot. I'm not sure of the significance of the name!
Wandering about yesterday in Kensington Market on a car-free Sunday, I found a whole mural painted by one of my favourite urban artists, UB5000. This one is on the side of Cora's Kitchen which specializes in cupcakes and the mural reflects this with many animated cupcakes but also a yellow bird eating a cupcake with chopsticks over towards the right side. The bird is everywhere!
Taking part in Monday Murals. Click here for more murals.
The dance on this porch was titled "Crutch" and started off with the mother wearing a foot cast and using crutches which became an integral part of the dance that explored the relationship of the mother & son playing, discovering and supporting each other. When I looked through my pics of the event I realized that there were a lot more than 100 people at this performance and apparently they had an attendance of over 1000 for the 5 sessions. The people in this shot and the many more that you can't see are sitting in the middle of the busiest street in the neighbourhood - I love it! Here's hoping this event returns next year.
At this stop of the Porch View Dances the host family and a couple of friends took on the personas of a group of birds performing wonderfully synchronized moves in the manner of an air show. All of the shows had wonderful sound accompanying the performances and for this one the music was indeed quite bird-like!
Last week, from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon, a very unusual event, "Porch View Dances", took place in Seaton Village which is the part of Toronto just west of the Annex. It involved a walking tour of the neighbourhood, with this fine gentleman as the ringmaster, stopping at 5 homes where the families of each home put on a dance performance each of which had been professionally choreographed and well practiced since last fall. The tour I attended had an audience of over 100 people and the cool part of the tour was that there were no police escorts but rather we all just took to the street and volunteers on bicycles blocked each end of the particular block that we were on. It was like guerilla performance art and was fabulous! I'll show some more shots of the performers on the weekend.
I just returned from spending a rainy morning at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) viewing the Picasso show "Masterpieces From The Musee National Picasso, Paris" but no photos were allowed so I am posting a pic of the wonderful Frank Gehry stairs which rise from the Walker court and break through the skylight to lead up 4 storeys to the top floor of the gallery. I posted a pic of them a year ago but this is a slightly different angle and plus I admit to being fascinated by them every time I see them! They were part of the 2008 redesign of the AGO by Gehry. The Picasso show was wonderful too since it featured works from his private collection and is on tour while its home gallery in Paris undergoes renovations.
Yet another ghost sign that I found recently on the side of a building on Richmond St West. It reads - "Milgrom Limited Coats & Suits where quality is created 372 Richmond St". I could find hardly any info on the company other than the fact it was located here from the mid 60s to the late 70s and it looks as if their sign was painted over another older larger sign. This building is now occupied by many small companies and studios.
Taking part in Signs,Signs. Click here for more signs.
