It's hard to beat a sunny autumn day and it is particularly a nice time for a run. I caught this young woman downtown, running up University Ave past the Canada Life building.
In 2000, more than 300 moose sculptures were decorated by different artists and they roamed all over the city. Unfortunately the antlers were relatively easy to remove and most of the moose lost their antlers shortly after the sculptures appeared. You can still find the moose scattered about but very few have the antlers like this lucky moose found up above the storefront of the "Lucky Moose Food Mart" in one of our Chinatowns, this one located on Dundas St W. This lucky moose is decorated with gold coins, the yin & yang symbols, and the chinese word for luck written upside down to signify that the luck has already arrived!
Taking part in Signs, Signs. Click here for more signs.
I love this space in the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) which was one of the major additions to the gallery during the Frank Gehry designed renovations completed in 2008. It was named the Galleria Italia as a tribute to the 26 Toronto families of Italian descent who contributed $13 million towards the construction. The space stretches almost 600 ft along the front of the building above Dundas St giving you a wonderful view of the street below and the of the Victorian buildings across the road. It is a warm lovely space now being used as the site of the gallery's espresso bar but it has also been used for sculpture exhibits in the past. This pic was taken at that magical time in the evening when the sky is like a jewel!
This mural has appeared on a wall along College St that has been a site of continuous tagging no matter how many times it was painted over. The owners contacted a city-sponsored group called StreetARToronto (StART) which has the mandate to promote street art while counteracting graffiti. The artists for this mural are Viviana Astudillo & Logan Miller and they have done a fine job with the result being that no further tagging has taken place.
Taking part in Monday Murals. Click here for more murals.
This small synagogue belonging to the First Narayever Congregation is located in a residential neighbourhood near the Annex in downtown Toronto. It is unique in that it is traditional-egalitatarian where both genders are treated equally and all sit together and worship together. The building was first constructed in 1890 as a Foresters' lodge and then became a church until becoming a synagogue in 1943.
Taking part in Inspired Sunday. Click here for more religious buildings.
The November 1 theme for City Daily Photo bloggers is "Heights."
He Xie is the Chinese word for river crab and this piece of Ai Weiwei's consists of 3,200 porcelain crabs. After his Shanghai studio was demolished by Chinese authorities in 2010, Ai invited guests to a feast of 10,000 river crabs to protest the control of information and the restriction of individual freedom of expression. He was placed under house arrest and was unable to attend.
This piece by Ai Weiwei consists of 38 tons of steel rebar that was recovered from schools that had collapsed during the horrific earthquake in Sichan Province in China in 2008. More than 90,000 people were killed including a huge number of children who were in school at the time. The mangled rebar was straightened with great effort and assembled as Ai's response to the refusal of the government to acknowledge the victims. This piece was accompanied by an incredible film showing the fallen schools and towns and the labour put into straightening the rebar.
On the wall behind the piece are the names and birth dates of more than 5,000 of the children who were killed in the quake. Weiwei was horrified by the shoddy construction that had caused the schools to collapse and the governments inaction, so he formed a Citizens' Investigation group that has been going out into the province and collecting names of the dead from the families that survived. This work continues.
