Month: October 2013

How perfectly this new building (a bar?) expresses the awarding of a 20-year, exclusive lease to a businessman with connections. How did this the gold mine of a location… the only thing like it, right by the beach, with oceans of parking and crowds of customers… fall into the hands of one family without ever going to public tender? Nobody seems sure, but it was a big factor in the downfall of our local councillor, who helped pull it off.

So what can be said about the building and the story behind it? I don’t know but sure it ain’t pretty.

Hawk-eyed Danica looked up from her handlebars and spotted a peculiar-looking helicopter hovering above the trees. I thought it was a full size machine, but quite far away. Danica got it right.

It was a model drone helicopter, maybe 2 feet wide, six propellors and steady as a rock. The guy flying it said it did have a camera. His control over the relatively quiet, battery-powered machine was very precise. I’ve seen many dog walkers with less control over their little dogs. Mr. Chopper literally walked his helicopter home, crossing a street and navigating between parked cars.

The blog budget could stand the 25¢ price of admission, so I checked out the relatively new self-cleaning public toilet down at Woodbine Beach. Looks pretty spiffy and a friendly female voice breaks into the soothing soundtrack…not exactly music, but a soothing, synthetic background sound.
“Welcome,” the voice said. “This toilet facility has been completely sanitized for your visit. You have a maximum time of 20 minutes. You will be given plenty of notice before your time is up”. (or words to that effect)

As you see, it does look pretty sterile in there. I didn’t photograph the fold-down changing table but there was one. I suppose when I left, the magic cleaning process activated itself. Rather wasteful of me… I didn’t do anything in there but snap photos.

For years now, I have walked past a house at the foot of our hill where a small sign begged “Free Hamid”. I was moved enough to look up more online and discovered that my neighbour Hamid Ghassemi-Shall was in an Iranian prison and his wife was trying to get him out.
Today’s local paper headlined her success, which is great, but it left me feeling a little ashamed. Why had I not knocked on the door and offered some neighbourly support or sympathy in all those 5 years? I didn’t know the guy. Maybe that’s why, but I DID know that the Iranians had murdered Canadian Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi while they had her in prison. I knew who the bad guys were.

A U.S. and Canadian politician dress up in traditional Balinese garb supplied by hosts of the 2013 APEC conference.
I don’t know if the costumes were colour-coded in any way. Other attendees wore blue or green shirts. Putin, who often prefers to do his photo-ops topless, wore green.
I couldn’t resist… my contribution is after the “Read More”.
The suggestion box is open.

There were more than a million of us out there again this year, snapping photos, making movies with phones and interpreting the installations. Even the “Parade” of events and installations along University Avenue depended on the crowd for movement… the art stood still and the people shuffled by. The audience was creating stuff, just as surely as the artists have.

Artists today seem to embrace the democratization of creativity made possible by technology. Many of the works depended on interactivity with audiences. Meaning, too, is a collaborative thing… I overheard some quite thoughtful and original comments from passersby.
In some ways, it’s a silly way to see art. At some popular venues, you see more backs of heads than anything else. Crowd control is kind of hit or miss, with unwitting line jumpers entering by exits while volunteers try to hold them off. Artists’statements abound, printed on signs, but who wants to spend the evening reading signs? Better to shoot a “selfie” with something colourful in the background… something for Facebook, maybe.
Nuit Blanche is an art event, a circus, a happening, an all-nighter (not us!), a sound and light show, a family outing, a traffic jam, a revenue generator and a public cost. Most people seemed to be having a good time, although some overdid that, barfing on sidewalks and in the street car. One person was stabbed to death (not an artist,though).
This was the 8th Nuit Blanche for Toronto. I’m not sure how many more there might be, but I’m glad we got out for it.

Andrew Horne, himself an artist and proprietor of the Flying Pony Café at 1481 Gerrard St. E., invited us to drop in on Saturday afternoon. A well-attended reception showcased a new exhibition of paintings and serigraphs by Cuban Canadian artist Julio Ferrer.
The serigraphs (signed, limited edition, handmade silkscreen prints) are colourful, witty, light-hearted and very well crafted. They are also affordable. The prints sell for $400 each, tax included. Framed, they are $550.
Danica and Julio are standing in front of one of his paintings… the background derives from an Emily Carr painting that originally featured 3 totem poles. The poles are gone, replaced by bright Ikea banners. Talk about diversity… Cuban-Canadian-Swedish-International.
Other pieces make witty use of the famous wave motif in the iconic Japanese print by Hokusai. Castro, Che and McDonald’s iconography is there, too.
Pop in for good coffee and take a look.

Before we headed off to Nuit Blanche, we made another art stop on Gerrard, in Little India or the South Asian Bazaar or whatever we’re calling it these days. The Gerrard Art Space (GAS) was holding an opening for a show of works by printmakers Lynda Hattin, Robert Quance, Liane Odze-Silver, Linda DeLuca, Emily Pennacchio and Noreen Mallory. It’s on until the 20th.
Styles and techniques are quite varied, so there’s probably something you’d particularly like. The bold expressiveness of Odze-Silver’s woodblock prints appealed to me. Mallory’s prints caught Danica’s attention and we both took an interest in a textile piece called The Healing Blanket by Linda Hattin.
I like what’s happening along this little strip of Gerrard. GAS offers arts a space to show work and there are classes and open life drawing sessions available, too.

To mark the 200th anniverary of the death of Tecumseh (today… October 5th), I read an informative piece by Allan Gregg, published in HuffPo Canada.
I am taking the liberty of reproducing his second-to-last paragraph here.

Last year, when I was touting the virtues of the TTC Nuit Blanche Pass (message still holds), I reversed the card’s black background with Photoshop and said I thought the pass should be BLANCHE. This year, when I picked up our pass… ta dah! There’s even a Moon motif on this year’s pass, like the background I picked last year.
This year my wish is for no rain!