I found myself in the Annex on Bloor Street yesterday, meeting Bill Byres for lunch. As we walked by Lee’s Palace, I snapped a picture for those of you who may not know what I was talking about in an earlier post. Al Runt is one of the artists in the Flying Pony Christmas Group Show, where you can buy small originals by Mr Runt for as little as $26.

Al Runt gets my respect for his artistic endurance. He has been tattooing Toronto with his energetic, colourful designs for decades. The style has remained remarkably consistent over the years. It reminds me of a deranged Dr. Seuss mixed with a splash of Matt Groening (in his Life in Hell days) and a bit of Robert Crumb. Runt’s first covering of Lee’s facade faded over the years, so he was commissioned to do a new one, as you see it here.

A tip of the fedora goes to Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick, for her brilliant coining of the word “fucco”. It names the fake stucco used to tart up slapped-together condos, renos and McMansions.

You may look, but you are too late to try. The Best Apple Pie on Earth was discovered in Windsor ON, rushed to Toronto and judged by me. The award goes to Angela Stipic, along with my gratitude. Thanks too, to Danica, for the speedy delivery. Freshness is all-important in these matters.

Signed in pencil 164/180 RAVEN CREATING THE GREAT FLOOD Floyd Joseph “94” Tyee. Serigraph on paper
Among the works of her own that Helen Andersen had stored were a few examples of works by other artists she admired. This beautifully crafted and realized Raven design by Floyd Joseph is one of them. See the frog and lobster shapes and the water motif, coming into being? Joseph’s work belongs to the great tradition of West Coast aboriginal art but he extends it, creating original icons, images and colour schemes.

Is it a selfie if you ask someone else to take a shot with your camera? I guess. Or maybe it’s an elfie, if you’re with the Jolly Old Elf himself.
Anyway, I am completely upstaged by the performer below (bottom right). She entertained the crowd with flair and confidence using all the moves to really sell her song. The audience gave her a big round of applause.

There was a chance to meet the artists today, at the recently mounted Christmas Group Show . I have seen and enjoyed David Irvine’s clever, amusing work before at the gallery-café, but today I saw pieces that opened my eyes to his considerable skill with a brush, too. That’s Mr Irvine showing me one of his pieces, Bed and Breakfast, featuring a familiar looking Nosferatu vampire. We laughed and agreed that Art is very serious.

Flying Pony proprietor Andrew Horne is a very capable artist himself and has pieces of his own in the show (Not to mention the Hand of Creation sign he also painted. I added the zot.) Andrew does a lot with font imagery in this exhibit. He’s very good at it and has training in the old time sign painting craft, which he bends to artistic use. His iconic neon Flying Pony is representative of another facet of his work which often derives from ephemeral photos  re-rendered, large-scale and hand-drawn, in blazing, saturated colours.
I was lucky to meet another artist in the crowd, also showing two pieces this month. That’s Linda Deluca, inset. I got to tell her how much I liked her Red Cactus collage, for its visual texture, colour, pattern and composition.

… and it had some prize winners, too. Judges awarded 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes for best baked goods. The neighbourhood association won sales and revenues for local spruce-ups and the event was a good opportunity for Beach Hillers to meet and chat.
I nearly missed getting any photos. A dead camera battery charged up just in time to grab a few shots before the event ended.

That’s Peter, letting me pose on his Black Bike after his return from a 2-year, round-the-world trip … another great story. But this one in the Globe and Mail tells of Peter’s association with recently deceased publicist Mary Jolliffe and the defection of Russian ballet star Michael Baryshnikov, in Toronto, 1974. I think you’ll enjoy reading it.
Peter has made a remarkable life for himself and, among many other things, sold me my first Macintosh computer out the the Mac Store he founded on Queen Street East. His interests are many, his enthusiasm for life infectious and his energy, seemingly boundless. A character with character, he is loyal to friends and colleagues. He wrote an email to his “list” in tribute to Mary Jolliffe, calling our attention to the newspaper story.

This striking image was among the finds when Helen Andersen’s missing pictures were discovered in 2013. Although it is only a rough study on cheap paper, I want to frame it and get it up on our walls. I think you’ll agree that it has a lot of force and character. Helen was never interested in prettiness. Instead, she dug in after more interesting qualities of volume and expression. Sometimes she hit the ball over the fence and for me, this is a case in point.
I have been considering this work and a number of others, for a curated collection of works aimed at defining key characteristics of Helen’s style. She tried many different approaches to art in her career, but kept returning to human figures rendered in her quirky, visceral way. I hope to narrow the number of pictures and focus on the most distinctive ones.
When I have the collection online, I’ll announce it here.

The image above arrived a couple of days after I let this domain name expire. It invited me to renew the name and offered links advertising similarly named sites. Nothing goes to waste in the rapacious world of internet commerce.
I had used the URL for a few years to post notes and reminders to myself about solutions I had found to problems with Macs and peripheral gadgets. Why not share them with other sufferers?
Some people did find the site and used it, particularly to keep old equipment going, but I lost interest and decided to let it go.