Canadian winter

I captured this one morning after a big snowfall. I guess the plow sprayed the side of the building as it went thrashing down Queen Street. Interesting how the snow mimicked the graffiti. I thought it was quite beautiful with the colours and the patterns mixing so well. Feels very Canadian.

Style Wars

If you have the time, watch this documentary on New York graffiti circa 1983 (you can watch it for free on google video). It delves into the old argument of art vs. vandalism — a very fitting topic for this blog. It's particularly interesting to hear the 'writers' and 'bombers' talk about lettering style and composition and it's pretty amazing to see where these styles originated from and by whom. You can see these styles reflected, copied and often mutilated in many contemporary "graffiti style" typefaces.

The Style Wars website is also very beautiful.

Portugal Village

A few shots around the corner from Dundas and Montrose:

If you say so

I really like this graffiti on this building. The curvature of the graffiti suggests femininity. Most tags have very sharp, angry lines (presumably done by angst-ridden teen boys), but this one has some smoothness that suggests a lot of sass. I like how it stands alone in the rubble of a normally masculine building.


(photo taken by me, June 2007. It was the side of old Ritchie's building on King East half-way through demolition)