Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
His name is Raymond Joseph Robichaud and he was born near St. John NB to a French Canadian mother and Irish/Scottish father, so he is a self-described mongrel. He asked if I could spare some change; he needed money for art supplies. Seriously, he said.
I didn’t expect to find graffiti in Singapore. Given the harsh penalties, I assumed there was enough of a deterrent to keep people from spray painting shit on walls. I was wrong. But most of it is simple tagging. I scratch my head and wonder of the artists: you risked a caning for that?
I eat my lunch at noon and my supper at six. I go to bed at eleven so I can have a good night’s sleep. I like the regularity. It never occurs to me that I could disrupt this well laid pattern by snipping up a novel and pasting bits of it onto carefully selected surfaces. It might make me late for lunch.
At a time when the weather should be cold and dull, a streak of bright warm weather comes as a boon to street photographers. People are out being people, doing all the varied things that people do, maybe with more gusto (desperation?) because they know it can’t last.
An earlier post on graffiti under the St. Clair St. bridge is now officially an archival document. The original subject matter no longer exists, so the only record of it is in photographs like mine. The city’s anti-graffiti people have grey-washed the concrete footings on the east side of the St. Clair St. Bridge.
Before there were graffiti artists, there were civil engineers. At least that’s a theory of mine. For years now, Toronto has been in the grips of a construction boom and, before anybody breaks ground, teams of surveyors and engineers spray paint lines all over the pavement. The streets become canvasses for a kind of urban development graffiti.
Thunder Bay has a vibe that reminds me of Victoria. There are a lot of young people, especially the sort of young people who don’t hang out at Conservative Party conventions. They live counter cultural values, buy local, vote Green. And express themselves accordingly …
I didn’t have time to sniff out really good examples of street art when I was visiting Manhattan. I suspect that if I were a tourist visiting Toronto, I’d have the same problem in reverse. I wouldn’t know where to look. Nevertheless, I saw what I saw and share it here:
Sunday night, after everyone had finished in the tunnel by the Glen St. exit from the Sherbourne subway station, I went back with my tripod and a wide lens to document the results. Here are some samples of the #graffiti from wallnoize7.
On Saturday morning, it’s as if the graffiti army showed up: kids (am I showing my age?) lined up on either side of the tunnel, traffic cones at either end of the tunnel, ladders, boxes of spraypaint, and a guy with a clipboard doling out paint and telling people where to go.
I saw Spudbomb doing his thing under the Bloor West Go Rail overpass. I don’t know if Spudbomb is a person or a collective. Or an aspiration. Or a poltergeist.
In August, I posted photos from under the Glen St. Bridge which passes over Toronto’s Beltline Trail and Yellow Creek. But it’s worth posting new photos of the same locale. What with all the trees losing their leaves, and the lower angle of incidence for morning light, and snowfall acting as a natural reflector, things…
Victoria has had a decent graffiti scene (probably because of the climate). But my impression is that the city has been trying to sanitize its appearance. Even so, there are still some places where you can find interesting street art.
Yesterday, while I was walking under the St. Clair Street Bridge (aka The Vale of Avoca), I saw this guy finishing up a “Wave” on one of the concrete supports. He tagged it MXC.
I wonder if it’s okay to shoot graffiti. The reason for my concern is that if I shoot graffiti I’ll be appropriating the creative expression of someone else. All the originality and work is theirs. I simply point my camera and click a button.