Left Foot, Right Foot: Urban Exploring - Bloor West Village Graffiti

I'm a huge fan of street art. Perhaps it's because I grew up in very rural areas where graffiti consisted of boring "Joanie *hearts* Chachi" or "Class of '82" crudely scrawled in spray paint on bridges and granite outcroppings next to the highway. Maybe it's because much of my childhood television exposure romanticized the gritty urban settings that seemed slightly dangerous and hip, so foreign and exotic to the quiet world I inhabited. The elaborate paint jobs in the backdrops helped to define in my mind what a city should be.

I love a good museum and spend a lot of time in them. But while many hate it and decry it, to me graffiti is the art of the people. You don't need to pay admission to see it. It doesn't have little white placards identifying the artist and medium or dictating what you should think or take away from the piece. It's a little mysterious; unless you are really in the know, the artist is anonymous, the intentions behind their art sometimes never really explained. There's no real or implied rule to speak in hushed tones. It reflects the zeitgeist of the world that we live in; portrays a little bit of who we are. It reads between the lines of cultural norms and news of the day and sometimes portrays uncomfortable truths. It relays information in times of repression. It often brightens the drab world we live in and makes our home just a little more unique and interesting.

Certainly there is stuff out there that is just unnecessary. In my personal view, tagging is pretty useless, it really doesn't say anything meaningful or do much to really contribute to the world in general. But it's obviously it's own culture and reflects meaning to someone, otherwise no one would waste the time generating it. If anything, it satisfies the primal urge to leave some reminder of our presence, to reflect that for some fleeting moment in time we were here.

The desire to leave your mark on the world is as old as we have been capable of communicating through word and art. And archeology has shown that it lasts. History books are written from it and while we may sometimes have the "official" history from dry bureaucratic records and propaganda of the leaders of the time, it is the graffiti that often reflects what the people were really thinking of their leaders and issues of their time. Scrawling a bison in pigments on a cave wall, etching "Tiberius was here" outside a Roman forum, spray painting stencils of business men and rats are all a way of taking a snapshot of who we are, reflecting our world as we know it and as we see it. It is a fluid art form. It is painted over, replaced, lost when structures are torn down or renovated.

Toronto, like any urban area has pockets that seem to attract rich activity. The following is a picture blog of graffiti that should be familiar to anyone who takes the Bloor Subway line past Keele towards Islington. For a short stretch the Subway goes above ground and runs along an alleyway behind Bloor St. These pictures were taken in the fall of 2009 and reflect the alleyway as it existed at that time. Sadly some of these have now been lost as one building complex has been torn down to make way for condo development. The bulk of it can be found between Indian Road and Dorval Road, although some of it extends east past Dorval Road. These pictures run in order from east to west. If anyone has information on the artists or backgrounds of these pictures I would love the feedback.

This is haunting. I would love to know who it portrays.

This is found behind the Toronto Hockey Repair shop.

Is this intended to be a self-portrait? I love the personality of this picture.