Whether it's stitched into our sneakers, bombarding us via enormous billboards, or providing the elegant medium for our favourite author's new novel, type -- and the hard work done by typographers -- can be seen just about everywhere, particularly in urban environments. Despite its ubiquity, however, typography is an art form routinely taken for granted (or simply overlooked) in our day to day hustle.
blogTO reader @casiestewart spotted this snow art poetry (or "snoetry"?) this morning, near the foot of Spadina. "The most beautiful thing to wake up to!" she Tweets. Now if only we could figure out who to thank for this cute morning surprise... is it the snoetry of @greg_a_elliott?
View it larger.
Since the launch of Google's Street View, hoards of people have marveled at the intriguing, wacky and even beautiful scenes captured by the city-mapping camera. And yet, for the most part, continued interest in the feature seems confined to bouts of procrastination and/or the gathering of travel information (both local and otherwise).
While there's little doubt that there are worse ways one could engage in both the former and latter, recently I've noticed another way that these virtual cities are being put to use. More and more artists are undertaking projects that rely heavily on Street View.
Not to be confused with the plethora of articles and websites devoted to sharing strange or humorous incidents captured by the now highly recognizable camera-car, these projects go beyond the comic and the bizarre in the hopes of shedding light on the world at large and the complicated role that Google's putatively benevolent information gathering plays in our understanding of it.
Out for a walk with my sweetie today, we stumbled upon what's left of this street art Valentine's Day message, painted on the road at the intersection of Lowther Avenue and Bedford Rd in The Annex.
Click the image to see it larger.
I slept with Adam Giambrone.
Well, I didn't really sleep with Adam Giambrone. But what if I did? That's the question on a lot of people's minds these days, after seeing buttons with this message worn on lapels of people around Toronto.
Since it was revealed that Giambrone had relationships with multiple partners, wearing this button might level the playing field, as it were. The buttons are the brainchild of Sonya Popovich, a production coordinator for a graphic design studio in Toronto.
"I had an outside designer do it, whom I paid for the design," says Popovich. "She gave me five options and I chose one. I had 500 made. They cost me $230 to produce. But I'm giving them away for free."
Valentine's Day gift ideas were plentiful at The Erotic Arts and Crafts Fair, which featured indie sex art, zines, toys, an erotic bake sale and other titillating tidbits at the Gladstone Hotel yesterday.
I arrive the Gladstone around 4:30 p.m. and dozens of inventive vendors are crammed into small booth-like spots in the hallways, some sharing an entire room in the artist's space on the second floor, while music blares from a makeshift DJ booth. Strangers brush by each other to get a closer look at the varied wares on display.
As mid-February nears, my artistic engagement has slowly crept back up to full swing after a dreary January. And so too, it would seem, has the city's. Coming off a month in which a number of galleries took a break from new programming, there's been a flurry of activity of late.
In this edition:
Late Night in the Bedroom continues to gain momentum. Since the last episode, Toronto's arts talk show has been plugged on the CBC and written about by The Star. And recently at Show & Tell Gallery, an enthusiastic live audience packed the space to watch the filming of episode #7. This episode, embedded above, features Jay and Matt from the online comedy series Nirvana the Band and Show, the artist collective Team Macho and a live musical performance by Everything All The Time.
As a sponsor of the show we'll continue to post episodes here whenever a new one comes out.
The Lower Ossington Theatre is in the midst of a theatrical face lift that will hopefully transform it into a much-needed arts hub. It may not be new (it's been a performing arts space for four years, and before that, a dance studio), but it's primed to set the stage for a renewal of the dramatic arts on Ossington.
When I think of charity event fundraising, I'm reminded of those generic e-mails I receive from my friends as they sign-up for events and proceed to spam their contact lists looking for donations. With that in mind, I was pretty impressed when I a friend told me about Eamonn O'Connell and Dilan Dissanayake's fundraising efforts.
These two determined riders organized Stand Up for the Cure - a stand up comedy night at Clinton's to help garner sponsorship for their Ride to Conquer Cancer. Both riders will be attempting to complete the new 200 mile route (not to be confused with the existing 200km one) taking them from Toronto to Niagara Falls, all the while raising funds for the Campbell Family Institute at the Princess Margaret Hospital.
