These are a few of the awesome murals that were painted on boarded up shops along Commercial Drive, Gastown, Granville, and Robson Streets in April and early May. I’m so grateful to all the artists, the Vancouver Mural Festival, along with various neighbourhood business associations for this initiative. It brought life and positive energy to empty streets.
I am ridiculously behind on writing about my visit to Berlin. There is so much to write about that I need to break it down into different subjects so it doesn’t become an extremently long blog post.
This one is of course about some of the street art I have seen around the streets of Berlin. I encounter more art on the streets in the East side neighbourhoods than where we are staying now in Wedding.
When we returned from Rotterdam a few weeks ago I discovered there is an app for the Berlin Mural Festival, which happened at the end of May shortly before we arrived. I was surprised to learn their festival was in its first year, but I guess plenty of murals have been produced without a driving force behind it.
The two crow stencils were located in the same area, and were a pleasant surprise to come across. We need crow street art in Vancouver. 😉
This is but a small taste of the many murals, stencils, paste-ups, and random bits of graffiti I’ve come across so far in my wanderings around the city.
Year two of Vancouver Mural Festival wrapped up this past weekend with the addition to the city of fifty plus new murals around town. Boris and I spent a bit of time on Saturday visiting the new mural alley that runs parallel to Main Street and is the location of most of the new work. Despite the lack of people in my photos there were huge crowds everywhere, and they mostly seemed to want photos of themselves in front of the art.
Check out the festival map to find locations of murals from 2016 and 2017. We were able to see everything on Saturday so I’ll definitely be wander Mount Pleasant again to see the ones I missed.
Over the last few years Seattle has been developing their local mural scene just like Vancouver has with our Mural Festival. I came across two new (to me) murals in Belltown and I really like the use of pattern, colour, layers, and the use of stencils.
There’s also a brand new section thats been added to the water side of Pike Place Market, which includes a series of public art pieces made by Clare Dohna. These are elaborate murals made with colourful ceramic tiles using imagery of local flora and fauna. This one features birds, but there were others with insects, and one with fish. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like these in North America because ceramic tile installation is not very common.
These three murals have got me thinking about what I would do if I had the opportunity to do one of my own. I’m not a painter, but it could happen.
It’s been three years since my previous visit to Toronto, and of course there are even more murals and pieces of street art tucked along side streets and laneways everywhere. Many pieces I saw previously in Kensington Market and along Queen Street West are still there, and there was plenty of new stuff as well.
This is a small selection of some of the murals I found in my travels around the city. The monochrome ones are really interesting.
I hope Vancouver achieves this level of art everywhere after a few more years of the Vancouver Mural Festival.
View all of my recent photos of Toronto street art on Flickr.
Murals on garage doors is a thing in Toronto and I am a fan. These were all taken in back laneways where most garages downtown in the city are located. I would love to see this trend make its way to Vancouver.
Kensington Market garage door murals:
Harbord Village garage door murals:
Each grouping from the two different neighbourhoods were taken in the same two laneways. I love the variety, and I wonder how the whole thing came about.
Boris and I were over on South Granville earlier this week in a rare moment between rain showers when the sun was out. I needed that break in the rain because the constant state of grey has been bringing me down (please do not read that as depressed). It was the perfect time to visit the kaleidoscopic mural on the side of Ian Tan Gallery painted by Milan Basic (photos here of the entire mural) and do a quick photo shoot.
The mural, the appearance of sunshine, and taking these photos of Boris and I, totally made the day better.
Oh Vancouver Mural Festival, how much do I love you? SO MUCH! Because of you the visual art scene in Vancouver has been made visible, and in the process our street art scene has levelled up about 500% in the few short weeks since all this mural painting has begun. These are just some of the 35+ new murals in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. Check out the map to find all of the locations.
The official launch of the festival happened this past Saturday, and I happily wandered the streets trying to take it all in. It was such a good vibe with so many people out to see the art. Boris and I ran into many friends and acquaintances, and every single person was excited and inspired by the festival.
Scott Sueme
We would be a very different city if more buildings looked like this brilliant abstract colour composition painted by Scott Sueme. He transformed an eye sore into something I now can’t take my eyes off of.
iHeart
Shannon Elliott
Tim Mack
Julia Iredale
Paige Bowman
Cody Lecoy
Ola Volo
Spencer Keeton Cunningham
Ilya Viryachev
Ola Volo & iHeart
Nomi Chi
I did not manage to see all the new murals on Saturday, but everything is supposed to be up for at least the next two years. With the success of the inaugural mural festival, I’m imagining what Vancouver could look like a few years from now when it has happened multiple times. It will be amazing!
The other evening I took took Boris to see the murals in progress at Maker Labs. The entire place is getting painted by a large group of artists collaborating in pairs on individual murals over different sections of the building. The project is part of the Vancouver Mural Festival, which kicked off this summer and will oversee the creation of 35 + new murals around East Vancouver. I think there were a total of seven in progress at the time of our visit, and these are four of them.
Work in progress by Alison Woodward and Graeme McCormack.
Work in progress by Alison Woodward and Graeme McCormack.
Painted by Mandy Tsung and Russell Alton
Work in progress by Nomadic Alternatives.
Work in progress by Nomadic Alternatives.
Work in progress by Nomadic Alternatives.
(I need to find out the artists painting this one)
The Maker Labs project will be finished on Friday, so this weekend will be an excellent time to drop by to see them. Visit the Vancouver Mural Festival website for more details about their event.
Boris and I also spent a few days in Whistler on our vacation last week. I haven’t been there in years, and it turned out to be a lovely place to wander the trails.
We went for a walk around Lost Lake one day, and then to check out Train Wreck trail the next. The wreck trail is an unofficial but well known trail that takes visitors to see a train wreck in the woods that has been there since the 1950s. The cars are spread across a kilometre and all of them are covered in layers of graffiti. Read more here about the history of the how the train came to rest in the forest.
Earlier on the same day we walked Train Wreck trail, I also paid my first visit to the lovely new Audain Art Museum that opened earlier this year in Whistler. The building itself is pretty incredible with elements of wood all over the outer surfaces, and surrounded by the remnants of the forest.
These are some of my favourite pieces on display at the museum, and below is a lovely long window in an upper gallery.
I enjoyed our time in Whistler, and I’m so glad the two of us finally had a bit of a vacation. We both really needed it.