teabowl

Make your own at PhotoFunia.

The new Art Gallery of Ontario, recently re-opened with new architecture by Frank Gehry, is lovely inside. Granted, it looks like a giant shiny slug from the outside (especially on a rainy day), but the same tube-like structure forms a great, warm space on the inside, a sort of walkway that spans the street side of the second floor of the museum. I knew I wasn’t supposed to take pictures, but couldn’t resist (it’s not like I was taking snaps of famous paintings!) until a burly security officer told me to stop.

Generally, going to the AGO was a good experience, well worth seeing. It struck me that right now, the museum is showing mainly itself – its new face and design: the actual subject matter on display seemed relatively minor, a fun hodgepodge of painting, sculpture, some contemporary installations and a collection of model ships (that’s how far we got, at least).

Even so, definitely too much for an afternoon, so a return visit is called for this coming weekend.

The Don Valley Brick Works consists of 16 heritage buildings and an adjacent 16-hectaire public park that includes the Weston Quarry Garden, wetlands, hiking trails, and wildflower meadows. From 1889 to 1984, the site was one of Canada’s pre-eminent brickyards. The Don Valley Pressed Brick Works Company produced a wide variety of bricks and kiln-fired clay products that built much of Toronto’s heritage buildings and many of Canada’s national landmarks including Winnipeg’s T. Eaton Building, Toronto’s Massey Hall and Casa Loma, Montreal’s Acadia Apartments and Moncton’s T. Eaton Building. (From: http://www.evergreen.ca/rethinkspace/)

Pictures from a weekend outing. I had to shoot around all the Japanese tourists and their tripods. Clearly, it’s a hot tip for tourists.

I built a Chinese Buddhist temple out of Lego yesterday. It’s not based on an actual temple and it’s pretty free-form. It’s fun to see what you can make out of a limited assortment of bricks… I’m particularly fond of the praying minifig in front of it. I turned his legs around so that he could ‘kneel.’

What a beautiful bowl from Peru. Creative Commons licensed photo by Dozenist.

Okay, these aren’t really graffiti. They’re mural copies of famous Group of Seven artworks in downtown Huntsville, Ontario.

Here’s some graffiti on a construction wall in Richmond Hill:

(Thanks for the quick drive-by shooting, Jen :)

So it’s become a bit of a thing – I spent another hour or two today exploring wall art around the Annex and Dupont/Bathurst. Here’s a great Halloween mural:

Right next to it is an upstairs piece that was a little more difficult to capture:

Finally, here’s one from the Dupont & Bathurst area (right on the railway line):

Seen behind Stevenson Art Supplies in Scarborough, here’s some great graffiti. I don’t know if Stevenson’s is complicit in this or not, but since only the rear of the warehouse has been decorated I think it’s just a nice, unprotected, secluded location for urban art.

It’s at Warden & Ellesmere, just south of Ellesmere, if you want to go see for yourself.

Entire (small) collection of snaps on my Flickr.

I’ve been visiting beautiful Frankfurt, Germany over Christmas. Well, I’ve been staying with my relatives in Offenbach, which is 20 minutes to Frankfurt by transit. Been having a great time… an excellent way to take a break, great shopping and great culture. I went to see two exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle – one about the discovery of abstract painting (Turner, Hugo, Moreau) and another entitled ‘Art Machines Machine Art.’

Here are two more random pictures from Frankfurt: