Celebration of the arts

 

Location: East wall of 290 Adelaide Street West

Date photo taken: 5 February 2022

On a big blank wall next to a parking lot at John and Adelaide is this gorgeous tribute to arts and culture. It's by Alexander Bacon, a Canadian graffiti artist, and was created as a Partnership Project through StART in 2019. If you're curious, the portraits he has incorporated are of real people, whom he credits in his Instagram feed as @que_rock_, @anniecwh and @allblckerthing.

Thing's End

 

Location: John Street, north of King

Date photo taken: 20 June 2019

This sinuous blue sculpture sitting outside the doors of the Festival Tower on John Street was installed in 2012 and is the work of Canadian artist James Carl. If you think it looks like a rubber band, you're spot on. Carl seems fascinated by the subject matter. For an earlier exhibition at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, he created a mass of more life-sized elastics out of polymer clay, and since this work has created at least three more large scale installations - a red one and a yellow one for another tower in Calgary, and a massive version installed in 2018 at the Airport Industrial Complex in Wuhan, China.