Day: October 13, 2019

August 26, 2019

Monday was my last full day in Toronto (and in Canada).  Here are some of the things I saw throughout the morning.  My afternoon venue took a while to get to and will appear in a separate post.

This is the Frank Gehry-designed façade on the front of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).  I didn’t know until I researched this post that Mr. Gehry is a native of Toronto.

The building is so large (and faces a narrow city street) that it was difficult to get it all in one photo.

I would have missed this next venue if my Airbnb hostess hadn’t made me aware of it.  It is located right behind the AGO.  This is Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University:

While much of the school is located inside a “normal” building, part of it is suspended on stilts, several stories in the air!

Admittance to the upper floors appears to be achieved by an escalator and perhaps stairs and/or elevators in the main street-level building.

And this being an art school and all, we may have found the artists responsible for some of the artwork in Graffiti Alley!  These images were found outside next to the stairs and handicap-access ramp:

I went back up to the front of the AGO building and saw this clever way to secure one’s bicycle without blocking the sidewalk:

This piece of art was located outside, across the street from AGO.  While the first photo shows what appears to be a flat painting of a man’s face, there is more to it than that.

The side you see above is actually three-dimensional.  It is concave, as it curves in from the sides of the painting:

The opposite side of the painting shows a similar image but is convex, in that it protrudes outward from the flat surface of the border.

After I took those photos I hopped back on a bus to head further north.  There was a restaurant where I wanted to eat lunch and I then wanted to revisit the art museum I had seen Sunday evening.

This was not the restaurant where I ate but I was amused by their signage.  Somehow I think if this is going to be your tagline….

…. then you may want to rethink the name of your restaurant….

Here is another look at the exterior of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

I didn’t go inside any of the museums in Toronto except to inquire about the availability of photos at the shoe museum (see previous post).  Next year when I return to eastern Canada I will budget days to visit many of the museums along my route, regardless of the weather.

 

 

August 25, 2019

When I was in northern Toronto Sunday evening I walked past this museum and noticed an impressive display in their windows.  I tried taking my own photos, both Sunday evening and again on Monday but there are two reasons why they are not blogworthy – 1) since they were taken during the day the reflection in the windows of what was behind me is too much of a distraction, and 2) what I was seeing was best viewed from a distance.  I don’t want the creativity behind the display to go unmentioned, though, so I have downloaded a few photos I found online and will post two of my own at the end.

The display I am talking about, called “In Full Bloom,” was created back in 2017 to help celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.  Students from the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University put together a display of the official flowers of Canada’s various provinces and territories.  This display consists of over 2,000 shoes created on a 3-D printer in various colors.  When viewed from a distance the flower images are quite impressive.  The “flowers” are arranged left-to-right based on the location of each province or territory (west-to-east) in the country.

(Photo credit: twitter.com)

(Photo credit: Remi Carreiro)

(Photo credit: museumnotes.blogspot.com)

The photo above is a prime example of the reflection in the upper right corner of the window distracting from the subject of the photo.

(Photo credit: occasionaltoronto.blogspot.com)

The photo above is the first closeup which clearly shoes the solid-colored shoes which are used to create the image of a flower when viewed from a distance.

(Photo credit: travelwithclem.com)

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The two photos below were taken by me Sunday evening around 7pm.

When I went back to the museum Monday I went inside to ask if professional photos (postcards, perhaps) were available but was told they were not.

 

August 25, 2019

Here are some examples of various murals, graffiti and a sculpture I saw while visiting various parts of Toronto on Sunday:

I saw this sculpture on the side of a building as I was riding the street car through the west side of town.  I made note of the location and got off on the return trip so I could get a photo.

I had also seen a cool mural so I got off the streetcar again so I could get a photo.  I had to take the shot on an angle to get it all in (without the clutter of cars parked in front of it).

This was on an apartment building on a side street (perhaps where the artist lives?).

Those were all taken in the morning.  Let me jump ahead to my trip home at the end of the day and show this mural which is on the side of a building about 4 blocks from where my Airbnb was located.

The reason I wanted to jump ahead in time with the photo above is that all the others photos in the remainder of this post were found in “Graffiti Alley,” a 3-block alley on the west side of town just a short distance from the main east-west street.  Yes, there really is such a place:

These next two go together.  Because I was literally in an alley I couldn’t get far enough back to get the entire theme (a lobster DJ) in one shot, and shooting it in an angle didn’t do it justice.