Exploring Queen West

The area of Zone C spanned the downtown in all directions! Spreading as far north as College Street, west to Dufferin, then south a little past King Street and East until Spadina.

A great feature of Zone C, as well as other districts was that the TTC had Shuttle Bus services running on each of the major streets, allowing exhibitors to travel between exhibits and to each of the different Zones throughout the city. In my case, much of this area was covered by foot, simply because many exhibits and independent art galleries were clustered together on Queen West trailing into Liberty Village.

This particular Zone was one of my favourites, not because it was sponsored by Heineken - my favourite Dutch beer, but because it was a raw and fascinating experience of art at its finest!

This compilation of images (bottom right) was taken from 3 different locations on Queen West, where each experience represents an aspect of the true Art Crawl experience:

Left: Wall Mural at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art)
Center: Coloured light mural at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health (CAMH)
Right: Independent piece at Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts

At the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, a large wall mural attracted people to stop and take pictures of the sight. From afar, the wall appeared to resemble an "Alice in Wonderland" as the mural conveyed busyness and movement and so the silhouette elements could each tell a story from this piece.

The center image showed how light could transform a plain-looking building in the day to an art piece at night. From my own observation, the use of light was appropriate for C.A.M.H as it represents the diversity behind its walls and how no two colours or individuals are the same.

The third image is a conventional piece, unlike the latter which represent new and innovative methods of art. What I liked about this piece was that it was not a traditional oil painting similar to ones in European museums. However, this piece in my opinion, was a form of contemporary oil works like the ones I remember seeing in Montréal this summer.

As we journeyed Queen Street West at 5 am that morning, we came across the Beatrice Lillie Health Centre at 1115 Queen West. Plastered from top to bottom in a vibrant pink floral theme, the building's exterior resembled a super sized Barbie doll house.

Created by Janet Morton, this installation, titled Femmebomb, was a blinding eyesore of electric pink and flowers. No matter how much you tried, you couldn't help but notice it. Paradoxically, the interior was so dark, that in many ways, the first thing that came to mind was... where am I ? followed by an urging wish to get out A.S.A.P, even if it meant seeing the super bright pinkness again.

The ever posh and popular Drake Hotel was bursting in colour. The lower windows were illuminated with a series of horizontal fluorescent tube lights that psychedelically changed colour simultaneously with the rotating spectrum on the rest of the exterior. Inside, you could tell from looking at the long lineup that the place was packed and no one was getting in that night! Nonetheless, it was still a captivating sight to see such vibrant colour right before your eyes!

As you can see, Queen Street West was filled with so many artistic goodies, that at times it became hard to choose which one to see first, or whether to check out other parts of Zone C.
We did check out Spadina, but to our surprise, not much was happening where we were, (south of College,) other than a whole slew of Asian restaurants open late, feeding the crawlers of the night into the wee hours of the morning.

After waiting 10 minutes in line, Jeff and I went into the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art where we observed a film featuring chaotic wild animals destroying the inside of a home.
To me, I could only ask myself, "What kind of people would allow animals in their house to purposefully destroy the place?" It makes you wonder if there's a reality out there beyond the art piece itself, and if people like that actually do exist.

Not knowing whether to make sense of it or not, we proceeded to a sculpture in the Museum that was made with potato chips and dip. In some ways, it looked like a mountain of solidified dip with chips stacked atop as the trees. In other ways, the sculpture resembled a mohawk. Regardless, the sight of chips and dip erupted an uncontrollable urge to want to eat the exhibit, yet at the same time, it was an interesting piece of art.


Right: Chip and Dip Contemporary Art Sculpture