HEY APATHY! Alterantive Comics at P.S. Kemsington
Street Art Stories 2006
continued from ALTERNATIVE COMICS Street Art Chronology 2005-06 part 4 As the summer picked up so did the heat., in every sense of the word. The temperature rose as did the crowds and once more my performances were proving successful. I had expanded, uncontested to a full 10x14 foot display featuring a complete line of prints, large murals, and t-shirts when simultaneous success brought forth enemies both new and old. While I successfully exhibited the works at the T.O.A.E. and was invited to take part in a group show in one of Toronto’s best galleries, at the same time the celebrations caused me more by-law hardships while working on the street.
By the summer of 2006 I had developed numerous and practiced techniques for my live painting performances. I had stop detailing the images with bamboo and focussed entirely one brushes using the wooden handle end instead of the pen. 4 x 6 foot Monsters and spiralling metropolis spewed across the paper in a matters of minutes. The images involved several characters from the 2005 ink drawings including the Superhero, the Samurai, the Machinehead and the Evil eye. I worked out on Queen Street on a daily basis while performing on the weekends and at several P.S. Kensington Car Free street festivals . Numerous midnight missions were also made landing graffiti style cartoon decapitations all over the city.
Live Painting at the T.O.A.E.
The street drawings were starting to gain recognition and were successfully shown at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. The weather remained cordial throughout the entire weekend and the open air festival proved unbelievable busy. On the first day I painted a large set of character faces which I proceeded to cut and frame for the Saturday sales. This was a process I had repeated almost daily while exhibiting the work on Queen West. At first I would make ten or twenty of these scribbled monsters and they would last for a week but by 2006 I was making at least that many each day. Eventually it got to the point were I would set out a 4 x 6 foot scroll and draw 50-60 characters in a rough grid as a performance and hope the supplies lasted. Fortunately or otherwise the character performance at the T.O.A.E. was the last batch of small hand drawn artworks I ever made. I replaced my 8.5 x 11 “ selections with digital prints after the exhibition.
4 x 6 ft. Character Performance and Selection of Prints
I talked to adults and children and people from all over the world. I even met people who spoke only other languages as the show is a huge attraction for tourists and collectors alike.One of the most impressive encounters I had at the outdoor exhibition was my introduction to the curator of the Edward day gallery, Kelly McCrey. The Edward Day gallery is one of the most highly respected of fall the Torontonian establishments. Kelley invited me to take part in a group exhibition and I was proud to accept his incredible offer. The HEY APATHY! Street drawings were reaching new heights both technically, professionally and most importantly in terms of interactions.
Having travelled many drawings since my introverted studio days I really started taking to engaging the crowds. Every drawing had a story and I was talking to more people and drawing bigger crowds. Of course, like before, the attention attracted grievances . A neighbouring and fully licensed jewellery vendor took offence to my success and started perpetual reports of my “inappropriate” activities to my old friends the by-law enforcers. At first the by-law officers let me pass with my buskers license but the jeweller persisted. He even made false reports of illicit behaviour resulting in visitations and fruitless searches by the actual police. Eventual the by-law officers, after numerous complaints from the vendor, told me that my license was not fully legit. They got me on a technicality which states that the busker cannot actually put articles on the city walk ways. After several repeat encounters, in which I was always sent off of the streets, one of the by-law officers told me that he found out more about the licenses and that there was one I could get. I followed his instructions immediately and found myself fully licensed and back on the street.
I lost almost two weeks of the summer battling with the vendor’s complaints and despite my full license I moved a safe distance away from that jeweller. It occurred to me that all the attention, my music and madness may have been quite problematic to his business so I tried not to hold any lingering hatred for the man. However I soon realized that the bout was indeed personal as the angered jeweller was quickly horded by drunken street people and musicians who occupied my vacated spot near the vendor for the better part of the following two years. Amazingly no matter how loud, how drunk, or how large their group expanded, I never saw the jeweller file another complaint?
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