Montreal

This fertility goddess graces this terrace for summer drinking and sipping coffee, naturally in winter it is void of people. The rich deep purple paisley accentuates the glow of motherhood, mind you she is glowing like some goddess but her stern face tells a different story. The door blends within the background and is inviting. I get a Latino influence in this mural, I can hear Santana strumming on a hot breezy night on a July with lantern lit dusk evenings and young love blossoming and overflowing in the streets where strangers meet.

There is gold in them hills, sooner or later I was going to hit a goldmine. To my surprise I hit pay dirt today. I actually found the muralist that inspired my quest to find the ultimate street museum. A whole building decorated in glorious rich colors and a story to go with the art and where the ideas flow from the imagination of Quebec artist Yannick Picard from Montmagny, a small town in the Province of Quebec. He has travelled all over the world as he explains the origins of his art. I would encourage anybody to hire him to do any building, his art is literally out of the world. I really envy his vision, a true piece of art in a depressed area where the mean streets claim many a youth.

"Those travels have been influencing my paintings. When traveling as well as in my daily life, I take hundreds of pictures that are a source of inspiration for the realization of my paintings. I like to capture the day to day life, banal situations and common object. Independently, those pictures are not really exciting, but once you put them together in a painting, you see the whole work of art in a different way. Some of my paintings could be seen as critics of the society or even as pictures of a world that unfortunately runs to its loss. By looking at my art, every spectator is free to make up his own idea." Read more>>

Incognito under a balcony our resident artist does his midnight creep. Like a guerrilla in the wild jungles of prism color he hides from the "man" in his quest to leave his unique imprint. He looks like a warrior in a chemical war of color and lines. Makes me wonder if Michelangelo would spray walls if he were alive today.  Look closer and you notice behind in the background is an icon in Montreal’s landscape, St-Michael’s church a block behind this painted wall. The church is very much like the Sistine Chapel graced by religious art, wonder if the priest would let our gas masked warrior in the corridors of divine immaculate art in his church and commission him for a job. This time of the year, the Polish citizens of Montreal will congregate  to St-Michaels’ with colored eggs for the Easter festivities, maybe we can sneak in some urban art on the colored eggs.

What started as a well intended statue for the kids in Montreal, you have to wonder where the heads of the politicians were at the time. As you drive by the elevated highway, you say to yourself what a cool idea to commemorate the youthful spirit with a statue by three boroughs of the city represented by kids holding up a giant dish. You would figure a statue for kids would be in a park for kids. Not this one, nestled almost under a highway on on little patch of grass constantly polluted by heavy traffic below from a busy service road and a major artery street that divides the linguistic divide from east to west. (long story) If any kid tried to see this statue most likely they would be mowed down with the constant barrage of heavy traffic. What were they thinking, not exactly practical in any sense. Most likely they had a few pennies left in the coffers and decided to stick any old statue in this desolate piece of green grass. I don’t know but it seems either the kids are holding a some kind of giant platter for a money collection or they just caught themselves a giant hubcap. All hail the "Giant Hubcap". One of the kids has his mouth wide open, his expression is kind of disturbing. The message is lost to me with this statue, maybe he is singing for his next meal. Who knows. When people drive by so fast, there is no time to think about the message. Atlas couldn’t get a gig in this joint.

Here is a mystic archer with his trusty bow drawn with a moebius tip.  Ever confident this warrior in a meditating pose and sure of his aim. His cape shrouded in a moebius eternity. Cupid of the desert or an assassin of deceit? Note this is the other side of this unfinished mural with our spray paint artist who is about to get the moebius tip aimed straight at his head. Could it be that the artist is about to receive a devine message of spiritual awareness over and over again. Our artist perhaps is drawing from the past and sprawing to the future as his friend looks to the right for something to come. See below other half. Everything we do has always a tie to our pasts, be it ours or others. Ignore your past and you will fail in the future.

This reminds me of an old Rainbow song called "Self Portrait". It goes something like this…

 

Paint me a picture and hang it on your wall.
Color it dark where the lines must start to crawl.
Down, down, down.

Spin me around and around.
Draw me away to the night from the day.
Leave not a trace to be found.
Down, down.

Nothing is real but the way that I feel.
And I feel like going down, down, down, down,
Down, down, down, down, down.

Paint me a picture of eyes that never see,
With flashes of light that will burn for only me.
Hey, hey, hey, there is only the devil to pay.
I’m ready to go pull me down from below.
Give me a place I can lay.
Hey, hey.

This is not the entrance to Ridley Scott’s house, this "Alien" like sculpture is at the headquarters of Cirque de Soleil in Montreal. Nestled on top of this contorted intertwine of metal are two little birds who see no threat from their host. A rather strange anomaly at the stay inn for students of the Cirque de Soleil. This is where they train all their performers and they sleep in the following building where this bent out of shape figure catches the gazing eye of every stranger that comes to visit.

No, you are not in Disneyland’s French quarters. This is a tavern that has graced our fair city for many years. As a youth when I took the bus to school about 25 years ago, I always wondered what kind of people go to "The Donald Duck Tavern". I also contemplated why nobody understood Donald all those years. Could it be that Donald actually is the patron owner of this fine establishment. I always envisioned a Disney menagerie of characters getting sloshed at a place like this. Explains why Donald sounded funny when he talked a few beers too many on his part. I never went inside this tavern, I think I might be let down. Then again I think there is something weird happening inside or maybe just a bunch of old men getting drunk.  Nothing cooler than telling your friends that you got plastered at the "Donald Duck Tavern". It just doesn’t have a ring to it.

There are many industrial parts in Montreal, the above wall is found in a garage repair street littered with other garages and repair shops just below Canada’s major highway called the Trans-Canada. Most cars on the road do deserve a decent burial, this artist most likely lifted the above scape from some picture taken from Arizona. It blends with all the centipede like flow of cars abound in the area.

At one time, this stop sign was covered all in snow. Snow is the graffiti artist of nature in reverse, it sprays white all over the earth and ebbs color from the landscape. It has snowed so much in Montreal and in many places in the world to stifle the global warming advocates, so much that not a peep out of Al Gore since record low temperatures are recorded all over the world. Forgot to mention, there is a cop car behind the snow bank at times, we call them tax collectors up here.

Here is perfect waste management from the city of Montreal’s Saint Michel "dump".

The children frolic each day when they have recess in this wonderful painted "school of fish".

So begins my quest for this year to find original art hidden through out the city of Montreal. Montreal is a vibrant city of multi-cultured people spawning mosaic origins from all over the world. I am sure the art I will find can found and expressed in many cosmopolitans in North America. Each day when I travel to work and back home, I passed by the above mural as it slowly went up. Ever languidly color and lines sprawling on the red brick wall, and then the red disappeared as a whole new world breathed over the cemented facade. I never saw the artist who put it up. Like most of this type of work, they will grace walls and nobody to see who painted them. Permanent residents on the daily commute they evoke their own imagery to personal taste. I am just a camera capturing the soul of the image of a city unique that came to be Montreal and as I watch it decay and grow anew. This is a moment of time that I will travel to bring you a personal artistic journey of wonder and discovery. Like the first explorers to the island, I will as a resident rediscover my own backyard. Hope you enjoy this personal pleasure trip.