The brilliant novel, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, tells the story of Marco Polo describing 55 imaginative cities to Kublai Khan. Each city conjures an aspect of Venice, Polo’s hometown. I left my own hometown at 19, and Toronto, the city I have lived in ever since holds different freight from Venice, the center of Calvino’s novel.
I only know Venice as a tourist and my two visits to the city separated by a decade were seamless in walking through a city of hidden back streets, piazzas, and small bridges spanning canals. In a decade in Toronto, entire streetscapes and neighbourhood have changed. The centre of the city has been transformed and is more alive with people living and working than at any time in the cities history.
The constant flux of Toronto, (we ruefully describe the city as having 2 seasons, Winter and construction), makes it difficult to hold onto, it is constantly changing as churches, car dealerships, factories and strip malls are consumed in the new mixed use glass and steel towers of condos and retail shops.
I was in Berlin last summer and the scars and wounds of World War 2 and the Cold War mark the buildings and streets but history is still etched into the city’s districts. Toronto is more like an Etch-a-Sketch, shake your head and another place changes.
I struggled to create a theme for my first attempt at etching in my 3rd year of College, it was my sketchbook that offered an answer…people and the streetcar. Toronto transit, the TTC is the best way to travel in the central city and many new people to Toronto used transit. Toronto’s architecture is it’s communities and the incredible demographic shifts of the population, from 12% in 1980 to 57% racialized people in 2021, makes Toronto one of the most multicultural and multiracial cities in the world.
In my Bench series it was my experiences on the Queen streetcar and the people I saw along this route that inspired each piece. The litho process I used sensitized the 2 inch thick aluminum plates with the grease from a graphite pencil drawing. The fill-in, line loss, and scumming (ink on the plate outside of the lines) were all terrible printmaking errors but exactly how I wanted each print to offer atmosphere and feeling. I used small rollers with different coloured inks and this contributed to lees control and very individual pieces.
The streetcar, the subway and the GO train (our inter-city trains) provided me with constant subject matter as I worked on an alter ego Illustrator for a few years. I named him Evonrude and he worked with graphic ballpoint pen, watercolour, and photoshop images and allowed me to focus on a more linear approach.
So, it is not leafy boulevards, soaring skyscrapers, or even the lake we border, it’s the rich diversity of people that call Toronto home that is the story of the city and the inspiration that continues to fuel my work.
I love all these!