Around the Neighbourhood.

A baroque refuse container outside the Gladstone Hotel

A Queen Street Greeting

Cabbages and Kings

The Art of Street Life

Last Roses of Summer…

Design We Love – Industrial Storm

These exquisitely designed and crafted hanging lamps from Sterling and Son, New York–and available at Toronto’s Industrial Storm–feature glass canopies and metal liners.  The lamps come in three sizes, with diameters of 18 inches, 23.25 inches and 31 inches.  …

Art We Love – Thrush Holmes

The lyrically named Thrush Holmes (yes, it’s his real name!) is not what you’d call a repressed painter.  This gigantic work–about as big as a Still Life painting ever gets–is 84″ x 180,” and is emblazoned with the artist’s trademark …

Art We Love -Verso’s Battered First Aid Boxes

 …

David Oleson on Art Condos Facade Design

For our previous two chats with Art Condos architect David Oleson, we discussed a few basic design issues pertaining to the new building. Topics covered include overall design decisions, the building’s use of glass, ideas about the look …

Art we love: Roland Brener’s Swinger

Among the many remarkable works in the current summer exhibition at the Olga Korper Gallery is a piece by the late Roland Brener (1942-2006) called Swinger. Swinger began in 1999, as a hand-built, laminated plywood figure of a standard-issue businessman …

Mabel’s bakery finds a new home on Queen West

Mabel’s Bakery at 323 Roncesvalles Avenue has been an oasis of great baked goods and specialty foods for about four years now. About six weeks ago, owner Lorraine Hawley opened a second Mabel’s–at 1156 Queen street West. It will be …

Design we love: Lotte lamps at INabstracto

We dropped in to INabstracto a few days ago to chat with owner Kate Eisen, and it was only when we were leaving that we noticed the delicious still-life she had made from grouping five Lotte lamps together on a …

David Oleson on balconies

After speaking about the use of glass in the Art Condos building, we went on to ask David Oleson to share his thoughts about the design and function of balconies in general and the balconies of the Art Condos building …

David Oleson on glass

We spoke recently to architect David Oleson, designer of the Art Condos building. Our first chat was about glass.

…

Design we love: Julie Jenkinson of Verso

Designer Julie Jenkinson has just opened her own small and charming design shop at the rear of Kate Eisen’s INabstracto. The place is wittily called Verso (as in “what is on the other side of the page?”). We spoke …

Design we love: Kate Eisen of INabstracto

Kate Eisen’s store, INabstracto: Mid Century Modern Furniture & Design, is as much a design museum and gallery as it is a retail outlet for historically significant design objects. We talked to her a few days ago about what INabstracto …

Art we love: Peak Gallery owner Zack Pospieszynski

We consider Zack Pospieszynski–owner-director of Peak Gallery–to be a man of discriminating taste and lucid opinions, and so we dropped by the gallery the other day to ask him about his current likes and dislikes in contemporary art. The …

Design we love: an old wagon jack?

We saw this strange rustic object in Robin Fraser’s shop–called REC + ART HISTORY–on Queen West last week. He explained that it was a wagon jack, for hoisting up your wagon and fixing its ailing wheel. It has a …

Design we love: chandelier feathers

At Symbolist, an intriguing and always mysterious second-hand store at 1080 Queen Street West, there is a big basket filled with these charming metal feathers. They cost a mere $3.00 each, and while they once apparently graced a chandelier …

Art we love: ceramics by Robert Archambeau

We’ve not always been big fans of ceramics–a lot of it seems artsy and sentimental– but we’ll always make an exception for the exquisite stoneware pieces of veteran ceramics artist Robert Archambeau. Archambeau, who won the Governor General’s Award in …

Art we love: the happy zones by Jose Ciria

For his third exhibition at the Christopher Cutts Gallery–Window Dreamer–New York based Spanish painter Jose Ciria has produced a suite of vast, chromatically explosive paintings which, while they may indeed invoke what the gallery calls the “sanguinity and terra …

Design we love: Industrial Storm’s cracked coffee table

This lean, noble table–Industrial Storm‘s Cracked Coffee Table–is visually powerful enough to be regarded as both furniture and sculpture. Described by Industrial Storm’s Hanson Tan as “Asian inspired with a contemporary sensibility,” the table features a top …

Design we love: Freitag messenger bags

The Swiss design firm Freitag has been creating its unique, ecologically impeccable line of bags since 1993. They are made of recycled truck tarpaulins, unraveled seat belts, old bicycle inner tubes and recycled airbags. The company’s Top Cat bag is …

Christina Zeidler of The Gladstone Hotel

There are two venerable cultural landmarks–institutions, really– on Queen Street West. One is the self-consciously glamorous Drake Hotel (about which we’ll be posting material here shortly) and the other is the no less glamorous but possibly more culturally earnest …

The art of mate drinking

The graceful and sociable art of drinking Mate — the traditional South American infused tea made from steeped leaves and twigs of the yerba mate plant — is so complex, one really needs instruction of what is actually a whole …

WORLDFinger in four questions

We talked recently, at the Art Condos Testing Centre in Toronto, with Art Condos developer Gary Silverberg about his cutting-edge WORLDFinger media control system.

WORLDFinger—which is an elegant, highly sophisticated tool for managing all your media devices from one single …

Woolfitt’s: staffed by artists, for artists

Ben Woolfitt has been a painter for forty years and, for the same amount of time, has run his famous art supply store on Queen Street West. We talked to him recently about both his art and his business.

Woolfitt’s …

Art we love: Tidal Waves and Sea Bathers by Y.M. Whelan

By the time you read this, Y.M. Whelan’s sparkling exhibition at the Fran Hill Show Room–called Book of Dreams: New Paintings–will probably be officially over, but gallerist Fran …

Design we love: Is driftwood making a comeback?

We remember (admittedly, it was quite a long time ago) when driftwood was considered to be a really chic design accent–people were putting soft, sinuous hunks of it here and there (on mantlepieces, on bookshelves, in the corners of rooms). …