Someone added- in a graceful handstyle- “Native Land” to this stencil.

Brilliant. Adds whole new meaning to the words of our national anthem: “Our Home And Native Land”. Improves the work by a factor of ten.

It’s a Saluting Astronaut!

Salute, Salute, Salute.

Like a good soldier is supposed to; It doesn’t care who it is saluting, as long as there is power! You’re the president now? Sure, if that’s the way the wind is blowing, I’ll salute!

This Astronaut could be saluting anyone at all… or nobody at all! It’s just as happy either way.

What does it care? It is dead, after all.

Guys. Guess what?

I am very frustrated right now.

This update has taken me nearly 7 hours. SEVEN. My computer has been fighting me every step of the way.

ALSO

I have been working on this Whirlygig, and 5 others, -on and off- for almost THREE YEARS .

That’s crazy. There’s no reason it should take that long! Why can’t I finish my projects? Why can’t I get my shit together? IS IT BECAUSE OF SHIT LIKE THIS COMPUTER AND RENT AND NO SPACE AND ALL THE OTHER MILLION LITTLE BARRIERS LIFE PRESENTS?!?

Blagh! Enough whining.

anyway.

I wanted to have all 5 Whirlygigs up at once -together- as a theme week; but with summer leaving and autumn here I thought I had better just cut my losses, do the rest later, and get at least one up…

I WILL finish the rest, just you wait.

This one is installed in Trinity-Bellwoods Park.

I hope you like it too.

It’s a Failure Friday!

This was the first vent project that I tried last summer. It was meant to be a sort of wire frame of my helmet.

I underestimated the power of the vents! It was torn to… ribbons!

I thought it was still kinda pretty.

This was one of the projects that I did last summer!

It was simple, but a hit!

After awhile, one of the bus drivers came over to take part in the fun.

When the tethers broke, the parachute men shot crazy high into the air!

Wheee!!!

This lovely video comes courtesy of the fine people at Dear Toronto.

It’s their thirteenth video update, and lucky 13 was in full effect-

Security was unusually fast.

A lot faster than I was measuring the site, designing the pattern, cutting the fabric, sewing it, scrounging the city for scrap wood for the base, building the base, and putting it all together….

Sigh. I recognize that satisfied head nod, though- taking care of business.

I know you’re just doing your jobs, but really guys, how much of a security risk was this action? Big? Was it a big security risk? I was really hoping people would have a chance to play with it a bit.

The speedy takedown is a little confusing, because the fire pit and the fountain lasted all day, overnight, and at least until lunch the following day!

So it goes.

This fountain is the latest bit of public sculpture to grace Nathan Phillips Square.

The scavenged wood that it’s made from was clearly the discarded remains of a little closet grow-op!

I must say, I found this to be a little disappointing. The stencil didn’t turn out as nicely as I had hoped and the fabric I used for the water was a bit too thick and heavy- it didn’t quite blow properly.

Also! Interesting! David Topping let me know about this old ad campaign! I suppose a lot of the “new” ideas we come up with have actually already been done before.

So there are these vents for the subway at the front of Nathan Phillips Square…

(For those not familiar with Toronto, this is city hall. You may recognize the building from the climax of Resident Evil- Apocalypse?)

…and these vents produce a continual upflow of wind. I’ve been meaning to do a theme week around this high-profile-spot-with-free-harvestable-energy for forever. Actually, I DID do one of the projects last summer, but I’ve been sitting on the other projects….. and as a result I’ve been beaten to the punch! Again! Arrgh!

Ah well.

I’m still putting my stuff up.

This is the first stencil I’ve made that is a repeat.

I’ve been wanting to make a repeat since I read about a brilliantly simple technique in a Katazome book.

Here’s how it works-

Make your design. This will represent the design:

PC

Cut it in half down the middle.

P[C

Move the pieces like this:

C[P

And now the outside edges line up perfectly! Just smooth out the center, connect and clean things up, and you’re good to go! If you want a vertical repeat, just do the same thing with a horizontal cut!

Brilliant, no? It’s one of those head-slapping “Of Course!” techniques.

I like how this is at city hall, and the earliest political gathering places were fires. Originally, I wanted this to be a big bonfire, with the walls made of logs- but it turns out that logs are really hard to come by in the city… especially for free… So it’s a fire pit instead.

Here’s the last follow-up until another 100 updates.

She’s lost her hair, parts of her body, most of her legs, but not her composure.

So she wins.

But it’s easy for her- her plucky smile is stencilled on.

Have you ever meet a three-legged dog? They’re amazing. Inspirational!

Basically, they are just like any other dog!

They can do everything most dogs do and they show no embarrassment or shame over their condition. They play with other dogs and everything almost like they don’t know they’ve lost a limb. Of course, they do, and of course, there is a physical limit to what they can manage, but they seem to have trouble finding it!

You can’t cripple a dog like you can a person.

I know I would be devastated if I lost either an arm or a leg. As an artist, it would be absolutely crushing to lose my good arm, or even my good hand. As a street artist, losing a leg would be incredibly heartbreaking. Being able-bodied allows me to climb ladders, buildings, jump fences, and just effectively get up and around the city.

If I lost a limb, and like a dog, used all my remaining abilities to the maximum, without shame or depression, I would probably be just fine. I’m sure I’d manage.

But, of course, our physical limits aren’t really what handicap most of us.

And sadly, some of us blessed with excellent physical health are as handicapped, as crippled, as lacking ???????? as if we were quadriplegics.

Original work here.

This hair was actually braided several times, but it kept coming out until someone added the hair elastic. How sweet!
The last pic is much later, and now she is all torn up and bald. Interestingly, someone has torn off her fingers, and taped them back up to resemble a penis. A wonky penis- but a recognizable penis nonetheless.
Non-Transgendered girl here.
Unrelatedly,
The UX are my new heroes! Amazing, inspiring stuff here! (Also from The Guardian! Link goes to online version, quoted below):
Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark’s clock
‘Cultural guerrillas’ cleared of lawbreaking over secret workshop in Pantheon

Emilie Boyer King in Paris

Monday November 26, 2007

The Guardian

It is one of Paris’s most celebrated monuments, a neoclassical masterpiece that has cast its shadow across the city for more than two centuries.
But it is unlikely that the Panthéon, or any other building in France’s capital, will have played host to a more bizarre sequence of events than those revealed in a court last week.
Four members of an underground “cultural guerrilla” movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France’s cultural heritage, were cleared on Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument in a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco.
For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.
“When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Panthéon’s officials know or not,” said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. “We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work.
“The Panthéon’s administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop, he had to take a deep breath and sit down.”
The Centre of National Monuments, embarrassed by the way the group entered the building so easily, did not take to the news kindly, taking legal action and replacing the administrator.
Getting into the building was the easiest part, according to Klausmann. The squad allowed themselves to be locked into the Panthéon one night, and then identified a side entrance near some stairs leading up to their future hiding place. “Opening a lock is the easiest thing for a clockmaker,” said Klausmann. From then on, they sneaked in day or night under the unsuspecting noses of the Panthéon’s officials.
“I’ve been working here for years,” said a ticket officer at the Panthéon who wished to remain anonymous. “I know every corner of the building. And I never noticed anything.”
The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther’s cosy squat cum workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris.
The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer connected to the net.
Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.
But the UX, the name of Untergunther’s parent organisation, is a finely tuned organisation. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialise in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.
Members know Paris intimately. Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret parties in Paris’s network of tunnels. They have now grown up and become nurses or lawyers, but still have a taste for the capital’s underworld, and they now have more than just partying on their mind.
“We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is incompetent,” said Klausmann. “But our means are limited and we can only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There’s so much to do in Paris that we won’t manage in our lifetime.”

The Untergunther are already busy working on another restoration mission Paris. The location is top secret, of course. But the Panthéon clock remains one of its proudest feats.
“The Latin Quarter is where the concept of human rights came from, it’s the centre of everything. The Panthéon clock is in the middle of it. So it’s a bit like the clock at the centre of the world.”

Here’s another pretty lady who has had her hair torn out.
But other things have happened to her too- she has moulded up nicely, someone wrote “Fresh 2 Death” on her hip, (aw shucks, thanks!) and, for whatever reason, people have stuck their used gum onto her crotch?
Non-gummy bikini bottoms here.
Unrelatedly,
Here is a video with a really clever idea for cleaning and unclogging caps!

The video comes from The Bomb Shelter, a graff shop here in Toronto. It’s where I go to buy my caps. (It’s cute, the caps are kept in a gumball machine.)
You know, for years and years I just used the factory caps. This was primarily because I didn’t have access to special caps, but it also didn’t really matter to me, because the factory caps are totally fine for stencilling. But after being in Toronto for awhile, I thought I would pick myself up some caps and try them out, why not?
Hot Damn! Why did it take me so long? A fat cap is all you need. There is nothing like a fatcap on a fresh can. Full, wide spray, with a nice thick coat. On the streets, it will cut the time it takes you to spray your stencil in half. More than half, really.
They’re nice to use while making my posters too- but I’ll still use a standard cap when I got lots of time, and want a bit finer control. They’re free with the can, after all.
Here’s another vid, this one is of a new “universal fat cap” in action. I’m going to have to pick up a few of these :