Waterfront Walk

A flip of a coin helped us decide on the destination for a recent Saturday afternoon walk. South, down to the waterfront, it was to be.

May The Best Painter Win : Art Battle

We entered the hall to find eight blank canvases set up easels in the middle of the room. The contenders were introduced to the crowd and a countdown began -- ten, nine, eight ... three, two, one, GO. The battle was on!Termed "Live Competitive Painting", at Art Battle events, Canadian artists compete to create the audience's favourite painting in twenty minute rounds.I'll be honest and say that when our friend Andrea explained what this was all about, while I did expect the experience of watching artists at work to be fun, I was skeptical that I'd be seeing good art. I mean, how good could something created in such a short time be? Turns out, I was wrong, because the artists competing in Toronto, for the honour of representing the city in the upcoming 2016 National Championship, turned out some excellent paintings at breathtaking speed.Similar battles have been going on in cities across Canada, and the winners of those will come together in Toronto this coming Thursday, July 21st, at an epic competition -- the grand finale of the Art Battle year -- during which the country's 15 best speed-painter, as voted upon by the audience, will be named National Champion.Additionally, for those who are interested is seeing what these talented artists can do when given more than a mere 20 minutes, for the first time ever, this year there is also the opportunity to witness them at work over a two-day period, beginning on Wednesday, July 20th.Hosted by Tanya Liliana, the Toronto events are held at The Great Hall, at the corner of Dovercourt and Queen Street West. For the semi-finals, we arrived early and got our tickets at the door, but the finals might sell out so tickets can be pre-purchased online here.

A Really Big Ball and So Much More : The Luminato Festival

Although Toronto's Luminato Festival has come and gone now, I still wanted to show you the shots I took there, because the venue was stunning. You'll see what I mean!

Meghan and I went on the final Friday of the 15-day festival. We hadn't gotten tickets for any of the shows, however had read that there was plenty to see there regardless.

Luminato organizers certainly chose an interesting and unique setting for their festival hub, for their 10th anniversary season. It was located at an old power plant called The Hearn Generating Station.

Set as it was in a remote location in a part of the city called the Portlands, about five kilometres from the downtown core, getting there was a bit of an adventure in itself. But the effort was completely worth it! (There was a shuttle bus, that went to Union Station, which we took on the way home, deciding on an Uber for the trip over.)

At the Art Gallery : Steve Martin Curates the Art of Lawren Harris

It was exciting to see and hear comedian and actor Steve Martin speaking at the AGO last week. He was in Toronto to discuss the exhibition, "The Idea of North : The Paintings of Lawren Harris", which opened at the gallery on the weekend and runs through to September 18th. The show, curated by Steve Martin himself, is in the city after recently being displayed in Los Angeles and in Boston.In addition to being a popular performer, Steve Martin is a lover and collector of art, which would help to explain his involvement in this show, but it goes beyond that -- he is passionate enough about this particular painter to have spent the last three years on the project, traveling far and wide to view Harris' paintings in person and the selecting exactly which pieces would be included in the show. He also participated in setting up the three shows, deciding where each painting would be hung.His interest in Harris first began after he saw a picture of one of his iceberg paintings in a book. At the event on Tuesday, he spoke about thinking that he'd discovered this artist. Then he saw that Harris' paintings were selling for over a million dollars a piece, and realized that, while this painter might not be well known outside of Canada, he had not, in fact, discovered him. So, he made it his mission to help get the word out about an artist whose work he greatly admired to American audiences and beyond.The event was held in the gallery's Walker Court and was set up as a sit-down conversation about Lawren Harris and his art, between Steve Martin and the art gallery's curator of Canadian Art Andrew Hunter. This was followed by a few questions from the audience.

A Look at Ossington Avenue in Toronto

Ossington Avenue, a street that my friend Nyla and I checked out on a recent Sunday afternoon, is somewhere I've only ever spent time at night. This makes sense considering that the stretch we were on, between Queen Street West and Dundas, has transformed over the past decade into an area geared towards offering a fun night out. It's lined with all kinds of restaurants, bars and clubs, most of which aren't open during the day, but come alive and are filled with people after dark.I found it interesting to know that the lower part of Ossington is one of the oldest streets in the whole city. It was more of a path carved through the trees that people on horses would travel when it first began. Back in the early 1800s, when the region was populated primarily by indigenous peoples and the city was little more than Fort York and a small trading area near the foot of Yonge Street, this section of Ossington was part of the only established path leading from that trading area all the way to London, Ontario. So Ossington, between Dundas and Queen, is much older than the northern part and the other streets around there, by a good hundred years or so.So, at first it was only a means by which someone could get to and from Toronto from the west. Then, in the 1840s the area was developed into Toronto's meatpacking district, with slaughterhouses and stockyards calling it home -- back then the majority of beings that traveled along Ossington Avenue were pigs and cows.Eventually, in the late 1890s early 1900s, the animals moved out and the streets turned to commercial and residential use. This is when the historical buildings, many of which still stand, were built.There was a period between then and now, that you wouldn't want to be on that street after dark, or even during the day. I remember when I first lived in the area in the late-90s, it wasn't a safe place to go at all. The buildings had become completely rundown and gangs had taken over. There wasn't much to see on the street anyway, so there was little motivation to be there.That changed in the mid-2000s when the inexpensive rents in the area, relative to the increasing costs of being on Queen Street West, attracted new independent businesses.Nyla and I started our afternoon with a coffee at Jimmy's located at the foot of Ossington, just north of Queen. Their coffee is very good and we had a nice time sitting at their open front window.