Japanese Cultural Centre Toronto

Located on Bloor street, the Japanese Cultural Centre has a library and is close to the ROM. They have rotating art shows and have something to check out. I was there recently and although I was let down that the prints on display were not real woodcuts but poor digital copies, I found they had selected some interesting monster images and made some sketches all the same.

I love the weirdness of this 'Ass face' guy with the balls as nose, you just don't see that. It is interesting to imagine how restrictive western art would have been at the same era.


Sure you have your Aubrey Beardsley but that is pretty underground in its era

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Ha! I remember my cousin having this picture with a suite of Beardsley images screen printed onto mirrors in his room.

This was a detail from a complex Japanese wood block print, I liked the hand was rising up in the sun rise and a different scale to the other information.

Here is a link to the cultural centre if you want to check them out.

Urban Architecture Circa 1997

This is a drawing I gave a friend of mine back in 1997 before I drove around North America for 3 months. Back then, as I am still, I was very interested in old buildings, disused buildings and the way that light would play on them.

I lived in the area of Queen and Sherbourne and it was a lot rougher then, most everything was derelict (please no Zoolander references) and even the hoarding that was up around abandoned lots advertised business and investment that had clearly gone bust 5 plus years earlier.

The images from that time were based on observations gleaned as one of the unemployed (who had no need for subways) wandering around Queen, Richmond St, Adelaide and over to Temperance Street around the (at the time) defunct Bay Adelaide centre.

Man the city has changed quite a bit, that long afternoon light appears in less spaces as there is so much more development.