I just spent about 30 minutes going through this guy’s prints. They’re great.
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The Largest Police have Ever Seen
The worst kind of crime hits my home province.
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Anyone in Montréal over the fall should check out Dan Beirne (of Said the Gramophone fame) in his new improvised “sitcom” The Bitter End. I’ve not seen it live yet, but I have seen this funny preview on their blog (where they also hope to be posting every single episode).
Here are some photos I snapped in Downtown Montréal of some of Roadsworth’s new pieces.
Hoefler and Frere-Jones have a post on their blog about those random strings of non-letter characters used to denote swearing. Apparently there is even a name for it:
The term is grawlix, and it looks to have been coined by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker around 1964. Though it’s yet to gain admission to the Oxford English Dictionary, OED Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower describes it as “undeniably useful, certainly a word, and one that I’d love to see used more.
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Radiohead’s new video is pretty neat. It was done without cameras, using laser-based 3d scanners instead.
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Schwartz’s & Roadsworth Movie Trailers
One makes smoked-meat sandwiches, the other does street art. But both are institutions in my home town of Montréal, and both are now getting documentaries.
Some very great people are launching a new mini film fest here in Montréal, M60, which will consist of 60 filmmakers each making a 60-second long film. First come, first served. It’s completely un-curated and open to whomever in Montréal wishes to participate. The launch will be July 24th, where they’ll be announcing the exact rules and a general theme for the submissions.
I did some drawings for the project, including the logo above and some of the images on their website.
Montréal-based street artist Roadsworth first endeared himself to me by using his stencils to create illegal bike paths where there were none, in response to the municipal government’s then lack of accommodation for cyclists. His artistic pieces have been some of my favourite in town for many years - they’re extremely playful, topical, and play off of their environment in a way that makes people take notice of the urban environment.
While walking down the street at mid-day several years ago I stumbled across a stencil of an owl on the sidewalk. It was obviously Roadsworth, but I was stumped as to why he had placed it at the bizarre angle he had chosen. His pieces almost always play off their location, but I was confused about the meaning of this one. I passed a few nights later, and realized that the owl was in fact perching on the diagonally-falling shadow of a street light.
He gained fame in 2004 for his much-publicized legal problems after being caught stenciling on a public road. I had feared that his work would never return, but it seems that him and the city have put their problems behind them, and Roadsworth is now doing some commissions here and there. Spacing Montréal’s Christopher DeWolf has a gallery of his recent work.
Anyone passing through the Mile End neighborhood of Montréal before June 22nd may want to drop in to Articule on Fairmount near Parc for the Black Market Type + Print Shop. It’s a fun little exhibit about typography in contemporary art. The curator has gathered text from the works of a variety of artists (Robert Crumb, Julie Doucet, Jasper Johns, Marcel Dzama, David Shrigley and many more) and has mounted them on their own, completely outside of the art pieces that once contained them.
The typefaces are not available for outside use, but there is a computer in the gallery which can be used to create your own posters using the fonts in the show. We created a poster advertising kittens we’re trying to find homes for, and put them up all over the neighborhood.
The show was fun, well curated, and relatively unpretentious. The staff was also extremely helpful and willing to talk to us about the exhibit.
What do you do when the municipality doesn’t provide the city-wide composting service you think they should? Well, it would seem that some people would start their own private composting initiative. For $6 a week, they’ll pick up your organic matter and compost it for you. At the end of the year you can pick up some high-grade compost from them for use in the garden.
I’m perfectly happy using my vermicompost in my apartment (for the record, it’s very little work, doesn’t smell, and produces stuff my plants love). It could be interesting for others though, and is also perhaps indicative of the fact that people on the island are interested in the service.
CBC had an article the other day regarding a remarkable drop in serious cyclist injuries on the island. This figure is especially remarkable considering what appears to be an immense increase in the number of cyclists on the road. The police are taking credit, stating that their crack-down on traffic violations among cyclists is responsible. While I don’t have any data to back it up, I find this claim rather suspect.
I would imagine that if there has been the immense drop in serious injuries to cyclists, it would be more attributable to the new bike paths, lanes, and general bicycle infrastructure which is protecting them from traffic and making bikes more visible to drivers.
Web Urbanist has a neat little gallery of furniture made from reused items, like this neat sofa made from a cast iron bath tub.
