At the Royal Ontario Museum, the portraits of homeless or formerly-homeless people holding signs with self-scrawled messages on them start outside the main entrance on Bloor Street, one large-scale man and large-scale woman standing back-to-back, dwarfed by the Crystal. They continue life-sized just inside, one young woman hiding above the main entrance, an older man [...]

Photo by sniderscion from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. No victors were declared last night in the ongoing struggle between the street and the man, between high and popular culture, between the alleyway and the gallery. In a panel discussion on the evolving nature of street art, the only consensus was that more conversations—open-ended, open-minded, open-hearted—are [...]

The Hug Me Tree has gone high art. An icon of the Queen Street West shopping district for the past decade until its unceremonious uprooting last August, this humble tree stump is now on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Over the past ten years, street artist Elicser Elliot repainted the tree several times and [...]

Photo of Bie Engelen in The House That Jack Built, courtesy of Suitcase Theatre. THEATRE: Suitcase Theatre’s new production, The House That Jack Built, begins today and runs throughout this March Break. The musical, based on the nursery rhyme of the same name, uses colourful masks as well as miniature and oversized puppetry for a [...]

Vandalist recently sat down with OTHER, one of the artists participating in “Housepaint, Phase 2″, now showing at the ROM. OTHER, a.k.a. Troy Lovegates, a.k.a. Derek Shamus Mehaffey, is an acclaimed street artist who has made his mark the world over. We caught up with him at his temporary studio space, just off Dufferin, while [...]