Legendary White Squirrel of Trinity-Bellwoods

Between spending a day selling my wares in Trinity-Bellwoods, where people visited me all day to tell me about their white squirrel sightings, and finding some amazing purple squirrel fabric, I thought it was high time to make a 'Legendary White Squirrel of Trinity-Bellwoods' pillow:

 

 and then, I made another 'Legendary White Squirrel of Trinity-Bellwoods' pillow:

 

This morning I was pretty amused and pleased to see that the legendary white squirrel himself had tweeted about it.

 

Queen West Art Crawl

As part of the Toronto Etsy Street Team tent, I will be selling things from secret minouette places, that is prints and hand-printed housewares THIS SATURDAY at The 10th Queen West Art Crawl! The events stretch from September 14 to 16. The Outdoor Art Show and Sale in Trinity-Bellwoods Park (which is midway from Ossington to Bathurst, and all the way from Queen St to Dundas St) will be running on Saturday, September 15 to Sunday, September 16, from 11am - 6pm. But be sure to come on Satuday, to get your minouette fix!
The main hub of the Queen West Art Crawl, the OASS is a two-day juried art exhibition featuring over 250 artists, food vendors, community booths, an exciting entertainment stage and the family friendly Kidz Zone.


Etsy will have their own tent with some fabulous FREE workshops too!

Come check out all the wonderful handmade items and enjoy a beautiful day in the park!

Legendary White Squirrel of Trinity-Bellwoods

Despite the opinion of some people around here (i.e. this apartment) there's a colony of white squirrels in Toronto's Trinity-Bellwood Park! I know. I've seen them, This is a portrait of one of them, climbing head-down a maple tree, along with the words "Legendary White Squirrel of Trinity-Bellwoods", which I carved in reverse, in lino, and printed in dark, silver-bronze, with redish-pink eyes, on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper). Each print is 8.5 inches (21.6 cm) wide and 14 inches (35.6 cm) tall. It's sort of become a running joke to question the reality of the white squirrels of Trinity-Bellwoods, but they are well documented. You can google it. They even have a street, White Squirrel Way, and a café named after them.

The lettering (fantastical "Legendary", outlined white "White Squirrel" with large bushy-tail like swirls, and the more formal and stylized "Trinity-Bellwoods") reflects the nature of the words.

There are two ways in which squirrels end up white instead of grey, black or brown. They may be albino squirrels, or they may have a rare white fur coloration known as leucism (due to a recessive gene). My local squirrels seem to have red eyes, so I think they are albino. I think it is their rareity which makes them so fascinating to people. These squirrels have fans, like other pockets of white squirrels in other places.

I'll let you, gentle reader, in on a secret. I've been thinking about the myths and legends of Canada, in a more general sense. You know, like Ogopogo and Cadborosaurus, and Sasquatch, the loup-garou of Trois-Rivières or the ghost of Mackenzie King's dog. Good suggestions for additions to this list will be rewarded.

guided, illustrated city tours

It's been a little while since I've shared my view of Toronto, so here we are. First, it's Dufferin and Dupont, where there are some amazing graffiti murals. What I love, in particular, is the inexplicability of the subject matter. Woolly mammoth? West-coast native Sun mask? Why not.



As we continue south towards Queen, we encounter the cyber-kitties. Secretly, I feel that the chrome cats would be a useful judge of character. Do you feel that robokitty is inherently awesome or a wanton destruction of private property? Maybe this should be a question on Faunalia's imaginary "Are you a soulless or soulful hipster?" quiz. I think Minouette would like a cyborg assistant, to help her with whatever mischief she gets up to in my absence.





So this wonderful mural has been on Queen West for a long time, and, Murphy's Law, when I finally get my act together and bring my camera to the mural, someone has placed an ugly 'Art Sale' sign in front of it. However, I confess that some of the art amused me, no matter how juvenile the humour.











The entire Dufferin & Dundas Portuguese village area is painted in this colour scheme, which is great. The fact that I timed this 'drive-by' photograph exactly wrong, such that the sun-face is behind the street-light also amuses me.



I love that this Koreantown mural is so similar in spirit to the Parkdale world map, except, now with more Korean food! Also, considering the stylized, low-resolution character of the world map, I love that the artist has clearly depicted the Great Lakes - because that's important.






Cherry St amazes me, how it can always look simultaneously picturesque and desolate.


So apparently, The Distillery District is the largest, in-tact, region of Victorian industrial architecture, anywhere in North America. Hence, it is a boon to the movie industry. Cleverly, the City opted to fill it with art galleries and artists' studios, simulateneously preserving it, and supporting the arts. And yet, I never go there. It's not the most public-transit-friendly destination and I suspect it is filled with tourists (and yet, I think to myself, really? in February! What sort of ill-informed tourist comes to Toronto in FEBRUARY?). From a historical perspective, I find it intriguing that so much of Toronto-the-good was clearly occupied with making whiskey.







New to Queen W, an optimistic graffiti artist:


I love the plastic bag + chain link fence = mural equation. I believe this one, in Trinity-Bellwoods park reads, "Where is the Love?"

slightly less incognito

IMG_5192
Originally uploaded by jenluvzyou

but you still cannot see what I am drawing....

Found on the Craft Toronto flickr group.