theQV IN theEV / DRAW THE ANXIETY OUT

“My master plan is to draw the anxiety out of the city with beauty.“ – Jim Power

Walking the streets of the East village it isn’t hard to look passed the ice-creameries, fancy espresso stores and boutiques brought on the steady wing of gentrification, and still feel that a spirit lingers here of the place it once was; that regardless, this essence of artistry, bohemia and the free spirited is reinvented.

Resident artist Jim Power, cements history with his mosaic public art on sidewalks, stoops, lampposts, planters, storefronts, and interior and exterior signage around the neighbourhood. He has been doing this for over 25 years. His mosaics, alongside other graffiti and street art of the pavements of the EV, so subtly fashion the landscape. As I walked I was struck by a particular lamppost that spelled “slow down,” and urged me to stand a while and examine the mosaic and to seek out more.

Mosaic as a medium for this neighborhood is a perfect metaphor: taking the broken fragments of varied types of tiles and then putting them back together to form a more beautiful whole, one which has a new meaning. This is the village’s residents exemplified.  The graphic style is rough but striking, organic yet composed, eclectic and u-nified. Old plates with marbles with Moroccan tile and fine china, all in the mix; it is exciting to understand that this imagery provides such aesthetic and narrative potential, and is concerned more with speaking to you than having you think it is trendy. It is our responsibility as artists, as with Jim Power,  to remember that our visual outcomes are connected to thought, to idea, pose questions, tell histories. And moreover, do not just serve as sirens, tempting our audience into aesthetic submission.