Photos by Tony Martins
Canteen Gallery has been bombed.
Not with explosives, relax. Local and international artists have fused street art with sneakers and other commercial objects for an eclectic and vibrant January exhibition called
Customs Month.
In graffiti slang, 'bombing' means painting many surfaces in an area. A range of commodities at Canteen (238 Dalhousie) have been licked with paint to make the usually illegal, legal, and the usually large-scale, small-scale.
Artists were initially provided with Supra brand sneakers and given time to customize them, but the exhibition soon opened up to include the other objects, says Canteen owner Inaas Kiryakos.
“It’s a fun concept,” Kiryakos says. “And the shoes are a little different. You can love the shoe, but if it’s not your size you’ve got to justify buying them.”
Also customized for the show are high heels, scrappers (scrap spraycans) and skateboard decks. The result is wild collection, featuring illustrated nuts and bolts (and a knife), bright and bold prints, and even a
Where’s Waldo, if you can find him.
“I don’t feel like its selling out,” Lester Jollymore says about commodifying a style of art typically executed for the thrill and enjoyment, not reimbursement. “I love to be part of the scene.”
Jollymore's contribution—a pair of Supra sneakers vibrant with fluorescents and sporadic markings—was no easy, er, feat. It took three days of considered freestyling with paint markers and required a different thought process compared to that for covering walls in their entirety.
“I don’t like doing shoes because they are so hard,” he laughs. “You do one, and think ‘Okay, I’m done… No, wait, I have another shoe.’”
And a downsized canvas isn’t the only creative obstacle for artists who usually expect their work to be temporary. Compared to, say, underpass graffiti art, the pieces from this exhibition will be much closer to everlasting. No artist will cover it with a new design; no city authority will scour it from its concrete canvas.
For some street artists, this prospect of permanence can be a little daunting.
“If I wanted my art to last forever, I would do commercial and gallery art forever,” says local street artist Poser, who is participating in his first gallery exhibition.
“With graffiti, you understand that it’s fleeting. It can only last for so long. If someone does buy my work [from the
Customs show], they’ll have to look at it for the next couple of years. In this sense, I do put effort into it. But for graffiti art, I put in a different kind of effort; into making something that is 40 feet wide and 20 feet tall.”
