A Field Guide to DTK's Art Walk

A FIELD GUIDE TO DTK’S ART WALK

Embark on a creative journey of local art in Downtown Kitchener

EXPLORE MOR

XPLORE MORE

Welcome to the DTK Art Walk.

Downtown Kitchener is the centre and heart of the city. It is a place where people dare to take chances by opening businesses. Our community is a place where people gather for living, working and playing – a place where we host special events that embrace food, music and art for people of all ages and backgrounds to experience a great sense of belonging.

The Downtown Kitchener Art Walk was just that – a vision for enhancement through art installations and placemaking. The Downtown Kitchener BIA and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery worked together to create something special to be enjoyed by the community. This initiative serves to bring people together across the Region. We are especially grateful for the drive and passion of all the artists that participated in this exhibition – both past and present. Among past installations of art, you will also find new outdoor pieces of art and murals on buildings throughout the core that are renewed every two years.

Whether you are driving, strolling, or riding, our goal is that everyone enjoys this outdoor exhibit. You can go fast or slow, sit and ponder or enjoy an offering at one of our downtown businesses. We hope you will feel a connection to this neighbourhood where all are welcome.

Linda Jutzi

Executive Director, Downtown Kitchener BIA

Shirley Madill

Executive Director, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Share your experience #DTKArtWalk | @DTKitchener

THE MAP

Share your experience #DTKArtWalk | @DTKitchener

38. BETWEEN THE ACTS

40. 30 ONTARIO ALLEY

42. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF?

44. THE ELECTROHOME

46. ABSTRACT SEDITION

48. REVEALING THE LANDSCAPE

50. BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

52. THE GOUDIE MURAL

54. GOUDIES LANE 5

56. GOUDIES LANE 4

58. GOUDIES LANE 3

60. GOUDIES LANE 2

62. GOUDIES LANE 1

64. QUEEN STREET PLACEMAKING PROJECT

66. THIS SHADOW IS MY OWN - VERSION 2

68. SIX TREES

70. SYNERGY

72. STORIES OF NEW BEGINNINGS

74. SWEET PEA

76. THE MARKET WALK

78. GROWING TOGETHER

80. GERMAN HERITAGE

82. DOWNTOWN PRESENCE

84. KITCHENER MARKET PIAZZA

86. ENTRANCE MURAL

88. JOY

90. SWEET PEA FLOWER MURAL

92. THE MURAL OF BELONGING

120. HALLS LANE 1

122. WE ARE THE SAME BEINGS

HOUSE FIRE (CHRONIC HEARTBREAK) & ALRIGHT 126. REMEMBER TO

KINSHIP 130. AOK ONIIJAANIW (DOE) 132. HALLS LANE 4

ZHASHAGI

ROADSIDE REDS

MENDED

IN THE KEEP OF CHANGE

CITY OWAYSEUG

GAUKEL BLOCK

RAINBOW WALKWAY

HALLS LANE 3

HALLS LANE 2

TRANSGENDER PRIDE FLAG WALKWAY

154. HONOURARY TRIBUTE FOR EVERY CHILD MATTERSFOOTPRINTS

156. THE LUGGAGE PROJECT

158. RECOGNIZE EVERYONE

160. IN THE CLOUDS

162. THE TILE PROJECT

164. THE VALUE OF ONE THE POWER OF MANY

166. PEDESTRIAN

168. WARM AND COLD

APORIA

Artist: Ed Zelenak

Year: 1978 Medium: Fiberglass sculpture

Location: 200 Frederick Street

Noted artist Ed Zelenak designed this controversial twisted orange fibreglass sculpture that sits on the lawn outside of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, Central Division. It was given as a gift from the province in 1980.

The piece has been part of our community landscape for 40 years with little information provided. As former Kitchener councillor and culture advocate Jean Haalboom speculated in an opinion piece for Kitchener Post back in 2017, was Aporia perhaps

“ … meant to lighten up the 1977, threestorey, windowless concrete building, a mid-century modern example of the Brutalist style of architecture [of the courthouse].”

Zelenak’s artwork explores the condition of the inner self — the dichotomies of life, and the interplay of intuition and logic through the use of the familiar iconography of trees, crosses, stairs, arrows and circles. Born in 1940, Zelenak studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design from 1957-59, and resumed his art studies in 1960 at the Fort Worth Art

Centre and Barsch Kelly Atelier in Dallas, Texas. He held the position of Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Western Ontario, from 1979-88. He has been a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts since 1976. Zelenak’s work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, Czech Museum of Fine Arts, Prague, the Chicago Athenaeum, Chicago, and The Ukrainian Museum, New York.

CANOE AND HERON

Artist: August Swinson @augustillustrated

Year: 2021 Medium: Digital illustration

Location: 151 Frederick Street

August Swinson grew up on the small Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation.

Early memories of life influenced his work as an illustrator. Swinson remembers nostalgic images of chopping and carrying wood and water, canoeing with his Grandfather or scrambling over rock with his siblings on the islands that dot the lakes of the Kawarthas. With a career in graphic design, he now spends time in his studio located in Kitchener.

An illustration combining a favourite activity and a favourite bird. You don’t have to go far to be on the lake or to see these magnificent birds.

EXPLORE MOR

PLANTING ONE ANOTHER

Artist: Mike MacDonald @kwartgallery

Year: Ongoing Medium: Wood, native plant species

Location: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 101 Queen Street North

Mike MacDonald (1941-2006) was a Mi’kmaq artist whose work primarily focused on the environment – incorporating plants and animals into many of his pieces. From the late 1980s into the early 1990s, MacDonald recorded testimony and created visual documents for the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en during their land claim challenges. While on location for a video shoot near Kitwanga, British Columbia, in an area threatened by clear-cut logging, MacDonald’s encounters with butterflies inspired his understanding of their connection to medicinal plants and healing. This was the seed of his numerous butterfly gardens created from 1995 to 2003 across the country. These gardens made spaces for contemplation and invited slow looking and interaction with medicinal plants.

MacDonald designed and built more than 20 gardens across the country, and for each space, he drew from Indigenous ancestral practices contributing to his extensive botanical knowledge. MacDonald understood that native pollinators are particularly attracted to native plants in order to eat, rest and breed. In the catalogue for the 2003 Shore/Lines exhibition, MacDonald explained that “(A)ll of the native plants that butterflies use have traditional medicinal uses.” MacDonald’s gardens provide a rich refuge for medicinal perennial plants (which return every spring) native to the Region, butterflies and other pollinators, inviting audiences to take time for contemplating and imagining healthier and more reciprocal futures. The best time to view these plants is between June and October, annually.

PROTECTING THE MEMORY

Artist: Timothy Schmalz @timschmalz

Year: 2007 Medium: Bronze casting

Location: Civic District Park (across from CITS)

Margaret and Queen Street

This 13-foot memorial sculpture depicts a fire fighting scene encircled in the arc of angels’ wings. The installation includes inscribed bronze helmets for fallen firefighters as a lasting tribute to their sacrifice.

Commissioned by Kitchener Professional Fire Fighters Association; donated to the City of Kitchener.

PAST | PRESENT | FUTURE

Artist: Ernest Daetwyler @ernestdaetwyler

Year: 2018 Medium: Mixed media (limestone, bricks, steel) sculpture

Location: 20 Weber Street East

On September 30, 2014, Regional Council approved the commissioning of Past | Present | Future by Ernest Daetwyler for installation at the former County Courthouse at 20 Weber St. E., Kitchener.

Daetwyler’s series of seven spheres of different materials and sizes was purposeful — to get people thinking about evolution and the notion of time, while also involving Indigenous women from the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener. The three limestone spheres refer to a distant past. A larger sphere is made of bricks, taken from some old downtown buildings. The reflective, steel sphere represents the present.

The piece makes a strong artistic statement in line with the project’s theme, which is the evolution of the site and of the Regional government and complements the site, the historically significant courthouse building, and nearby Waterloo County Jail and Governor’s House.

People are encouraged to visit the site to engage with the artwork and enjoy the public space. The artwork is located on the Queen Street side of the property next to the Ontario Heritage Trust plaques.

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FOOTPRINTS

Artist: Nicholas Rees

Year: 2005 Medium: Cast Portland cement

Location: Downtown Community Centre, 35 Weber Street West

A whimsical take on creating paths and storytelling in a literal footstep sense.

This installation uses historic samples of footwear that had been donated to the Artifacts Project by Tom Kaufman, President of Kaufman Footwear. The samples would have been made in the King Street plant Downtown Kitchener. The imprints suggest footsteps leading to the Community Centre.

ANVIL

Artist: Nicholas Rees

Year: 1996 Medium: Ferrocement

Location: City Hall (outside Duke Steet entrance), 200 King Street West

Nicholas Rees’ piece symbolizes Kitchener’s industrial past and hopes for the future.

The Anvil acknowledges the industrial history of Kitchener, expressed by the City’s motto, “ex industria prosperitas” translated to “the industry success.” Also, it resonates with the Kitchener Industrial Artifacts Project which was founded in 1996 by Rees in partnership with the City of Kitchener. The Artifacts Project celebrates the local industry and its history, where the placement of selected pieces resonates on many levels connecting their significance in that specific location.

Down

Town

HORSEPOWER

Artist: Brad Golden and Lynne Eichenberg

Year: 1993 Medium: Mixed media (glass, iron, steel, aluminum) Location: City Hall (outside Duke Street entrance), 200 King Street West

Commissioned to celebrate the opening of the new Kitchener City Hall in 1993, this piece recognizes the historical role industry played in Kitchener’s development.

This sculpture was inspired by the well-preserved stock of industrial buildings within the City. The project features a composition of four large machinery wheels complimented by a monument glazing screen. The screen facing City Hall displays images selected from the City archives on the surface. A large frosted image of a Regional scene faces the countryside beyond.

Stainless steel letters are inlaid in the surfaces of the two benches within the sodded area of the artwork that spells “Industria” and “Prosperitas” – both words taken from the City of Kitchener’s motto which are representative of the values of the City and the metaphor of the artwork.

Heit & Hope

QUEUING TO WAIT Year: 2019

Artist: Sherry Czekus @sherryczekus

Medium: Oil on canvas

CONVERGENCE SCREEN TEST 1

Year: 2021 Artist: Lauren Prousky @laurenprousky

Medium: Digital drawing

HEALTHY HABIT Year: 2021

Artist: Brie Pointer @briepointer

Medium: Digital illustration

THREAD Year: 2021

Artist: LOF Photography @lofphotography

Medium: Photography

Hope lane

INNER REFLECTION Year: 2021

Artist: Miranada Herdman

Medium: Digital illustration

YOU COULD BE HERE A

Year: 2021

Year: Derek Koehler

@prunelia_fb

Medium: Digital image

QUAIL AND DUMPLINGS Year: 2020

Artist: Kat Hernden @kathernden

Medium: Acrylic and embroidery thread on canvas

YOU COULD BE HERE B

Year: 2021

Year: Derek Koehler

@prunelia_fb

Medium: Digital image

Heit & Hope

IN THIS PLACE Year: 2020

Artist: Lucy Bilson @lucybilsondesign

Medium: Typographic poster

LOVE Year: 2021

Artist: Robin Linder Design

@rlinder.design

Medium: Digital illustration

STUCK BETWEEN Year: 2021

Artist: Amy Esplen @amy_esplen

Medium: 3D design

SELF DISCOVERY Year: 2021

Artist: Senara Dowrick @senarasart

Medium: Digital illustration

Hope lane

A HOME WITHIN A HOME

Year: 2020 Artist: Lupita Guerrero

@lupitague.art Medium: Digital Illustration

COMPARISON Year:

2021 Artist: Amy Esplen

@amy_esplen

Medium: 3D design

START CREATING Year: 2021

Artist: Sara Nieto @saranietoillustration

Medium: Digital illustration

CONVERGENT REALMS #3

Artist: Ardea Rose Thurston-Shaine @ardearts

Year: 2024 Medium: Oil on canvas

Location: 30 Water Street North

Ardea Rose Thurston-Shaine is a resident artist at the Globe Studios in Kitchener. Since she grew up in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, her art practice combines her love of natural beauty with her penchant for philosophical reflection. ThurstonShaine received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2018. Her art has been shown internationally including in Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, New York City, London UK, and Italy.

A water surface is the place where multiple worlds meet. It is a space where what is inside and what is outside is debatable, where what is real and what is only seeming is called into question. Three different realms emerge: the underneath, the above, and the surface itself. Reflections and shadows alter the viewers’ vision of which objects exist in which spaces, including the artist and the viewers themselves. The reference photo for Convergent Realms #3 was taken at Columbia Lake Park in Waterloo, using a ceramic sculpture that artist Ardea Rose Thurston-Shaine made and dropped into the stream.

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INDOORS OUT

Artist: Stephanie Scott @sstephaniesscott

Year: 2019 Medium: Acrylic paint on plywood

Location: 340 King Street West

Stephanie Scott is an illustrator and designer specializing in murals and environmental branding. With an education in Fine Art and Graphic Design, her work unifies her skills in both traditional and digital media.

Based on childhood nostalgia, the bright and inviting colour palette of Scott’s mural brings a sense of personality throughout, and is intended to brighten and be an inviting piece in the space. The simple shapes and strong lines provide a pleasant unifying feeling while sitting at the outdoor lounging space.

DTK OUTDOOR MURAL

Artist: Trisha Abe @trishaabe

Year: 2018 Medium: Acrylic paint on plywood

Location: 227 King Street West

Trisha Abe is a painter, illustrator and muralist based in Kitchener, Ontario. Abe’s dive into the world of visual arts was sudden and intense. She is heavily influenced by female portraiture and her work embraces the human form through minimalism and celebrates strong character, diversity, and feminine energy.

Abe aims to breakdown complex, multidimensional beings into their most basic elements. She has painted murals for a number of clients including: Shopify, Inkbox Toronto, Communitech, and the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo.

Cited from Abe’s website

MOON LANDING

Artist: Conan Stark @starkconan

Year: 2023 Medium: Digital illustration

Location: 1 Young Street

Conan Stark is a multidisciplinary artist and arts educator. His practice has seen him awarded grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Waterloo Region Arts Fund, and Pat the Dog. His work has been seen throughout the Region since he graduated from the University of Waterloo’s Fine Art undergraduate program in 2002. He won the Community Edition’s “Best Visual Artist 2023” and won an Arts Award “Denney” from the 2023 Waterloo Region Arts Awards.

Art is a lifelong fascination and joy for Stark. His art practice uses photography, mixed media and digital illustration to explore the power of imaginative storytelling as social practice. His often brightly rendered works echo the influence of sequential comic art, entangled with a personal connection to place and memory. The creative process of drawing for Stark is all about seeing, which allows him to accept the world is not as it looks, and in turn teaches him to see beyond the immediate.

WELCOME // WE ARE ALL THE SAME // GRANDCHILDREN’S JOY

Artist: Pamela Rojas @p.rojas.art

Year: 2010-12

Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: 102 King Street West

Pamela Rojas believes in and enjoys creating art as an individual artist. As a community art project where she integrates people in the process of executing the work, her experience teaches that art can be a vivid experience for different groups of people, and it also creates community bridges.

Rojas’ designs are inspired by a mix of Latin American muralists and Folk Art Style. Her painting presents us with a magical, peaceful, serene world with candour and imaginative spontaneity. She explores vivid colours, emotions, and the fusion of ceramic details. The essence and the character of Rojas’ style sprouts from the innocence of the mind, and simplicity, which removes constraints and allows more liberty in composition — transmitting a sense of happiness and surprise in a world as though seen by people for the first time.

CELESTIAL MECHANICS

Artist: Kate Wilson @kate.wilson.eidetics, CAFK+A @cafkabiennial Year: 2009

Medium: Acrylic paint on brick

Location: 102 King Street West

Kate Wilson’s practice has focused on large-scale wall drawing installations, having completed a drawing entitled Microbial Baroque at the Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax Nova Scotia.

This piece is in collaboration with Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area (CAFK+A) a non-profit, artistrun organization that presents a free biennial exhibition of contemporary art in the public spaces of the City of Kitchener and across the Region of Waterloo.

Celestial Mechanics is a large scale architecturally sitespecific wall drawing. Wilson’s drawings flirt with abstraction and recall macro views of botanical and astronomical forms. They take on the appearance of intimate, colourful, doodles that have been magnified to larger proportions.

Cited from cafka.org

BETWEEN THE ACTS

Artist: Jane Buyers

Year: 2002 Medium: Bronze

Location: 36 King Street West

Between the Acts is a bronze relief representing part of the drapery and hem of a brocade theatre curtain, which appears to be billowing through the brick facade of the building from the stage inside.

Theatre & Company, similar to most contemporary theatres, did not have a stage curtain. Nevertheless, the curtain remains a powerful symbol of the border between

everyday life and the heightened experience that is the theatre. The image of a curtain embodies the anticipation, the excitement, the sense of magic and transformation that lie at the core of the theatrical experience.

Since Theatre & Company has since closed, this artwork serves as a bit of a historical document of what was once there.

30 ONTARIO ALLEY

Artist: Andrew Thom @rapspray

Medium: Mixed media mural and spray paint

Location: 30 Ontario Street North

In the alleyway at the side of 30 Ontario Street North, Andrew Thom expanded and created this piece to run the entire length of the building.

This piece, brought together by three smaller pieces, brings exploration to letterforms. It accents, juxtapositions between flat, monochromatic colour palettes seen in the lettering and 3-dimensional atmosphere of the background.

Thom’s typographical and shape-driven mural gives viewers an opportunity to come to their own conclusion on the context of the piece as a whole. His use of heavy line work to create the illusion of a light source allows the piece to pop off the wall. It’s this form of art that inspires Thom to continue exploring different avenues, letter-forms, colour and artistic culture.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF?

Artist: Kat Hernden @kathernden

Year: 2024 Medium: Acrylic and embroidery thread hand sewn into canvas

Location: 48 Ontario Street North

Inspired by patterns found in nature, architecture, and on bathroom floors, self-taught, Kitchener-based artist, Kat Hernden, creates made-youlook geometric works of art using canvas, acrylics and embroidery thread.

Hernden’s artistic practice revolves around a deep fascination with patterns, offering solace amidst chaos. By seamlessly integrating thread

into canvas, she merges geometric painting with traditional embroidery techniques, forging a captivating intersection of art and craft. Drawing from a lifelong passion for needle arts, Hernden finds solace in the meditative rhythm of hand sewing, infusing her work with a sense of order and balance. Through her art, she invites viewers into a world where intricate patterns offer both aesthetic delight and a sanctuary from the tumult of modern life.

THE ELECTROHOME

Artist: Christina Peori

Year: 1995 Medium: Mixed media and plaster

Location: 33 Ontario Street North

The mural depicts Electrohome Ltd., previously a prominent manufacturer of appliances and electrical equipment.

Set in the 1900s, this mural showcases a large balloon with examples of Electrohome’s products and family set in the middle of the balloon. The baby in the piece portrays the son of Arthur B. Pollock, Founder of the Electrohomes. Expanding on family ties and connection to one another, this mural provides strong leading lines and captures the viewer’s eye within the balloon.

Town

ABSTRACT SEDITION

Artist: James Nye @james.nye.18

Year: 2023 Medium: Oil on reassembled canvas

Location: 8 Queen Street North

James Nye was born in Kitchener and raised in Ajax. After graduating from high school, he found himself with no ambition in his life and no insight into where it would take him.

He moved from Ontario to Vancouver Island, where a slow and steady process of awakening took place. This is when Nye discovered painting. Based in Kitchener once again, he is continuously creating thought-provoking works of the highest standard.

Nye’s paintings are rooted in the realist, descriptive tradition of oil painting. In his paintings, there is an abundance of information at hand. Imagery overlaps. Systems collide. Colour, line and form blanket the landscape.

Using remnants of canvas cut from his past works, Nye creates colourful, abstract collages filled with contrast and complexity. These surfaces serve as the foundation for Nye’s painted imagery whereby his intriguing landscapes emerge.

REVEALING THE LANDSCAPE

Artist: Nancy Farrell @NancyFarrellArt

Year: 2021 Medium: Acrylic/Canvas

Location: 7 Duke Street West

After completing an Honours BA in Fine Art from the University of Guelph, Nancy Farrell continued her art studies through working with artists in the United States and Canada. Her art journey first began with clay work at the Waterloo Potters’ Workshop. She soon moved into figurative sculpture in clay, then into found materials, leading her to begin painting. Farrell currently maintains studio space in both Waterloo and in Guelph.

Nature is the impetus for her creative process. For Farrell, the process of art-making has, at its core, a contemplative, spiritual understanding of the natural world. Farrell’s response is to select, distill, convert and arrange textures, shapes, marks and colours that emerge from distilled memories of landscape.

Farrell begins each canvas with no plan, but uses extensive mark making as she taps into conscious and unconscious memories. Art speaks of things that cannot be easily expressed and Farrell uses intuition to accept the challenge of producing both abstract and non-objective paintings.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE/ THE KW HOMELESS MEMORIAL

Artist: Ernest Daetwyler @ernestdaetwyler

Year: 2020 Medium: Bronze, red sandstone slab

Location: Vogelsang Green (Duke and Queen Street)

Ernest Daetwyler studied at the Schule für Gestaltung, Bern, Switzerland, the Centro Europeo in Venice, Italy and received his Master’s diploma from the Schule für Gestaltung, St. Gallen, Switzerland.

His multidisciplinary projects, exhibitions and public interventions are being presented in Canada and internationally. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, Pro Helvetia, Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Presence Suisse, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG) 2010 Exhibition of the Year Award, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, the Waterloo Region Arts Award in Visual Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, N.Y.

Daetwyler is a founding member, former Artistic/Executive Director of the international, artist-run biennial CAFK+A: the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area.

This public art project honours and remembers those who have lost their lives while experiencing homelessness.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a community collaboration initiated by Suzi Gursoy, a Kitchener resident with a lived experience of homelessness. Gursoy’s hope is that this memorial will create a respectful space to remember those we have lost and remind us that we must continually strive towards a world where homelessness no longer exists.

The project was able to be realized with the support of The KW Homeless Memorial Committee, whose members represent local organizations that exist to assist and raise awareness about people on the streets, the community, friends and volunteers, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund and City of Kitchener.

THE GOUDIE MURAL

Artist: The Firm @thefirm.murals

Year: 2017 Medium: Mixed media mural and spray paint Location: Goudies Lane (entrance through Queen Street North)

GOUDIES LANE

This mural was brought to life by The Firm, a mural collective who captured the vision of Downtown Kitchener through live music and art. As it was completed, people enjoyed live entertainment from a band performing beside the wall in the alcove where the mural resides.

GOUDIES LANE

GOUDIES LANE Nº5

Artist: Jordan Warmington @jordan_war

Year: 2017 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: Goudies Lane

(entrance through Queen Street North)

GOUDIES LANE

Jordan Warmington’s tattooing style, and use of flat and punchy colours, are clearly translated into this mural. Bold lines and a four-colour palette allow for a captivating piece that highlights a little something for everyone and creates a depth and sense of movement.

GOUDIES LANE

GOUDIES LANE Nº4

Artist: Andrew Thom @rapspray

Year: 2017 Medium: Mixed media mural and spray paint Location: Goudies Lane (entrance through Queen Street North)

GOUDIES LANE

Andrew Thom finds inspiration through a wide range of aspects when it comes to his street art, finding the lines and highlights through light, movement and a selected colour palette.

Thom works with trending and popular colour palettes accompanied by letter exploration, deviating from traditional understandings of how letter-forms work with each other. Thom pushes the

boundaries of what letter-forms and light sources can do. He enjoys the whole process of exploration and lets himself and viewers rationalize and interpret his work from their own perspectives. Whether that is through following the map of movement designed by Thom or enjoying the colour integration with its surroundings, his pieces are yours to discover.

GOUDIES LANE

GOUDIES LANE Nº3

Artist: Stephanie Boutari @stephboutari

Year: 2017 Medium: Mixed media mural exterior acrylic paint Location: Goudies Lane (entrance through Queen Street North)

GOUDIES LANE

Stephanie Boutari is known for her large scale architecturally-inspired pieces, accompanied by vibrant colours, a wide range of depth and detail.

Boutari emphasizes her work with strong lines and uniform shapes that join one to another in a harmonious balance between colour, structure, depth of field, gestalt and other elements and principles of design. Focusing on gradients, this piece allows the brick to take on a sense of breaking through a visual fourth wall.

GOUDIES LANE

GOUDIES LANE Nº2

Artist: Tori Ward Year: 2017

Medium: Mixed media mural acrylic paint

Location: Goudies Lane

(entrance through Queen Street North)

GOUDIES LANE

An almost sketchbook-like style, this mural provides a nice punch of contrast with the simple black and white figures planting and taking care of nature. Along with three children, the poem helps tell the story to bring strong balance and relatable qualities when viewing this mural, not shying away from topics that are relevant to all viewers.

GOUDIES LANE

GOUDIES LANE Nº1

Artist: Clare Binnie @clarebinnieart

Underground Gallery @ undergroundgallery

Year: 2017 Medium: Mixed media mural acrylic paint

Location: Goudies Lane

(entrance through Queen Street North)

GOUDIES LANE

This organic and free-flowing form takes on an interpretation of the City as a whole. Using strong use of colour and movement, the viewer’s eye can move throughout the piece, taking notice of the buildings and clock tower of Victoria Park. This piece allows for the viewer’s own interpretation.

GOUDIES LANE

QUEEN STREET PLACEMAKING PROJECT

Artist: Designed through community engagement

Year: 2020 Medium: Duratherm on asphalt

Location: Intersection of Queen Street and King Street

The design in the Queen Street corridor helps mark the importance of the Queen Street and King Street intersection as the centre of Downtown Kitchener, and signals the space is a place for people, not just cars.

It also helps to provide traffic calming and connectivity for pedestrians crossing Queen Street via Halls Lane or Goudies Lane. This work was part of the Queen Street reconstruction that includes the redesign of Vogelsang Green.

The design itself is a colourful, abstract piece that works in a series of icons related to the area, including crowns symbolizing King and Queen streets, a heart to symbolize the heart of downtown, opera masks and more.

THIS SHADOW IS MY OWN - VERSION 2

Artist: Maureen O’Connor @maureenfaithoconnor

Year: 2024 Medium: Chromogenic Photograph

Location: 26 King Street East

Maureen O’Connor’s artistic practice is lens based traditional photography. Photographs are printed on Chromogenic paper, traditional darkroom emulsion based paper.

O’Connor is a life-long animal lover and the photographs from “The Threshold Series” are produced with the cooperation of local sanctuaries. Many of these animals from the series are rescues from fur farms and others are nonreleasable wildlife.

The animals in these images were brought and photographed onsite in the location seen in these photographs. Several of the locations are private homes in Toronto, pre-redevelopment or prior to the homes being demolished. By photographing Canadian animals in abandoned and crumbling domestic architecture, O’Connor raises questions about how nature and the built environment intersect. She sees these spaces as transformative, evoking memory and showing the beauty and fragility of the animals and the architecture. While the juxtaposition may appear odd, the images convey a sense of calm and quiet tension.

We are invited to cross the threshold and imagine new narratives where the natural world and the domestic world meet, and consider how this informs our identity in a country defined by both its wild landscape and its orderly cities.

SIX TREES

Artist: Cathy Amos @cathy.amos

Year: 2019 Medium: Acrylic

Location: 70 King Street East

Cathy Amos is inspired by colour, patterns and textures and applies it playfully in unexpected ways. Amos seeks out joy and happiness in her work and looks for the exceptional in everyday life. Intuitively, she works up shapes, lines and spaces in all her work until the energy connects to that ‘ah-ha’ moment.

Six Trees was developed from small thumbnail sketches of mark making. This playful interpretation of trees shows whimsical leaves and branches and cross-section rings. Strong straight roots anchor the trees amidst smooth stones. A nature inspired colour palette brings harmony to this fun little row of trees.

SYNERGY

Artist: Clear Eyes Collective @cleareyescollective

Year: 2022 Medium: Spray paint

Location: 27 Scott Street

Clear Eyes Collective is a mural crew based out of Hamilton, Ontario. Made up of members Darian Poisson, Adam Bates and Josh Kellett, their mission is to integrate the mysterious power of art into the plain cityscape, transforming ordinary spaces into an immersive gallery. Their approach to public art has always been rooted in creating vibrant visual environments that connect and uplift the community at large.

The trio have been painting large-scale murals as a team for 6+ years, and in that time, they have had the opportunity to partner with local businesses, festivals, different municipalities/ cities, and corporations. They take tremendous care to make sure their designs are tailored to each specific project, while always maintaining a vibrant and bold style that naturally comes out of their collaborations.

As a collective, they explore the mysterious power of visual art through painting murals, with a focus on converting city streets into an immersive gallery. With spray paint as Clear Eyes Collective’s primary tool, their work is inspired by tropical themes, musical experiences and the human connection. As

artists who are primarily painting walls in a public space, they place great value in the subtle way that murals can enhance the visual environment of a neighbourhood. Their goal with this design is to draw attention to the harmony that exists between the urban and natural landscape and compliment the sense of community that Kitchener already has to offer. Clear Eyes Collective aims to create a landmark that locals would be proud to have in their neighbourhood, while simultaneously welcoming a bright future.

This project was made possible through the generous support of the Regional Tourism Organization 4 Inc. (RTO4).

STORIES OF NEW BEGINNINGS

Artist: Pamela Rojas @p.rojas.art

Year: 2014 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: 256 King Street East

Celebrating years of providing support to newly arrived refugees, this mural is filled with vibrant colours and the narration of a strong cultured community. Spanning the length of the building, this mural allows you to gravitate to the warm colours, inviting scenery and sense of community.

Town

SWEET PEA

Artist: Walter Gibson

Year: 2004 Medium: Terrazzo tille, glass, mosaic tile, copper, concrete (fountain)

Location: Kitchener Market (Eby Street), 300 King Street East

This elegant and playful fountain, stretching 33 feet long, is in the shape of a pea pod. It functions as a seating area, and the centre of the fountain features running water over five copper peas. The fountain benches were designed out of traditional terrazzo glass; the colourful higher back area is Byzantine glass mosaic. The fountain was created when the market was opening at the current location, making references to the food and farming.

THE MARKET WALK

Artist: Nicole Beno @nicole_beno

Year: 2014 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: 300 King Street East (on Eby Street)

Inspired by the sounds, smells, sights, tastes, atmosphere and culture of the market on a busy Saturday morning, Nicole Beno created a mural that spans the width of Eby Street.

Tapping into what Beno’s visits to the market are like, she utilized her style of abstraction and colour theory, line, unity, shape and movement to represent the vibrancy of the market — capturing the organicness, and seasonality of it all.

GROWING TOGETHER

Artist: Jon Johnson @brfc

Year: 2023 Medium: Latex paint on concrete

Location: Kitchener Market, 300 King Street

East (Eby Street ramp to parking)

Jon Johnson is a self-taught graphic designer and screenprinter who was born and raised in Kitchener.

The city, the people, the communities, the plants, the animals – all of us grow better when we remember that we are Growing Together.

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THE GERMAN HERITAGE OF THE WATERLOO REGION

Artist: Gus Froese

Year: 1998 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: Kitchener Market, 300 King Street East (Eby Street parking garage)

Constructed as if reading an old newspaper, this piece showcases the German heritage of the City. It captures a couple dancing, while melding both historic and present-day images.

The colour palette used is influenced by German culture, with rich earthy tones and aspects showcased in traditional German clothing. The work is encased with a decorative border that lets the piece blend organically onto the market wall.

DOWNTOWN PRESENCE

Artist: Monte Wright

Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: Kitchener Market, 300 King Street East (Eby Street parking garage)

This mural uses a colour palette that resonates with strength, honour and humble caring feelings. The story told through the piece leads the viewer’s eyes to the centre and back out to the other side of the mural. The movement allows for every element to be showcased in its own unique way.

KITCHENER MARKET PIAZZA

Artist: Melika Hashemi, Meg Harder @meghan.harder

Year: 2019 Medium: Paint Location: Kitchener Market,

300 King Street East (Piazza)

Melika Hashemi’s earlier works are reimaginations of aspects of Iranian culture experienced in hyphenated ways, and her current works reflect concerns with marginality, resistance and her relationship to “home.”

An aspect of Meg Harder’s work considers the social history of Fraktur Folk Art — imaginative, illuminated calligraphy made by early Mennonite settlers to Ontario.

Hashemi and Harder were drawn together by the aesthetic resonances between Persian and Mennonite visual

culture. This mural design mixes motifs and patterns from each cannon, to create a colourful and eye-catching hybrid space that reflects the modern intercultural realities of Kitchener. The abstract design reveals small scenes compiled from historic Fraktur and Persian miniature illustrations. Botanical motifs and highly stylized text are featured in both Persian and Mennonite artwork. This mural will also feature site-responsive poetry by local writers Seth Razlaff and Bashar Jabbour. Together, these different elements blend in celebration of food, culture and gathering.

ENTRANCE MURAL

Artist: Stephanie Scott @sstephaniesscott

Year: 2023 Medium: Digital design, printed on vinyl panels

Location: Kitchener Market, 300 King Street East (Piazza)

Stephanie Scott is an artist and designer specializing in murals and environmental branding. With an education in fine art and graphic design, her work unifies her skills in both traditional and digital media.

Scott approaches each project with a fresh perspective, viewing it as an opportunity to learn and create something new. She works closely with people to create designs that are custom tailored to them, feeling like an extension of their brand. Each project calls for a particular solution, therefore each piece she creates is a little bit different.

As a regular at the Kitchener Market, Scott wanted to capture the vibrancy of the space, and the excitement of shopping on Saturday morning. Each panel features an arrangement of different items one might buy at the market. These include baked goods, fresh cut flowers and produce from all different seasons. Hidden in each panel are tiny silhouettes of people, playfully interacting among the arrangements.

JOY

Artist: Behnaz Fatemi @behnazfaatemi

Year: 2022 Medium: Acrylic Paint

Location: Kitchener Market, 300 King Street East (Cedar Street)

When Behnaz Fatemi first immigrated from Iran to Canada in 2018, she found it challenging to make visual connections with her new environment – everything was new and different. Fatemi found visiting the Kitchener Market to be healing, as it felt familiar to the markets Fatemi used to frequent in Iran.

A graduate from the University of Guilan, Iran, with a BFA in Studio Arts, Fatemi now lives in Waterloo Region and is on her way to completing an MFA at the University of Waterloo. Fatemi is an interdisciplinary artist who works across various mediums and techniques: mainly in drawing, sculpture, installation and performance. Fatemi’s work investigates the deep connection between humans and their behaviours. Fatemi’s most recent piece, Joy, which is

located at the Kitchener Market, shows just that. The piece brings the spirit of one’s market rituals to life, while also celebrating the Market’s rich diversity. The series of shopping bags in Fatemi’s mural are held by diverse hands, and the bags themselves are containing items of significance to various cultures, signifying that the Kitchener Market can act as a unifying space for a community of such unique and individualized lived experiences.

“The Kitchener Market, with its welcoming, diverse, and vibrant atmosphere, resembled the Grand Bazaar in Esfahan, the city I was born in and had lived in before immigration. Visiting the Kitchener Market every few weeks eventually became a ritual for me. Shopping, walking, and people-watching at the market promoted my healing, inculcating a sense of belonging into my mind.”

SWEET PEA FLOWER MURAL

Artist: Stephanie Scott @sstephaniesscott

Year: 2023 Medium: Exterior latex paint

Location: Kitchener Market, 300 King Street East (Cedar Street parking garage entrance)

Stephanie Scott is an artist and designer specializing in murals and environmental branding. With an education in fine art and graphic design, her work unifies her skills in both traditional and digital media.

Scott approaches each project with a fresh perspective, viewing it as an opportunity to learn and create something new. She works closely with people to create designs that are custom tailored to them, feeling like an extension of their brand. Each project calls for a particular solution, therefore each piece she creates is a little bit different.

To make use of the unusual shape of this space, Scott envisioned a design that could organically creep up one side of the wall and around the other. She drew inspiration from Walter Gibson’s “Sweet Pea” fountain on the opposite side of the market. Sweet peas are climbing plants, which made them the perfect fit for the space. Scott chose to show a variety of colours, which will keep this area looking lively all throughout the year.

THE MURAL OF BELONGING

Artist: Pamela Rojas @p.rojas.art, August Swinson @augustillustrated, Mono Gonzalez @monogonzalezchile, The Firm @thefirm.murals, Ian Pierce @artesekeo, coordinated by Neruda Arts @nerudaarts.ca

Year: 2017 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: Charles Street near Cameron Heights

Neruda Arts had the vision to create a huge mural representing the desire and need to belong to a community. This ambitious concept was realized, and the 150-foot mural, to coincide with Canada’s 150-year celebrations, was installed on Charles Street in Kitchener in September 2017. The mural came to fruition as the amazing local and international artists funnelled the skills of over 150 talented members of our community.

By recognizing that Canada is a nation of immigrants living on Indigenous land, through this mural, they explored the Indigenous, multicultural and Canadian identity by visually narrating the story of belonging. The activity itself brought different cultural communities of all ages together to create a piece of beautiful art, from varied perspectives.This piece is about the need to belong, the celebration of equity, social justice and respect for cultural diversity on this land we all call home.

ANIMANIMUS

Artist: Ted Fullerton

Year: 1999 Medium: Bronze

Location: Corner of King and Madison Street

A two-part sculpture comprising a figure elevated on a pole accompanied by a chair element.

Animanimus celebrates Kitchener’s rich historical background in manufacturing, retail, hospitality and community by symbolically utilizing the universal image of a chair. Animanimus is a created word from two psychological terms: anima, animus. It represents a fusion of the soul, spirit, and hospitality.

IN THE GARDEN

Artist: Stephanie Scott @sstephaniesscott

Year: 2020 Medium: Latex paint on brick

Location: 9 Eby Street South

Stephanie Scott works closely with clients to create designs that are tailored to them and feel like an extension of their brand. Some of her work can be seen around Waterloo Region at Catalyst 137, Wilfrid Laurier University, 44 Gaukel and St. Jacobs Village.

Starting each project with an open mind and a blank slate helps Scott create a

custom design for each space. Endless curiosity fuels the research phase of every project. Scott loves any excuse to dig through archives or get lost in books. She continuously collects all kinds of resources and inspiration, waiting for the perfect time to use them. Regardless of what style or subject matter she is working with, when it comes to public art, Scott’s goal is always to create an uplifting atmosphere that can be enjoyed by anyone.

THE WATCHFUL BIRD II

Artist: Sumaira Tazeen @sumairatazeen

Year: 2022 Medium: Mix media on board

Location: 243 King Street East

Sumaira Tazeen is a Canadian visual artist, educator and curator of Pakistani origin.

She received her BFA in miniature painting and sculpture from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 1996. Since then, her work has been exhibited in established group and solo exhibitions across South Asia, United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East, and has been presented to such influential figures as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Rania of Jordan. Her work is part of International public and private art collections. Tazeen recent paintings have become a part of the ROM’s Global South Asia collection.

Tazeen has been selected as 2018 Artist in Residence for the City of Kitchener. She is showing in prestigious public art galleries like Art Gallery of Mississauga. She has curated a show at Royal Ontario Museum on South Asian Heritage Day (2013) and conducted specialized art workshops and courses at Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2015 and 2022), Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and the University of

Waterloo. Tazeen is continuing her practice in Canada.

Derived from rigorous training in South Asian and Persian miniature traditions, Tazeen’s artistic practice delves into universal themes of womanhood, touching on aspects such as relationships, sexuality, love, fidelity, and health. As an immigrant, single mother, and artist in Canada, Tazeen reflects the challenges faced by women from marginalized communities. Immigrant women, particularly from South Asia, grapple with cultural and social differences. Her art aims to raise awareness, fostering positive change for them.

The Black Crowned Night Heron, a small bird, holds diverse symbolic meanings — patience, wisdom, solitude, emotional connection, transition. In Tazeen’s work, featuring the bird in a vast landscape signifies her journey past trauma towards optimism for a better horizon. This piece encapsulates Tanzeen’s identity, experiences, and narratives, portraying the struggles of universal women and offering a glimpse of hope and positivity amid adversity.

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RECOLLECTION & TRANSFORMATION

OF MEMORY

Artist: Allan Mackay

Year: 2009 Medium: Sainless Steel, ceramic tile and granite

Location: Speaker’s Corner, 2 Benton Street

By incorporating literal and abstract images based on source pictures of the current site, an interactive experience is provided for the viewer. The sculpture is a combination of abstract coloured porcelain tiles, reflected and transformed by a stainless-steel pillar acting like a mirror — into a recognizable image of the site before the modernization process. This perspective technique in visual arts is called anamorphosis. The granite walls contain a series of etched literal and abstract images, as well as text placed strategically on the sculpture and wall elements. The text reinforces the notion of public voice and the purpose of the site (Speaker’s Corner) through repeating phrases: “Speaking public speaking and speak up and speak out.”

UNTITLED (HALLS LANE)

Artist: Jenice Zahraj (1962 - 2021)

Year: 2002 Medium: Acrylic on panel

Location: 20 Queen Street South (Halls Lane)

Jenice Zaraj painted the mural depicting Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington while she worked as the Marketing Manager at The Walper Hotel.

Duke Ellington stayed at The Walper Hotel when he played a concert in 1946 at the Queen Street Auditorium, which was located across the street from The Walper Hotel.

At the time Zehraj painted the mural, The Walper Hotel was promoting historic tours and thought that painting a mural with some of the famous artists who had stayed at The Walper Hotel would add to its historic charm.

This is the only known mural painted by Zahraj.

Information generously provided by Stroll Walking Tours.

MEL BROWN MEMORIAL STATUE

Artist: Abiola Idowu @abiolaidowuart

Year: 2023

Medium: Bronze statue

Location: 44 Queen Street South (Queen Street and Halls Lane)

Abiola Idowu is a multidisciplinary artist. He came to Canada from Nigeria (via Ohio) in 2018. Prior to coming to Canada, Idowu worked briefly with a sculptor in Zanesville, Ohio and continued his own practice.

Idowu has been in North America for eight years, and in this time, his work has been featured in 13 exhibitions, including eight solo exhibitions. He now calls Brampton his home, and he is proud that it embraces him as an artistic icon. He received the 2021 Art Acclaim Award celebrating artists who achieved national and international recognition. In Canada, he has created several public art installations, and he completed a bronze memorial statue of Mel Brown, a project led by THEMUSEUM. Mel Brown was a beloved blues musician who called Kitchener home; Brown passed away in 2009.

SEA TO SKY

Artist: Nathaniel Voll @vollage_art

Year: 2020 Medium: Analogue collage

Location: 44 Queen Street South (Halls Lane)

Nathaniel Voll (he/they) is an analogue collage artist, playwright, poet, actor and arts educator living in the Willow River Watershed (Kitchener, Ontario).

Voll’s art uses animalistic and surreal themes to establish fantastic worlds which challenge the norms of our own. His work has been exhibited at the Kitchener Public Library’s “Gallery at Central” and is forthcoming at Kitchener City Hall and The Registry Theatre. Voll’s collages have been published in Kalopsia Literary Journal, Collage-Lab and elsewhere.

In his analogue collages, Voll often creates

abstract landscapes which challenge the viewer’s expectations of reality, perspective and form. When creating Sea to Sky, they compiled disparate figures from various print sources, collaging a world removed from photorealism. Voll trimmed the images with rough edges which left borders around each element to draw the viewer’s attention to the piece’s surrealism. Through these hints at absurdity and the piece’s connection between nature and humans, Sea to Sky invites viewers to find beauty in the compilation of diverse beings and to consider their assumptions about reality.

GRIZZLY BEAR

Artist: Chris Austin @chrisaustinart

Year: 2014 Medium: Mixed media mural spray paint

Location: 37 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Starting to paint at 15, Chris Austin used his work as a creative outlet, embracing originality. Austin is proud of his style, which has shaped his work throughout Downtown Kitchener and the Region. Collaborating with artists of many facets, Austin has been able to broaden his network and creative reach to the City.

Grizzly bears play a large part in Austin’s work, allowing him to be able to tap into something that is frightening to him and to be able to embrace it with open arms. When this mural was created, it was intended to make the downtown core more lively and vibrant with art. This piece is the second part of the bear series he created. Allowing for the quick fluid lines to flow through, captivating his style, it has become a staple to anyone who walks down Halls Lane.

LEXINGTON AVE

Artist: Sherry Czekus @sherryczekus

Year: 2017 Medium: Oil on canvas

Location: 41 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Sherry Czekus is a Canadian painter based in Waterloo, who completed her MFA at the University of Western Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Arts with Studio Specialization from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Education from Wilfrid Laurier University. The public domain, specifically Kitchener, is a site of observation of urban crowd culture and its participants that Czekus explores through painting.

Czekus’ artistic process begins with becoming one of the crowd as a part of the everyday experience. On busy city sidewalks with her camera, she makes her source images of the urban crowd and its figurative gestures, intersections and spaces between its members. Since the emergence of flaneurism and urban culture in 19th century Europe, the online social frontier has recently developed and has changed our visual perception of the physical crowd experience. Painting, as a conceptual medium, simultaneously expands and collapses these moments Czekus captures as an enriched site of knowledge about us as a collective. Straddling the boundaries of representation and abstraction, she allows the photographic language to give way to the language of painting.

A FAMILY REIMAGINED

Artist: Cody Houle @houlefineart

Year: 2023 Medium: Digital

Location: 50 Ontario Street South (Halls Lane)

Cody James Houle is an Anishinaabe/ French artist born and raised in North Bay. The Houle family were Anishinaabe from Saugeen First Nations.

A self taught artist, Houle has been active in the arts community for six years.

Houle creates art his own way by telling personal stories through woodland, abstract and landscape paintings.

This piece represents a reimagining of Houle’s family’s tragic history, and what could have been, had they had healthy love and support from each other.

THE CONDOR AND THE EAGLE

Artist: Alapinta @alapinta.cl, Neruda Arts @nerudaarts.ca

Year: 2014 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: 30 Ontario Street South (Halls Lane)

This mural was created as a tribute to the Mapuche and Six Nation’s Peoples, the original caretakers of the land.

Neruda Arts brought Alapinta (Chile), who came to Canada, and had many conversations with Six Nations and local Indigenous organizations, before beginning the mural.

Conversations regarding strong storytelling and narration, represented with strong lines, vibrant colour and fluid movement were had. This mural engages the viewer and inspires imagination through imagery while celebrating cultural expression.

This massive mural has been a focus

of Downtown Kitchener since 2014. Alapinta has been an artist collective from La Araucanía Region, in Chile, since 2004, inspired by public art, graffiti and murals. They paint dreams and realities, taking art to various public and private spaces, focusing on health, education, culture, and heritage, among others.

This collaboration between these two groups showcases strong storytelling and narration. Accompanied by strong lines, movement, colour, shapes and gestalt, this massive mural has been a staple of Downtown Kitchener since 2014. Tapping into cultural references and imagery, this piece allows for imagination and inspiration to showcase at the forefront.

HALLS LANE Nº3

Artist: Bruno Smoky @brunosmoky

Year: 2020 Medium: Mixed media mural spray paint

Location: 61 Halls Lane (Halls Lane)

The Artist Bruno, also known as “Smoky,” has dedicated his life to visual art. Since childhood, drawing and creativity was always a part of his daily routine. In 2004

he began painting on walls with spray paint in Brasilândia, a precarious neighbourhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he grew up.

This piece is a hopeful message of growth and rebirth — a peaceful communion between technology and nature through a respectful balance, represented by the recycling symbol and careful use of colour. Promoting this Region’s existing conservation on technology for good, Smoky hopes to inspire the community to explore Halls Lane.

Smoky has gained international and professional recognition through his artistic journeys throughout Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Argentina, Paraguay, Sweden, USA, Germany, The Netherlands, England and Canada.

Smoky has worked in various organizations and NGO’s teaching the history of graffiti and its role in society to at-risk youth. He is currently the coordinator for the Essencia Arts Collective, and a founding member of Clandestinos Crew. Recently, Smoky moved to Toronto, with his wife and artistic collaborator, Shalak, and continues his art practice.

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HALLS LANE Nº2

Artist: Clandestinos Art @clandestinosart

Year: 2020 Medium: Mixed media mural and spray paint Location: 119 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Clandestinos Arts, made up of artists Shalak Attack and Bruno Smoky, explores the presence of nature and urban art context. This immersive mural aims to inspire those that encounter it, and bring forward discussions around the significance and power of the natural world, within an ever-changing built environment.

This work is a reminder of the cycles, resilience and sacred power of nature. This mural project extends across the lane in a wonderfully different direction, while maintaining a singular verve of the artistic talent collectively called Clandestinos.

HALLS LANE Nº1

Artist: Shalak Attack @shalakattack

Year: 2020 Medium: Mixed media mural and spray paint

Location: 119 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Shalak Attack is a CanadianChilean visual artist dedicated to painting, muralism, spray paint urban art and canvas art. For over a decade, Attack has manifested her artistic expression on walls across the planet.

Attack’s practice fuses the spirit of South American muralism with contemporary street art. Her distinctive multi-layered and signature use of colour are emblematic of her unique style that inhabits the realm of psychedelic magical realism.

WE ARE THE SAME BEINGS

Artist: Brubey Hu @brubeyhu, CAFK+A

@cafkabiennial Year: 2020

Medium: Digital illustration on vinyl

Location: 125 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Brubey Hu’s work explores architectural space, colour theory, memory and translation through the lens of duality both visually and conceptually. “A duality that exists within a body, does not necessarily exist as a pair of oppositions,” Hu explains. The pair can also be complementary to each other or live at the same time as coexistence.

Being bilingual and living-in-between, translation is a process that she frequently engages with. Through subtractive simplification, her works are her attempt to discuss the notions of consensus and reconciliation. Hu transcends flat images or physical space and objects, and documents introspective moments.

Hu is a MFA graduate from the University of Waterloo. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. Originally born in Xiamen, China, Hu moved to Vancouver in 2011, then to the United States. She has exhibited at Art Mûr in Montreal, Hui Yuan in Hefei, China and at Florida International University in Miami, US.

EXPLORE MOR

HOUSE FIRE (CHRONIC HEARTBREAK) & ALRIGHT

Artist: Tee Kundu @lukitstee, CAFK+A

@cafkabiennial Year: 2020

Medium: Digital illustration on vinyl

Location: 125 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Tee Kundu takes from personal and communal anecdotes and finds playfulness in stories of both joy and sorrow.

Living under an unsustainable system hurts, and Kundu has found that the only appropriate response to our current ways of living is heartbreak. It is a chronic condition, fuelled by an anxious, over-worked, exhausted population. Kundu feels they are part of this population, as are you. Finding humour in our stories is an act of resistance, and of defiance. It is an act of hope. Heartbreak takes time, and love and patience. We can give each other that. And these stories, they feel they can give to you.

Kundu is an interdisciplinary artist and illustrator. They mostly draw things. In addition, they often work in social practice, performance, zines, facilitation and they’re a DIY dabbler. They want to be a storyteller, and they want to be helpful.

REMEMBER TO

Artist: Racquel Rowe @kellrowe,

CAFK+A

@cafkabiennial Year: 2020

Medium: Digital illustration on vinyl

Location: 125 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Racquel Rowe’s practice explores the realm of gender politics and family structures. She primarily explores the family structures within the Caribbean, with particular emphasis on her own family and the matriarchs within it. Rowe spent a few months in Barbados and was able to reflect on certain practices that connect people through generations. Simple things can often be the hardest to remember, and Rowe seeks to elevate the kind of elementary actions we often take for granted, but that can have a big impact on those around us.

Rowe is a multidisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados, who currently lives and works in Waterloo Region. She’s exhibited widely across Canada and holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BA in History and Studio Art from the University of Guelph. Rowe has shown work in and around the GTA as well as the Caribbean.

KINSHIP

Artist: Alanah Jewell @morning.star.designs, CAFK+A @cafkabiennial Year: 2020

Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: 157 Halls Lane

Alanah Astehtsi’ Otsistóhkwaˀ

Jewell is a Bear Clan artist from Oneida Nation of the Thames.

She uses digital illustrations, acrylic paintings on wood and canvas and mural work to bring Indigenous art and representation to urban spaces. She is also a community organizer, and hosts Indigenous art markets in her home city of Kitchener, Ontario.

“Kinship is a reflection of two different, parallel worlds: one where we long to be connected to community, and one where we are fully immersed in community.

I have lived in both of these worlds,” Jewell explains.

“For those in the first world: you aren’t alone. The distance we feel from community is collective, and connects us to one another as a form of distant kinship. For those in the second world, we are connected based on our shared values. I hope Kinship bridges the gap between these worlds, and inspires people to reach out, build meaningful relationships and understand the importance of belonging to community.”

AOK ONIIJAANIW (DOE)

Artist: August & Luke Swinson

@augustillustrated & @lukeswinsonart

Year: 2021 Medium: Exterior acrylic paint

Location: 154 King Street West (Halls Lane)

August Swinson grew up on the small Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation. Early memories of life influenced his work as an illustrator.

August Swinson remembers nostalgic images of chopping and carrying wood and water, canoeing with his Grandfather or scrambling over rock with his siblings on the islands that dot the lakes of the Kawarthas. With a career in graphic design, he now spends time in his studio located in Kitchener.

Luke Swinson is a visual artist with Anishinaabe roots from Kitchener, Ontario.

A member of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, Swinson’s work reflects his desire to better understand and reclaim his Indigenous culture. He seeks to promote cultural education and preservation through his art projects.

A collaboration between August and Luke Swinson. Both artists are heavily inspired by nature and their Indigenous heritage. The stylized landscape represents the peaceful countryside of their native land.

HALLS LANE Nº4

Artist: Stephanie Boutari @stephboutari

Year: 2020 Medium: Spray paint and acrylic latex paint

Location: 165 King Street West (Halls Lane)

Stephanie Boutari is known for her large scale architecturallyinspired pieces, accompanied by vibrant colours and a wide range of depth and detail.

The design approach behind this artwork was driven by a desire to bring colour into public space, while making a subtle reference to digital technology — a nod to both the pixelated graphics of retro arcade games and the tech culture the area is known for. Leaf-like shapes appear to be ‘digitized’ through an abstraction of their form using geometric outlines and stripes: a visual juxtaposition of nature with technology.

Similarly, the colour palette contrasts shades of green with more vivid, saturated hues and artificial colours such as magenta, all against a black backdrop — a play on how we often view the world through a digital lens or screen.

The mural’s (created for AOK Craft Beer + Arcade) composition is centred on three large windows, working with the wall’s existing symmetry as if to be growing from within the middle window. The design intent here was to visually integrate the windows within the artwork while heightening the overall drama of the piece.

ZHASHAGI

Artist: Luke Swinson @lukeswinsonart

Year: 2020 Medium: Digital illustration

Location: 60 Charles Street West (Halls Lane)

Luke Swinson is a visual artist with Anishinaabe roots from Kitchener, Ontario. A member of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, Luke’s work reflects his desire to better understand and reclaim his Indigenous culture. He seeks to promote cultural education and preservation through his art projects.

Zhashagi means “Blue Heron” in Anishinaabemowin. Swinson has always felt a strong connection with the Heron throughout his life. Their confidence, independence and beauty have been a great source of inspiration to him. Zhashagi, along with much of his art, represents the relationship he has with his culture. As Swinson creates, he reads and learns about the subject of his art through the lens of Anishinaabe people. Swinson uses bold colours and shapes to make his art easy for others to understand and connect with. Swinson’s goal is that his artwork will develop and be nourished along with his understanding of Anishinaabe tradition and language.

ROADSIDE REDS

Artist: Anne Filiatrault @annefiliatrault

Year: 2016 Medium: Oil on Canvas

Location: 44 Gaukel Street

Anne Filiatrault is an oil painter and illustrator based in Kitchener. She holds a BFA from the University of Western Ontario (’91) and an Honours in Interpretive Illustration from Sheridan College (’94). She has been recognized within such local institutions as Homer Watson House and Gallery, Cambridge Centre for the Arts and Wilfrid Laurier University. Her commitment to both traditional practice as well as commercial design, result in strong brushwork with narrative qualities.

Natural landscape that we happen upon day to day, over time can go unnoticed. Everyday routine of repetitive schedules can bring assumptions of familiar vignettes and brilliant first impressions get lost. Filiatrault strives to recreate the splendour of daily morning sun, magnificent skies and colourful Ontario landscape with painterly brushstrokes of intention and light. Roadside Reds emphasizes the radiant reds of Autumn sumac bushes that often border our busy commuter highways.

MENDED

Artist: Simone Cotrell @patriciacsimone

Year: 2022 Medium: Acrylic paint and gel medium

Location: 44 Gaukel Street

Afro-Caribbean artist Simone Cotrell is a Black contemporary abstract and realist painter from Waterloo Region. Her expressive, colourful paintings pay homage to her African heritage, Caribbean culture and various people and children within the BIPOC community.

“Mended” is a symbol of togetherness, being joint as one, in company of and being of many. There is no direct subject, and instead have many “little people” with no specifications. Cotrell felt this meaning works well for 44 Gaukel because it is a space where many come together – something like a well-mended community in a sense.

Supported by @44gaukelarts

IN THE KEEP OF CHANGE

Artist: Vincent Marcone | My Pet Skeleton @theartofmypetskeleton

Year: 2020 Medium: Digital illustration on vinyl

Location: 44 Gaukel Street

44 Gaukel Creative Workspace has had many functions, many faces and stood through many seasons. Students, entrepreneurs, scientists and artists have all used this space, and the constant that binds their experiences here is a spirit of creation. Three animals, native to the area, were chosen to symbolize the successful ingredients that live within 44 Gaukel. Each animal flourishes, ages, dies and is born again to illustrate the function of this transformative space.

RAVEN = intelligence | adaptation | creation

FOX = playfulness | agility | cunning

RABBIT = abundance | prosperity | energy

My Pet Skeleton is the pseudonym of graphic artist Vincent Marcone. He developed a unique style by mixing his affections for the 600-year-old art of intaglio printmaking and computer graphics. He has painted album covers, designed intricate online worlds and directed weirdo music videos that have won awards — from places as diverse as the Emmys, the Junos, and even a Cannes Film Festival nomination for his short film, The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow.

CITY OWAYSEUG

Artist: Luke Swinson @lukeswinsonart

Year: 2020 Medium: Mixed media mural

Location: Gaukel Street (between Joseph and Charles Street)

Luke Swinson is a visual artist with Anishinaabe roots from Kitchener, Ontario. A member of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, Swinson’s work reflects his desire to better understand and reclaim his Indigenous culture. He seeks to promote cultural education and preservation through his art projects.

City Owayseug which means “city animals” in Anishinaabemowin is a reminder, in the heart of the city, of the relationship and responsibility we have to nature. Using the street as a canvas, Swinson’s art contributes to an evolving transition of Gaukel Street into a pedestrian-first street and public space.

Gaukel

WE LOVE DTK! Year: 2023

Artist: Brie Pointer @briepointer

Medium: Digital illustration

PEOPLE OF COLOUR 34 Year: 2023

Artist: Roshan James @roshan_james

Medium: Digital illustration

DAFFODIL MACHETE Year: 2023

Artist: Kat Hernden @kathernden

Medium: Acrylic and embroidery thread hand sewn into canvas

THE SPACE BETWEEN YOUR THOUGHTS

Year: 2012 Artist: Fatima Garzan @fatigarzan Medium: mixed media

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PARADISE UNPAVED Year: 2023

Artist: Catherine Mellinger

@catherine_mellinger

Medium: Collage

CHROMATIC Year: 2023

Artist: Ryan Antooa @ryanantooa

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Gaukel

WE LOVE DTK! Year: 2023

Artist: Brie Pointer @briepointer

Medium: Digital illustration

GEOMETRIC ENSEMBLE Year: 2023

Artist: Nicole Beno @nicole_beno

Medium: Digital collage

JANNAT Year: 2022

Artist: Nimra Bandukwala @nimrabandukwala.art

Medium: Watercolour and pen on paper

STARRY NIGHT Year: 2021

Artist: Lauren Judge @laurenvjudge

Medium: Acrylic painting on canvas

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MAKWA Year: 2023

Artist: Luke Swinson @lukeswinsonart

Medium: Digital illustration

FINDING FOCUS Year: 2023

Artist: Claire Donnison @_curiouslyclaire_

Medium: Digital mixed media

PERENNIAL PUPS

Year: 2023 Artist: Hushpuppy Designs

@hushpuppydesigns

Medium: Digital illustration

MELISSA TAKES THE LEAD

Year: 2021

Artist: Bangishimo @bangishimo

Medium: Photography

Gaukel

ACCEPTING MYSELF AS I AM

Year: 2022 Artist: Alana Decker

@a.deckerart Medium: Mixed media

SUNSET WATERS Year: 2023

Artist: Alanah Jewell

@morning.star.designs

Medium: Digital illustration

RED CRANE Year: 2022

Artist: Roshan James @roshan_james Medium: Charcoal, acrylic, poster paint, oil pastel, watercolour crayon

DAY DREAM Year: 2023

Artist: Trisha Abe @trishaabe

Medium: Digital illustration

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TAKE FLIGHT (ON YOUR OWN TIME)

Year: 2023 Artist: Tee Kundu

@lukitstee

Medium: Digital illustration

ON UNSEEN HANDS || STORIES OF CARE Year: 2023

Artist: Conan Stark Poem: @starkconan

Fitsum Areguy @fareguy

Medium: Digital illustration

RAINBOW WALKWAY

Year: 2018 Medium: Thermoplastic road paint

Location: Crosswalk at Gaukel and Joseph Street

Created during PRIDE 2018, outside of Victoria Park entrance, this walkway celebrates the inclusion of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. It showcases the vibrant colours of the rainbow in bold thick lines and has become a signifier for everyone in the downtown community.

TRANSGENDER PRIDE FLAG WALKWAY

Year: 2022 Medium: Thermoplastic road paint

Location: Crosswalk at Gaukel and Joseph Street

Installed by the City of Kitchener, the Transgender Crosswalk is located at Joseph and Gaukel streets, near the entrance to Victoria Park. The crosswalk was installed with the intent to create a sense of inclusion and belonging in the City for all voices, particularly for voices that have been marginalized.

The transgender crosswalk was installed in ealy Novemeber 2021, ahead of the Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, which honours transgender people lost to violence.

HONOURARY TRIBUTE FOR EVERY CHILD MATTERSFOOTPRINTS

Artist: Sheena Merling & The Every Child Matters Crosswalk Committee @everychildmatters_crosswalk Year: 2022

Medium: Paint Location: Victoria Park

Sheena Merling (Bin-no-g Man-na-doe Quay - Spirit of the Children) is Bear Clan and calls Kitchener home.

She is the leader of a resident-led group of Indigenous community members and allies that shared a vision of bringing a decorative Every Child Matters crosswalk to Victoria Park as part of a tribute to honour the children who were lost and those who still live with the generational trauma caused by Canada’s Residential School System. Merling’s group was awarded a #LoveMyHood Matching Grant from the City of Kitchener to support bringing this vision to life.

As part of this honorary tribute, orange footprints have been painted throughout Victoria Park representing each child that died at a residential school in Canada. In laying these footprints with community members, Merling and her team have sparked important conversations to help raise awareness and educate the community about the Every Child Matters movement and the impact of residential schools in Canada. The footprints lead to the eventual location of the first Every Child Matters crosswalk in Canada to be officially endorsed by the Orange Shirt Society.

THE LUGGAGE PROJECT

Artist: Ernest Daetwyler @ernestdaetwyler

Year: 2008 Medium: Indiana limestone, bronze

Location: Victoria Park (Gaukel Street entrance)

Eight carved sculptures modelled after historic luggage pieces (to scale) are placed beside paths and in fountains.

Daetwyler used luggage to symbolize the perspective of travellers and immigrants representing different periods in our past. The handles and labels of the luggage are cast in bronze. Each label references personal statements of Kitchener residents from different cultural backgrounds.

RECOGNIZE EVERYONE

Artist: Lucy Pullen @lovittnyc, CAFK+A

@cafkabiennial Year: 2018

Medium: Mixed media on metal staircase

Location: 27 Gaukel Street (Charles Street entrance)

Born in Montreal, Canada, Lucy Pullen is an artist based in New York. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions across Canada and the United States. This installation was in collaboration with. Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area (CAFK+A) a non-profit, artist-run organization that presents a free biennial exhibition of contemporary art in the public spaces of the City of Kitchener and across the Region of Waterloo.

Pullen produced a polychromatic star-burst mural that covers the elevator shaft and the wrap-around fire escape on 27 Gaukel Street in Kitchener. The work is effectively a walk-in mural, that envelopes the visitor on all sides. The thematic title of the mural and of CAFK+A.18, RECOGNIZE EVERYONE began as a game between friends. While on a trip together, they challenged themselves to find the familiar in the strange. There are no rules other than to recognize an acquaintance in the face or demeanour of a stranger. The point is the reimagining of public life.

Cited from cafka.org

IN THE CLOUDS

Artist: Brie Pointer @briepointer

Year: 2020 Medium: Photography

Location: 14 Charles Street West

Brie Pointer is a multidisciplinary artist. As an art director, brand designer and illustrator by trade, her work can be refined and experimental in both digital and traditional mediums.

This colour series was created initially as social photography for Wayward Farm, a small-scale market farm run by

Pointer and her partner in Baden. The bold, bright and fun colours accentuate the true beauty of freshly-picked, raw vegetables. Don’t forget to eat your veggies! “Initially, the series was going to be called, Eat The Rainbow, but we didn’t want to be sued by Skittles (even though this rainbow is way more delicious!)”

THE TILE PROJECT

Artist: Carol Bradley

Year: 1996 Medium: Terracotta tiles

Location: 58 Queen Street South (Charles Street)

The Tile Project is a communitybased art venture facilitated in 1996 by Carol Bradley. As part of the City of Kitchener’s Artist in Residence program, it proposes a tool to make our journey an opportunity to learn from each other and create a dialogue among its participants and audience.

Each participant was given some clay which they rolled into a square tile and then wrote, painted or sculpted

anything they wished onto its surface. The individual tiles were then placed sideby-side to create a collective, quilt-like mosaic. The process began and ended over the course of several weekends in the fall of that year, and saw over 260 pairs of busy hands working together to create delicately shaped pieces of their identity on a terracotta tile. The Tile Project displays community art as a way of seeing, documenting and engaging in critical reflection to stimulate relationships among participants and viewers.

Explore

THE VALUE OF ONE THE POWER OF MANY

Artist: Marilyn Koop

Medium: Mixed media mural on plywood

Location: 84 Queen Street South (Charles Street)

This simple, yet powerful piece showcases multiple stories within one frame. Marilyn Koop captured a simplistic style to convey strong emotion through relatability, togetherness and the importance of sharing.

Peaking into four windows, the viewer gets a glimpse of “the power of many,” paired with a colour palette that is warm and inviting he viewer can’t help but be influenced by this mural to lean on each other.

PEDESTRIAN

Artist: Ted Fullerton Year: 2010

Medium: Bronze and composite

Location: 4 Charles Street East

Composite medium (series of six figures) responding directly to the goal of promoting pedestrian first values.

This site-specific commissioned sculpture installation refers to the City of Kitchener’s goal of promoting pedestrian-first values and “the purpose of place.” The sculpture is in association

with the intent of the Diamond Schmitt Architects’ design of a multi-level parking facility. Its symbolic reference is to inspire optimism, aspiration, limitless possibilities and the importance of the independent individual purpose towards the future. It is a work that has been referenced as being “existential,” which refers to the intricacies of human existence.

WARM AND COLD

Artist: Sanela Dizdar @sanelaart

Year: 2023 Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Location: 29 King Street East (Halls Lane)

Sanela Dizdar is a graphic designer, published illustrator, artist and art instructor.

As the owner of Sanela Art School and Studio, Dizdar has been teaching different age groups her techniques in drawing and painting for last 15 years.

Her art is exhibited locally and internationally.

Dizdar works in many styles and techniques including graphite, colour pencils, watercolour, pastel, acrylics and oil. She explores deep emotions in her portraiture, while exploring serenity and movement of water and waves. She expands the unravelling secrets of the world on her macro theme based paintings.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is important that we acknowledge that Downtown Kitchener is situated on land that is the traditional home of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and Neutral Peoples. We recognize and deeply appreciate their historic connection to this place, and the contributions Indigenous peoples have made in shaping and strengthening this community.

We are grateful for the opportunity to meet here and re-affirm our collective commitment to make the promise and the challenge of Truth and Reconciliation real in our community.

FIELD NOTES

Share your experience #DTKArtWalk | @DTKitchener

FIELD NOTES

Share your experience #DTKArtWalk | @DTKitchener