Graffiti Alley

WORDS BY TRACEY COVEART, PHOTOS BY KERI ANDERSON (@KERIJEANS)

Queen West’s Graffiti Alley: Canada’s most beloved street art gallery

One of the most mesmerizing art galleries in the world is not a gallery at all, but an alleyway that has become famous around the globe for its eye-popping street art. Queen West’s iconic Graffiti Alley – a threeblock, one-kilometre continuous concrete canvas along Rush Lane from Spadina to Portland – is not only one of the city’s most celebrated and colourful attractions, but also the battleground where street artists scored their first major victory in Toronto.

The ‘vandalism versus art’ debate has long been a hot button issue between business owners, politicians and talented aerosol artists looking for a legitimate outlet for their creativity. For years, they came to Graffiti Alley under the cover of darkness to paint. Their pieces were cultural treasures but, according to the law, if they were created with spray paint, they were considered graffiti vandalism, which remains illegal in this city as it is in most parts of the world.

In 2005, the city enshrined its anti-graffiti laws in Chapter 485, which specified that: a) No person shall place or cause or permit graffiti vandalism to be placed on any property; and B) The owner or occupant of property shall maintain the property free of graffiti vandalism. Championing the municipal code, former Mayor Rob Ford went to extraordinary lengths to expunge graffiti, which had continued to proliferate in spite of its illegal status. His guarantee to remove defacement wherever it existed sparked one of the city’s most public conversations ever about the subject (and, ironically, made the mayor a favourite figure in street art across the city). His eradication campaign went so far as to encourage Torontonians to use a dedicated Smartphone app to photograph and report graffiti in the city, leaving property owners to pay the clean-up bill.

Several years before Ford became mayor, however, a movement to legitimize the graffiti art form had taken hold. In 2003, event organizer Janna Van Hoof started Style In Progress, a not-for-profit supporting all forms of hip hop, including graffiti art.

Artists are required to get permission from property owners to paint, and while commissioned and approved “aesthetically enhancing” art murals and street art are exempt from Toronto’s anti-graffiti vandalism bylaws, unauthorized graffiti tagging is still a criminal offence.

Angry that the city was determining what art was and wasn’t, she made it her mission to bring Toronto’s “creative youth” out of the dark.

After organizing the artists and helping them to get permission from supportive property owners, she staged the first annual Style in Progress, a 24-hour legal graffiti event that continued to celebrate hip-hop culture for the next five years. At the inaugural event, 50 artists turned the walls around Queen West’s Drake Hotel into an open-air art gallery, leaving their distinctive mark on donated spaces and forever changing public perception.

Inspired by Van Hoof’s success and determined to protect its much-lauded Graffiti Alley – a hotbed for unsanctioned but culturally significant street art – the Queen Street West Business Improvement Area took up the fight. In 2011, in the midst of Ford’s street art witch hunt, the BIA won its bid to have Graffiti Alley designated as an area of municipal significance, exempting owners from receiving notices of violation for graffiti vandalism on their property.

That struggle gave birth to StreetARToronto (StART), a city-sanctioned program that provides funding and approval for public murals and other forms of street art, including graffiti art. The program, which looks to Graffiti Alley as an acclaimed example, aims to reduce graffiti vandalism by providing wall space for creative murals and street art that engages the community and makes a positive impact on the city. Graffiti Alley hosts pieces by some of the world’s most celebrated aerosol artists, including Toronto’s Elicser Elliot, Skam, Spud, Poser, DeadBoy and Duro the Third, the self-professed King of Instagram Murals who has been commissioned to create works for corporate giants including Google, Hilroy and the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Even Canadian comedian Rick Mercer has fallen under the spell of Graffiti Alley, recording many of his tilted camera rants while walking this vibrant and instantly recognizable stretch of Rush Lane.

While the vandalism versus art debate continues, Queen West’s illustrious alleyway has given graffiti some serious street cred for its ability to beautify neighbourhoods, engage residents and serve as a living museum that encapsulates the diversity and vibrancy of a city. There is no question that street art lends character to a community and Graffiti Alley is a glorious case in point. It’s hard to imagine Queen West without it and this gives street artists around the world hope as they continue to “inspire neighbourhoods, one wall at a time”.

“StART aims to reduce graffiti vandalism by providing wall space for creative murals and street art that engages the community and makes a positive impact on the city.

Since the BIA’s watershed victory, the popularity of Graffiti Alley has exploded, and it is now widely regarded as one of the best street art destinations in the world. The appropriately grimy back-alley welcomes a steady stream of tourists, international students, professional photographers and Instagrammers snapping selfies in front of brick works