Joanne Sisco

butterfly ways

I don’t often re-blog a post, but I’d like to make an exception with Mary’s post about butterfly doors.

Mary is a Toronto blogger and her view of our city is always a bit different and definitely interesting.

This post about a neighbourhood that recently painted their garage doors with murals of a butterfly theme is clearly one of those posts that’s both different and interesting.

Since today is Thursday Doors, it seemed like a perfect time to profile Mary and her blog. I hope you enjoy.

as I walk Toronto

street art on a low retaining wall that says butterflyways in bright pink letters

Garrison Creek park is a small strip of green between the railway tracks an alley of garages. Many of the garage doors were painted last weekend with murals all on the theme of butterflies.  There are about 30 paintings and they are the work of a number of different street artists.   The project was curated by Nick Sweetman and it is part of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterflyway project; StreetARToronto was also involved.

If you don’t like pictures of butterfly murals, I suggest that you skip this post because I’m sharing photos of a lot of the garage doors!  In no particular order here they are:

mural of an orange and blue snake loosely tied in a knot around a purple tree, blue butterfly hovers in front of snake's face, mural by Cruz 1 Artist: Cruz1

Three black line drawings of a butterfly, with details and shadowing, very realistic looking, on a fence Artist: unknown (by me)

Artist: blackburn

many whimsical butterflies and caterpillars Artist: J. McKie

pink water lily painted on a black background Artist: C Mazzulla

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterflyways project - a possum and a butterfly by wales Artist: wales

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterflyways project - a person's face in profile, with a butterfly spread over the back part of the head Artist: 2US & XYZ (not positive about that)

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterfly ways project - very stylized abstract picture of a butterfly and a flower Artist: XYZ & MAC

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterflyways project - two adjacent garage doors, the left one is by mska and is a brown butterfly and mushrooms. on the right is an hibiscus flower by horus taffytats Artist: (left) mska, (right) horus, tuffytats

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterflyways project - two adjacent garage doors, the left one is a monarch butterfly landing on pink flowers, on the right is a riot of blues and greens Artist: (left) braes, (right) C. Perez

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterflyways project - a pink and purple butterfly that looks like a face, with daisies Artist: @anyamielniczek

a mural on a garage door in an alley, part of butterflyways project - a black butterfly with orange and blue highlights, on a green leaf Artist: P.S

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38 comments

  3. I’ll pop over and leave a comment in Mary’s blog, but I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this one – lovely to see what are usually ugly garage doors brightened up like this. One or two odd ones, but several I love. Shame they didn’t paint the ugly fence too!

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    • I’m a big fan of street art when it’s done well. These laneways of garage doors tend to be hotbeds of random graffiti so it’s nice to see a proactive solution that adds colour and interest to the neighbourhood.
      Thanks for popping over to visit Mary’s blog 🙂

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  14. Joanne that is amazing. Such creativity. Do you suppose the owners got to choose their art? Some might be quite surprised by their not so usual butterflies. I would love to see this when we visit Toronto. Thanks for letting me know about it.

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  15. I don’t think I have ever seen a reblog on your blog. I love this post and I am glad you shared it with your friends. What a colorful and beautiful decor for old garage doors. Now, we can just hope many will follow this example.

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    • Deliberately creating beautiful themed murals is so much nicer than random graffiti. I think this neighbourhood had the right idea in agreeing to do this. The coordination of it must have been significant.

      I have reblogged a few times – but I could probably count them on one hand. This one I did rather spontaneously and perhaps that was the key. I tend to overthink things and then talk myself out of it 😉

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