DRAWING INSPIRATION
Storefronts stoke artist’s creativity
“Art was something I was good at as a kid. I was always drawing and cartooning and doing creative stuff in general. I wanted to be a journalist, because of the Tintin comic books. I wanted to be a reporter, so I founded a local newspaper and published articles and took photographs. This was near Burnstown, where I grew up. I think I was about 11 and I used my dad’s photocopier and made four issues over the course of a year-and-a-half or something like that. And then I got interested in something else — I think it was animation. Then I wanted to be a film director, so I borrowed my uncle’s old Super 8, or whatever it was at the time, and wrote some films. Then, in high school, I started doing some graphic design work for organizations and local garage bands, and then I made the decision to go to art school. Design school, actually; it was a little more practical and useful.
“But I remember thinking, when I was 11 or 12, that I should make a career out of something that I enjoy. I don’t know where that came from, although I was encouraged by my parents, which was helpful. And I had two really good art teachers at high school in Renfrew, at Renfrew Collegiate Institute.
“It was my series on corner stores that started me on this whole notion of fading storefronts and change in a city. It started with a fellow who grew up in one of these stores — Mike’s, on Rochester. At the time I was doing house drawings, and he commissioned me to do one, but the house that he grew up in was a corner store with an apartment behind it, and I became very interested in the building and the idea of these stores being in integrated neighbourhoods, and the fact that we don’t see new versions of these anymore and there’s some
quality to them that’s kind of from another, fading era.
“But simultaneously, every body came and talked to me while I was doing it. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I love this store,’ ‘Please tell me it’s not for sale,’ ‘I hope it’s not going away.’ So that was part of it, and I decided to go look at other stores in the city. And that has grown into other themes. Last year, I was working on fruit and flower shops in Toronto. So the idea of the family-run or neighbourhood store has become the bigger interest from there.
“I’ve started a Patreon account, which may be a way to help tell the stories of these places I’m drawing, perhaps by doing comics to tell about the people around them or the people who interact with them. And one of the goals of that is to draw every corner store in Canada. I don’t think it’s really possible, but it’s nice to have a goal — maybe just do it in every province and territory, or in every major city.
“Last year, I thought might have to move, and maybe out of my neighbourhood (Chinatown). And I was very nostalgic and not looking forward to leaving, so I decided to go and draw my favourite block, which is Somerset from Upper Lorne to Booth — that’s always been my favourite little block in the whole city; I love the way it curves. There are maybe 12 storefronts there, and I started doing those. And from there I just started moving outwards, getting other buildings in the neighbourhood that I really like and that has this sort of visual requirement I have. It’s hard to describe — there’s a feel, and signage has a big impact; some thought to the typography. And age has to do with it as well. If a business has been there for 30 years, it’s because it’s worked. So a building has to resonate a bit in the neighbourhood. There’s a human element to it. So that’s sort of where I come from.
“The archival element is also important, although I didn’t really recognize it right away. It became more apparent as I went along, sort of an after-the-fact factor. And I do think it’s quite important — for the city, for people in the communities. These places clearly have meaning to people for their own reasons, but there’s a broader community meaning to these places. You can just tell, when a corner store closes up … Boushey’s, on Elgin Street, was by far the best example of a place that people were heartbroken to see close. We knew well enough in advance that it was closing, so I did as many studies as I could, so I was out there a lot that summer and talked to a lot of people. I remember one woman came up and said that she would go to the Market or to church every week, and after, they would go to Boushey’s and get a Lebanese pastry of some specialty they could only get there. This woman was in her 50s and tearing up over this, because this place reminded her of her and her dad when she was a kid.
“So it’s more than just a place to get your milk and whatever, and what I’m doing becomes more than just a sketch of the place. Change is always happening in a city, and I sort of felt an obligation to keep doing this, and expand it, and try to get as much of it done as I can.”