IN TUNE WITH STREET ART
Musician’s Instagram posts of city’s ‘spraycations’ hits the right note,
Armed with an iPhone, Steve Ward has become one of Toronto’s most appreciative and knowledgeable chroniclers of graffiti, turning his Instagram account into a public gallery for the city’s street-art community.
Since 2013, when his mission began, he has posted more than 6,000 photos of bombs, tags, hollows and burners, and cultivated a large, loyal audience.
Two years ago, Ward was between jobs and looking for a creative outlet. A trombone player with two music degrees, he says “it’s just basic nature for me to want to create art on a daily basis.” Graffiti appealed because it was cryptic and underground, with its own arcane vernacular and etiquette. “I love question marks,” he said. “I just wanted to figure out everything about it.”
He still defers to the long-standing scenesters and downplays his expertise, but Ward has embarked on an impressive self-education, devouring graffiti documentaries such as the seminal Style Wars and reading everything he can get his hands on. He’s even messed around with the tools of the trade, though he doesn’t tag himself.
“I can talk about Montana (spray) paint, the old paint and the new paint,” he says. Most important, he started walking around and keeping an eye out for pieces. Ward still does all his research on foot.
Some writers were wary of him at first — “As soon as you start asking questions, people are gonna immediately think you’re a cop, you’re a snitch.” — but Ward has earned an avid following online (6,352 Insta- gram followers and counting) with his judicious eye and his sheer documentary energy. He’s competing with a handful of other graffiti photographers and hates getting scooped. “It’s all about getting the pic first, or the best pic first,” he said. “It’s what gets me out of bed.”
Since Rob Ford launched a crackdown on graffiti in 2011, pieces tend to get “buffed” more quickly than they used to, Ward says. He understands that he’s photographing crimes and freely calls graffiti artists “vandals” but he also knows that cleaners and bylaw officers are playing a game of whack-a-mole with kids who tag.
Ward, 32, talks about urban spray paint like the connoisseur he is, relishing idiosyncrasies of style the way some people speak about jazz trumpeters and discoursing on the history of tagging with a scholarly seriousness.
Toronto’s scene is getting more cos- mopolitan, with writers from around the world visiting on “spraycations,” as they’re known.
Ward estimates that about 50 regular graffiti artists are operating downtown. Some of the most prolific have been jailed for bombing. “You can see the writers who have done time for it and how it shapes their relationship with the game,” he says. “It fuels the fury.”
Ward has his frustrations with the city’s scene. He wishes Toronto artists, long heavily influenced by the “wild style” New York esthetic, would take more inspiration from European graffiti.
Still, as a newcomer and an artist himself, he brims with fellow-feeling for embattled, mostly young writers he documents.
“Graffiti is for the kids who have to do it,” he said. “They itch to do it. It’s the same way I feel about playing the trombone. It’s why I love people who can’t contain creativity.”