From a garage studio to the world’s streets
Multimedia artist uses light, air to dig deep into his work, which has taken him abroad
Fresh air and sunlight are, for multimedia artist Evond Blake, musthaves. They let him “go deep” into his artwork.
His dream oasis is a hillside cabin in the West Indies, with doors open to ocean breezes, intense light and lush greenery. Blake, 37, has found the light and air in the garage of his eastend Toronto home. With the door rolled up, his work space is open to the elements, and it’s separated from the home he shares with his wife, musician Jessica Blake, and their 1-year-old daughter. Blake’s other oasis is the street. Better known perhaps for his public work — under the pseudonym Mediah — he has been painting graffiti art since age15, skipping school to paint anywhere he could. After starting out in Markham, where he lived, Blake moved on to Scarborough’s RT line, which had been “a legendary spot for graf art in the city. Scarborough factory owners along the rail lines were very tolerant of this.”
Blake says all he ever wanted to do was paint graffiti, and his plan had been to “become an incredible graffiti artist . . . The intention was always to be constructive and to improve the surface, not damage it.”
His parents had different plans. They ran a tutoring school in Toronto and expected him to follow in their footsteps, and those of his three older sisters, with a university degree.
Only after learning about Seneca College’s digital art design program did he pursue post-secondary education.
Since then, he’s been painting murals all over the city, through Mural Routes and StreetARToronto (or stART).
The huge mural on the WoodbineGerrard railway underpass is his, for example, and had been commissioned by the City of Toronto.
Blake is in his element on the street.
“In public, I can paint huge walls, bigger than me, and I love, love, love working on something bigger than me.”
His current work — digital, multimedia, animation, fine art and murals — reflects his graffiti-artist roots. Some describe his work as futuristic; he prefers the term dynamism because of the “obsession with speed, motion and force . . . blurring the lines between media art technology, the gritty esthetic of street art, and the polish of contemporary work.”
He’s parlayed this quality into an international portfolio, with commissioned work in several Canadian cities, in Europe, and in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Not surprisingly, Blake notices the differences in sunlight and air quality. He also sees differences in appreciation for public art. “In Europe, cities like London, Paris, Warsaw, Berlin have developed their own dis- tinct style of street art. That’s where it’s at in terms of leading-edge street art.”
In South Africa, however, people would stop to ask him what he was doing, what it meant and why he was there. “They said they had no idea what the piece was or what it was about,” Blake recalls, “but they couldn’t stop looking at it.”
South Africa had also been an emotional experience for Blake. While painting, he met Igbo people from Nigeria who recognized his ancestry and connected it to theirs. “It was weighty and emotional and exhilarating.”
Setting up the studio
Blake’s garage has a jumble of organized clutter on one side, spread out over a drafting table, and it includes about 400 cans of spray paint in racks. Along the other wall are his works-in-progress. He talks while he works, using spray paint, markers, a ruler and triangle, and painter’s tape.
Having branched out into a variety of media, the studio isn’t large enough for everything.
So, in Studio A, his garage “oasis,” he does fine-art pieces, and pre-sketches for public murals. In Studio B, an upstairs bedroom full of computer equipment and drafting tables, it’s about digital media: animation, design, video, and a hybrid of digital and fine art.
Street art or graffiti art?
Graffiti describes a style of writing or drawing on public walls. Graffiti artists are also called “writers” — the most elaborate writing styles are works of art in themselves.
A street artist also creates public murals but their style is more figurative — often political — and uses paint, stencils and wheat paste.
In many countries, including Cana- da, graffiti is considered vandalism when done without permission. At its highest art form, it confounds municipalities because, although illegal, it adds to urban vibrancy. The City of Toronto has a department to oversee (and monitor) commissioned street art.
Painting a mural over several days is a creative puzzle with a point of “frustration figuring out what that piece wants to become, and for that I really need (mental) space to problem solve.”
As well, there’s the challenge of questions and comments from passersby. He figures it’s a small price to pay for the benefits, the main one — to both community and artist — being visibility. “Whatever spirit or feeling you transferred into your work, people can feel that thing and have a connection to it, and that’s what makes a piece relevant and successful,” he says.