Group struggling to keep iconic mural alive
City’s rainbow tunnel is a frequent target of vandalism, but charity vows to restore it every time
The message came in late February. It wouldn’t have been a surprise to Marta Keller-Hernandez, Rob Matejka or any one of the hundreds of thousands of drivers who travel along the Don Valley Parkway every day: The rainbow tunnel had been vandalized again.
The mural has sat alongside one of Toronto’s busiest routes since the 1970s, when it was painted by an artist named B.C. Johnson. Sometime earlier this year, someone graffitied over it, spraying purple bubble letters on the left side and a mess of doodles on the right.
It was far from the first time this had happened. Keller-Hernandez, the managing director of Toronto charity Mural Routes, has spent years keeping the mural clean, working to organize artists to repaint it year after year as taggers return time and time again.
But as Mural Routes prepares to have its lead instructor Matejka paint over it again, the organization is also faced with the reality that there is little it can do to stop this from happening in the future.
The mural is a frequent target because of its prime location, visible to cars travelling both north and south on the parkway. The route averages around 135,000 vehicles a day through the week, according to the city — and every one has a view of the rainbow tunnel.
“As it has become a landmark because it is so visible from the DVP, it is also a great billboard for anybody that is looking for attention or recognition,” said Matejka, who has restored the tunnel many times over the last decade.
He believes it’s not so much about vandalizing the mural itself. “(It’s more), ‘This is a great location for people to see my tags, so I’m going to put it here,’ ” Matejka explained.
But because the mural is set on a tunnel, the options available to Matejka and Mural Routes to keep vandals away are limited.
Moisture from the soil seeps through the concrete, damaging the paint that rests on the other side. Matejka describes the paint as Saran Wrap.
“It holds the moisture in,” he said. “The thicker those paints are, the more they trap all that moisture in, causing it to bubble and flake.”
Ordinarily, Mural Routes would paint an anti-graffiti coating on top of the mural, allowing Matejka and others to simply powerwash the disruptive tags off. But at the rainbow tunnel, adding an additional layer would only trap more moisture and quicken its deterioration.
Matejka suggests better lighting on the tunnel could act as a deterrent, but such a project hasn’t happened yet.
Instead, Mural Routes must clean up and repaint the mural every year. The tunnel is usually tagged as winter turns to spring, Matejka said, and the restoration that follows typically lasts until the next spring.
Matejka is used to it at this point. “It’s sort of, I think, the nature of what it is,” he said. “We try to keep the legacy going because it matters a lot to the community.”
That’s the motivation to keep the tunnel alive: its resonance with anyone who passes through that section of the Don Valley Parkway. The tunnel’s impact reaches outside of Canada, too, with an oil painting of it by Scottish artist Peter Doig selling for more than $15 million in 2014.
But these constant restorations put a strain on Mural Routes, a charity that has operated in Toronto since the 1990s. While community members maintained it over the years — and the city contributed funding for a larger restoration project in 2012 and 2013 — Mural Routes has since taken over maintenance of the tunnel.
The charity has a reserve fund for maintenance across the city and it taps into that money every time the tunnel is tagged, Keller-Hernandez said. Mural Routes pays the artist — Matejka will do it again this time around — and for the materials, which normally average around $1,500. This year, since the graffiti is so expansive, the cost will be around $2,000, according to KellerHernandez.
Often, the charity relies on donations to cover the cost. Sometimes, it comes out of the organization’s operating budget. But Mural Routes will be there, this spring, next spring and for springs to come, keeping the mural alive. “It has become a part of Toronto,” Matejka said. “It’s a bit of an icon, in a way.”