New mural at Wellesley station has undergone a transformation
A new mural now greets commuters at the Wellesley TTC Station. CTV's Jessica Smith has more on the artwork and the message behind it.
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CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
To Canadians, he's Manitoba's greatest architect. To this artist, he's grandpa
When Anna Binta Diallo would visit her grandfather in hospital, the artist would often find herself at Galerie Buhler Gallery, the contemporary art centre at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. Near the gallery's entrance, there's a circular artwork made of colourful glass. It's like a modern take on a gothic church window — a prairie tableau on a backdrop of emerald green. A row of Winnipeg buildings appears in the middle of the piece, and right at its centre is a familiar landmark: the towering façade of the St. Boniface Cathedral. In 1968, a fire devastated the great stone edifice, but a local architect famously led the reconstruction efforts: Étienne Gaboury. The glass artwork at GBG is also a Gaboury creation. He was both an architect and an artist. And he's also Diallo's granddad. Architect and his artist granddaughter compete for book award in 2006 7 days ago Gaboury died in October of 2022. "Even though he's gone, I connect to him through seeing what he's done," says Diallo. When she visits GBG, she marvels at her grandfather's artwork. Sometimes, memories flood her mind. She might flash back to being a little kid, sitting at the table with her grandpa, the two of them drawing side by side. But wherever her thoughts may wander, the piece simply leaves her in awe. "How on earth did he do this kind of stuff?" she says. "It's complicated to work with glass." Diallo would know. Earlier this summer, the artist returned to GBG to open an exhibition of her own. It's called Heliophile, and it features seven original works including four stand-alone sculptures made of fused and stained glass. The artist has had a uniquely prolific year. In July alone, her work was appearing in six exhibitions across the country, including the Polygon Gallery in Vancouver and the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto (both shows are still on view). But in Heliophile, Diallo is unveiling an all new body of work which features a medium she's never tried before. Nominated for the Sobey Art Award in 2022, Diallo is best known for her work in collage. Her projects are often site specific and large in scale, and they explore themes of nostalgia, memory, and family heritage. The same subjects are mined in Heliophile too — with a special focus on her relationship with her grandfather. The idea emerged through conversations with the gallery's curator, hannah_g. As early as the spring of 2022, they'd discussed Diallo creating something for the space, and after Gaboury's passing, they reconnected. "I reached out to send her my condolences," hannah_g says. Then, a couple days later, she contacted Diallo again. The curator had a burning question: "I wondered if she would be interested in making an exhibition that in some way related to or referenced her relationship with her granddad." Diallo had never considered the idea before. The subject matter was relevant to her practice; she'd long been concerned with themes of family, identity and growing up on the prairies. "But [the work] was never explicitly about him," she says. "I said, you know, I'd like some time to think about it, because I'm not sure how I'm going to approach this." Born in Senegal, Diallo grew up in the Winnipeg neighbourhood of St. Boniface, the heart of Manitoba's Francophone community. Even as a little kid, she was aware of the mark her grandfather had made on the city. His buildings were part of her everyday landscape. Diallo now teaches at the University of Manitoba, and her homecoming is a relatively recent development. The artist previously lived in Montreal, where she was based for 15 years. "Moving back to Winnipeg, I'm reminded of how much his presence is all around me," she says. Gaboury has been described as the province's greatest architect, and he was responsible for many of its enduring landmarks, says Anne Brazeau, a writer and researcher at the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation. (The organization is developing an online exhibition about his life and work which is expected to launch in the fall.) Moving back to Winnipeg, I'm reminded of how much his presence is all around me. - Anna Binta Diallo, artist The Royal Canadian Mint is perhaps his "most impressive federal commission," she says; the St. Boniface Cathedral reconstruction "launched his reputation as a major architect, especially of religious buildings." But in Brazeau's opinion, his most defining achievement is The Precious Blood Church. Constructed in 1969, the building is clad in cedar shingles and suggests the shape of a tipi — a nod to Gaboury's Métis heritage, and the predominantly Métis congregation. Diallo passes it every morning while walking her kids to school. According to Brazeau, Gaboury's signature flourish was his mastery of light, and Precious Blood is a prime example. "He is creative with his window placement," she explains, "small, precise, strategically placed windows that would track the sun and especially the low, Manitoba winter sun." Heliophile, the title of Diallo's exhibition, means lover of light. It's a nod to her grandfather's guiding principles; "he was very interested in light as an architect," says Diallo. It's become an important aspect of her own work as well. In her collage art, Diallo often creates cut-outs of human figures. These silhouettes are faceless yet somehow familiar, and she fills each outline with found imagery in a patchwork style. As the saying goes, they contain multitudes. The different textures and colours Diallo incorporates in each composition suggest layered narratives and identities. In Heliophile, Diallo continues to play with silhouettes. Many of the figures are girls — daydreamers who seem to float on separate planes of space and time. When they overlap, their colours combine, casting a blended palette of colourful light onto the gallery floor. In each piece, Diallo says she's made "little winks" to her family lore — details like memories of summer days at the beach or her grandfather's habit of collecting rooster knick knacks. She was reflecting on the concept of lineage while developing the body of work. "It's a meditation on life, on the journey of life, the cycles of life and time and perhaps memories as well," she says. To fabricate the free-standing glass artworks which appear in Heliophile, Diallo collaborated with Prairie Studio Glass in Winnipeg. The exhibition also features a video projection and two installation works — vinyl cut-outs which Diallo has collaged on the gallery's walls and windows. The artist says they serve as a bridge between her past works and the new pieces in glass. Since opening in June, Heliophile has drawn a unique mix of patrons, as one might expect of a hospital venue. Its regular patrons include patients, hospital staff, caregivers. "It's definitely a unique space," says Diallo. "From the get-go, it was something I was thinking about, like who would be coming, how would they interpret the work, or what state of mind would they be in if they came in to see the show." After all, she'd been in their shoes a short time ago. Says the artist: "I want them to feel a sort of calmness, but also a jolt of joy."
Edmonton Journal
2 hours ago
- Edmonton Journal
Fringe Review: Quiz Icarus a treat for trivia fans
Quiz Icarus Article content Stage 1, ATB Westbury Theatre, 10330 84 Ave. Article content They flew too close to the sun, but oh, it was so worth it. Article content Toronto-based performers Nam Nguyen and Aaron Brown are bonded by their passion for Jeopardy, a love that has shaped their lives in many ways. Brown became a trivia night host, hosting multiple games at various pubs, while Nguyen moved into the world of theatre, keeping his love for the long-running game show to obsessively watching with his girlfriend at the end of the night. Article content They got their dream in 2024, and while the retelling from both angles is actually fascinating, it's what lies underneath that really grabs. Article content Because Quiz Icarus isn't just about getting a shot at becoming a champion trivia master, it's about community. A community of nerds obsessed with knowledge for knowledge's sake, the intricacies of a game that seems fairly straightforward from the outside, even with each other. Article content If you're a fan of trivia, and who isn't, you'll want to prepare yourself because half the fun is answering the questions that pop up throughout the show via the giant Jeopardy screen in the background. Article content
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Why Formula 1 romances have us racing to the bookstores
When Nova Scotian writer Amy James first attended the Formula One (F1) Canadian Grand Prix in 2019, she brought a book with her, thinking she would be bored for most of the race. By the time they waved the checkered flag, the book had never left her bag, but James left the track a fan for life. Now, six years later, a love for motorsport has inspired her romance novel Crash Test — one of the many books currently on the market that centre around the whizzing world of race cars. Crash Test is a second-chance romance set in the highly intense atmosphere of professional racing. The story centres around Jacob Nichols, who is involved in a massive crash. No one but Travis, the driver currently leading the championship, knows they've been secretly dating for a year. As the races trudge on and tensions grow, their love is tested both on and off the track. James' novel is right at home in a popular new subgenre of F1 romance books published in the past year. Along with titles like Simone Soltani's Cross the Line and Madge Maril's Slipstream, these stories imagine the winding road of an athlete's love life. As an author and a fan, James says she hopes to see more motorsport love stories pop up in bookstores. "Authors are really having fun playing with the traditional romance tropes, but just in the F1 world. I have a feeling that's going to continue to grow as the world's obsession with F1 grows," said James. The phenomenon of sports in romance fiction is not new. According to BookNet Canada's sales data, sports romance was one of the top selling subcategories of romance novels in 2024, accounting for five per cent of total sales in Canadian Romance. However, the majority of sports romances depict sports like hockey or football, with motorsports a more recent addition. James says she wrote Crash Test a year before writing her debut novel, A Five-Letter Word for Love, when F1 romance was not something editors were looking for. Picking the topic hadn't been a conscious decision at first, she says. But as she began to write, James says she quickly realized that F1 itself had all the elements of a thrilling romance. "High stakes, tension, adrenaline — those are the same things that you see in any sport…. I think it lends itself really well to romance novels or fiction in general," she said. Adding to the appeal, F1 takes place in beautiful locations, James said. "They travel all over the world, so you can really pick whatever location you want to." 'It's a soap opera' Long-time F1 fans and commentators have noted an increase in media attention for the sport in recent years, notably due to the popularity of Netflix's Drive to Survive, which has given fans unprecedented access to the personal dramas of the sport that go on past the pitwall. "It's a soap opera," said CBC Montreal's sports journalist Douglas Gelevan. "You talk about novels — it's character building. [Drivers] are characters and we're watching them play out in reality. Speed is one part of F1's appeal, he says, but so is its elite nature. "There's only 20 seats in the entire sport, and to get one and to keep one is so difficult and just the sheer amount of money and spectacle that goes into F1 is intoxicating in a lot of ways." As someone who has been covering F1 in Montreal for many years, he credits Drive to Survive, in part, for the new demographic of gearheads. "[The show] has brought in people who wouldn't have been traditional race fans in a way that has really blown my mind … And it's really peeled back the layers of the onion of the sport that were always there, but really weren't fully understood by the general public in a way that they are now." Canadian TikToker and romance book expert Lu Aburawi is one of the many people who became an F1 fan through the Netflix docu-series. "When I watched Drive to Survive, I thought, 'Whoa, exceptional storytelling.' There's so much more politics behind the money … it's unlike any other sport." Tangling with the tropes While the drama of motorsport lends itself to fiction, Aburawi notes that when it comes to romance books, "it's the responsibility of the author to take F1 as the backdrop and make it interesting," with the added task of representing those within the sport fairly, particularly the gender disparity. In the 75 years of F1 globally, only five women have ever raced in a Grand Prix, and as campaigns to involve more women in motorsport have gained traction, they are seeing themselves reflected in the main character of these novelizations. "A lot of these women who are playing these main characters are trying to be taken seriously. Whether they're journalists or photographers or they work for the team or marketing people, they want to be taken seriously in the industry," said Aburawi. "So what ends up happening is that there's a sense of desperation for them to not fall into their own trope and their own stereotype when [the main character does] date an athlete." Motorsports content creators like Montreal-based Nora Jo, or @norajooo, have even found themselves as the unintentional muse of F1 fiction. "Two years ago, I posted this picture of me in front of a Charles Leclerc car in Monaco and it ended up being the cover of one of the F1 fanfiction[s] … I think there are like two books currently using my name and my picture just casually out there. So sometimes I feel mortified by that fact…." Now with this summer's F1 The Movie, and legions of younger female F1 fans taking to social media to share their love of the sport, it's easier than ever to get introduced to F1. For her part, James says she wrote Crash Test so it would work "both for someone who loves F1 or someone who doesn't know anything about F1 and literally just wants to read a romance novel." As motorsport romance enjoys its heyday, James says she recognizes that trends in publishing move faster than Ferraris and sometimes you just have to appreciate the ride. "If you try to chase trends in publishing I think you will inevitably never catch up because it changes so fast…. Writing a book to actually seeing it on the shelves could be many years, so [it's] just luck. I hope that what I'm writing now becomes the next niche trend."
