DUNDAS PLACE

Dundas Place is near and dear to my heart. Located in the heart of downtown London, Ontario, this stretch of Dundas Street was recently revamped to be a pedestrian friendly flex street, meant to boost foot traffic to local business, encourage civic engagement and help revitalize what has been a downtown plagued by urban sprawl and all the same homelessness and addiction related issues affecting most mid-sized cities in Canada. Until recently, I worked out of a studio space located at the dead centre of this stretch. I spent the better part of 14 years watching out my windows at the ebb and flow of businesses and people, and eventually the massive transformation brought about by the construction of this badly needed flex street. I was one of a few artists commissioned to create a poster for Dundas Place while construction was still underway, but having trouble finding inspiration in the chaos of the construction, I walked the four city block stretch armed with my camera and found what beauty I could in the details of the store fronts and textures of construction debris and building materials. The result is a series of 30 distinct iterations, which were then turned into banners for the newly installed light standards, as well as a wheat-pasted treatment for the hoarding on what is to become the Dundas Place Field Office.