I strive to discover unknown territories of individual and collective being. To this end, I incite liminal experiences – the psychological and metaphysical subjective state of being between disparate existential planes – offering opportunities for one to embrace the strange and singular of our existence; to explore alchemical possibilities of the imagination; to live more intensely and freely in the here-and-now. I do a lot of different projects. From public interventions to roadtrips to multimedia parties to urban expeditions to installations. I am a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design's Sculpture/Installation program, and am really competent designing/building stuff. My contributions to public/urban art in Toronto have been featured in Canadian Art Magazine, the Toronto Star and other media outlets.

This project is a 50-ft-tall photo-transfer paste-up in response to mayor Rob Ford’s war on graffiti/street art culture in Toronto. It would be a giant (digitally rendered) image of Ford in a white painter’s suit eating graffiti hotdogs smothered in gravy he pours-on using a gravy boat shaped like a train (a “gravy train”). I'd get help from my talented street art friends (http://www.jessealbert.ca/index.html and http://www.at-aw.com/http://www.at-aw.com/ to name two) to produce and install the piece at a symbolic downtown location where it would be widely seen and photographed dynamically, like Graffiti Alley south of Queen Street. I will also work with my long-standing collaborative partner and documentary filmmaker (http://decipherimages.com) to document the process. The project will be the focal point of a short documentary video about the war on graffiti in Toronto.

The subject matter of this project is very close to me, both as a street art practitioner and a creative human being. I see Rob Ford’s ignorant, my-way-or-the-highway attitude toward graffiti as an affront to free creative expression and an insult to people who strive for and want to live in a vibrant city of art and joy. While I don’t appreciate/condone senseless, destructive tagging, etc, I believe that street art is an important cultural/social/political form of expression that must be kept alive. It is sorely misunderstood and people like Rob Ford need to be challenged at every turn. Obviously, this project is time-sensitive. Now’s the time. So getting a grand from the Awesome Foundation would be... grand.