Queen West Art Crawl

 Yesterday we started with brunch at the Gladstone Hotel Cafe, such a beautiful, light-filled room. John liked this denizen at the bar. We also liked this 10 by 14 foot Stag by Grant Heaps. It's assembled from thousands of square pieces of reclaimed fabric, lightly stitched together.

The Fly Gallery is just a window (fly as in theatrical fly-space). That's John's bike. 

Try to get by to see these beautiful paintings by Allison McCall. They'll be there until the end of April.

No visit to Queen West would be complete without a look-in at Katharine Mulherin's Contemporary Art Projects. Katherine was at her desk, friendly and welcoming as ever. We talked about the gorgeous Elsie Rasmussen photographs hanging behind her.

It's been a while since we made it this far West so we were surprised to discover two new collectible shops had opened up: Art History and The Melissa.

The stores are conjoined and both had great stuff. Here is some Melissa.

We were tying up our bike's outside Paul Petro Contemporary Art and who should appear but Greg Couillard, the infamous Toronto chef. He was deeply jet-lagged having just arrived last night. He was doing the food for a gallery opening and had been up with the larks buying the ingredients. He's living in Mexico and loving it. He thinks he might like to do 6 months here and 6 months there. He told John again how much he loves John's food pictures and told me they had been a big hit at the Culinary Institute of Guadalajara.

We went into Paul Petro's and were particularly struck by new paintings by Mark Bell. We'd not seen his work before. Don't miss the one at Reception. Love it! Until May 1st.

MOCCA had a lovely installation, Untitled Seven, by Emma Hart and Benedict Drew, involving film and slide projectors and musical instruments. The din was beautiful and the experience was great fun. It's part of the Images Festival.

You might find yourself projected on the wall as you walk by.