The Evergreen Brick Works–more urban exploration

A most unexpected and cool opportunity, while at Toronto Maker Faire: urban exploration of the Evergreen Brick Works!  This was the most amazing combo of beautiful semi-decay and interesting weather-sheltered street art.

These Orwellian faces, likely intended as memorials, were not painted on, but rather applied as decals over the brick.  Love the peeling effect.

Too my utter surprise, in this overly-lawyered world of endless safety waivers and buzz kill, Maker Faire attendees could wander freely through the fantastic kiln area.  It’s a cavernous…

sheltered…

factory floor…

with hundred-yard(?) long kilns that were used for drying and firing the bricks that were made here from the ideal local clay.

And the street art!  Wow.  Here’s where I need David Hoover to curate this walk-through.

I find these old factories almost cathedral-like.  Big scale.  And for me, a reverence to the making that once happened within.

Tagging over other work is a pretty serious offense on the street.  Do the same rules apply here?

In addition to the great great bones of this building at the macro scale…

there were some fantastic textures in the details.

Amazing decay.  Like filo pastry.

A range of quality.

This eroding brick is an alien landscape.  Or like cake.

Storage!

Zoom shot through the kiln.

No kidding…

I finally found some wall-writing.  And this was the only instance I could find.

Think I have to use James’ method of manually selecting the focal point for shots like this.  Tough one.

 

Only example of stencilling that I saw.

…collaborate and listen…

Floor.

We could really use a venue like this in Waterloo Region, eh?

Happy making,

DW