Old Mill Subway Station Rail Bridge Mural - Part 2

Well you know, I think it's important to say that I had a team that helped to develop the whole scene of this wall. And Kwest is a street artist who was part of this team and Jarus also. These two guys are very well known street artists.

We had to meet, before we started this project. They had to know where I was coming from. And I wanted them to really understand. And I talked about our cosmology and we did a little ritual along the edge of the water. And we began to talk about the underworld and where that underworld was in our everyday world. Where could we find the edge of the underworld. So, I said, "We're very close to the edge of this underworld. Look at that water going by. We call it the Humber River but it's called Kabechinon. That water is the edge of the underworld". And that underworld is the spirit world and we have these two worlds that run side by side. One's a physical world and one's a spirit world. 

And I shared this understanding about this underworld with these artists. And so Quest decided he was going to do the whole underworld, the body of water and Jaris realized that, "Well I'm going to be doing these fish 'cause these are the underworld guardians".  And that circular structure that holds the image in a like a medallion floating in the water, that circle represents the edge of the underworld. And those lines coming down off it are tangents going, reaching into that deep understanding of this cosmology and that spirit world. Because all of our lives we are connected to that underworld.

And what I'm hoping that the viewer will get is a sense of a dreamlike quality. You know because dreaming is very close to the underworld. ‎And when we have dreams our spirits are traveling. And if a person can get to a place, that feeling of dreaming when they see the work on the wall, I think I did my job.