Toronto, CA

August 19, 2016 Greetings Tour

*Please note as of 2021 this mural is no longer at this location!

Greetings from Toronto, Canada! This was technically our first international mural project in North America and also the first official postcard mural in an interior space. A mutual friend recommended us to be the featured artists for a wall inside a new Lululemon concept store in Queen West. This particular store would have a multi-use area for local community based events. After a some back and forth communication to get proper work permits, we were finally able to line this up and made our way up to Toronto in the summer. Special thanks to Mike Krupica and Allister Lee for making this happen.

On the way up, we had a houseplant in the RV as we crossed the border which was not allowed into Canada. They didn’t let us throw it out on the spot. As a result, we had to turn around go back across a bridge to the American border. When we got back to the US customs checkpoint, they said we couldn’t enter back into the country with the plant. We were temporarily trapped in an abyss between two countries due to a little houseplant! Finally, after explaining the situation, they let us dispose of the plant. Afterwards, we had to wait and start the process all over again to get through Canadian customs. As frustrating as the experience was, it was a funny memory of interesting RV life experiences. Don’t even get us started about how many times we get pulled into secondary inspection crossing borders in our RV.

We drove for a few hours getting accustomed to the metric signs and Tim Horton’s everywhere. We arrived at the shop which was fully under construction. The construction project manager was pretty strict and required us to have on safety equipment just to get on site. Next thing you know, we were running around Toronto shopping for hard hats and steel toe boots! Thank you to Lululemon for covering these unexpected costs. It gave us a chance to explore the city a little before we got to work on the mural. Toronto was a very friendly city and much hipper than we expected.

The streets in the city were pretty narrow and difficult for us to get around in a 24’ ft RV. Therefore, we had to park Honeybear at a nearby business and ended up staying at some Airbnb’s as we painted the mural during the week. We loved being able to walk around in the summer weather. Also, a shout out to the local restaurant Maker Pizza as they were definitely NYC approved!

For the background of this mural, we decided to go with a more subtle & pale color combo than we normally would have gone with. We didn’t want to overpower the retail environment since the rest of the space had white walls. However, we kept the brand’s colors in the lettering. We took a bit more direction from the client on this mural due to the artwork living inside a retail store. However, Lululemon was very much in line with our overall project vision so the creative process went very smoothly.

The construction manager on site ended up being a very nice guy. He was just doing his job and kind of messing with us in the beginning. It was a challenge using spray paint at such a small scale. Also, it was tough to work around some obstacles like the pipe that went vertically through the “N.” As a graffiti artist, Victor was used to working on all kinds of irregular surfaces, so we still got it done with no complaints!

There was still a lot of construction work to be done after we finished the mural, so we weren’t able to capture completed shots of the furnished space. We did find some photos from blogs online after the store opened. It was great to see it being used as a creative space for the local community. Thank you again to Mike, Allister and the Lululemon team for making this project happen!

Photo Credit: BlogTO

Photo Credit: Toronto Life

Photo Credit: Mike Krupica