My conversation with an artist who prefers to remain anonymous. We went for a walk under the Gardiner Expressway in Tkaronto on March 11, 2025 to discover or rediscover the downtown critters project, a series of large printed drawings of local animals, birds, insects and amphibians in Southern Ontario. The idea is to create little moments of surprise and joy for pedestrians and motorists around some of the most bleak and industrial stretches of Toronto and Ottawa. The drawings are quite moving and made me want to go back in time…
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Imagine stumbling upon a vibrant drawing of a local animal beneath the cold, concrete of a city expressway. This is the reality created by Downtown Critters, a public art project sparking joy and reflection in Toronto’s urban landscape. Discover the story behind the art, the artist’s motivations, and the unexpected connections it fosters between city dwellers and the natural world.
Chapter Summary
00:00 The Role of Art in Imagination
01:00 Introducing Downtown Critters
02:42 The Inspiration Behind the Critters
04:55 The Emotional Connection to Urban Wildlife
06:31 The Joy of Discovery
09:00 The Ephemeral Nature of Art
10:41 Art as a Reflection of Loss
12:26 Connecting Species and Spaces
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Behind the Story
Downtown Critters began with a simple observation: a family of bunnies living under a dumpster in a construction site near Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway. This sparked the artist’s desire to remind people of the animals that still inhabit, or once inhabited, the city. The project uses large-format drawings and wheat paste to create ephemeral art installations in unexpected places, prompting viewers to consider their relationship with the natural world.
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00 - 00:00:49] anonymous
I mean, I think there's a lot of roles for art generally, and one of my favorite ones is kind of imagining, you know, that art helps you imagine, even if it has nothing to do with it. It helps. You can be a springboard to help you dream and stuff like that. The project that we're going to talk about today, I think has a lot more to do with the kind of maybe solace or companionship or remembering melancholy, maybe. Although I think it's also about joy and surprise. So there's a few. A few levels of which I guess are all things that you hope to get from Art.
[00:00:49 - 00:00:51] Claude Schryer
Episode 223.
[00:00:55 - 00:00:59] anonymous
So this is the fisherman cat, which is actually a fisher.
[00:01:00 - 00:01:17] Claude Schryer
My conversation with an artist who prefers to remain anonymous. We went for a walk under the Gardiner Expressway in Tur on March 11, 2025, to discover or rediscover the Downtown Critters project.
[00:01:17 - 00:01:31] anonymous
It's been there because I think that's been there for three years or so now. So one of the appealing things about being underneath the Gardiner is there's less weather damage than other places because it is covered. So they last for a little while, a couple of years.
[00:01:31 - 00:02:12] Claude Schryer
A series of large printed drawings of local animals, birds, insects and amphibians that live or used to live in southern Ontario. The idea is to create little moments of surprise and joy for pedestrians and motorists around some of the most bleak and industrial stretches of Tokranto and Ottawa. I found the drawings to be very moving and made me want to go back in time. Downtown Critters.
[00:02:14 - 00:02:40] anonymous
Yeah, I mean, I think it's within the realm of graffiti art, because it is. You know, we go out at night with our buckets of wheat paste and unroll the paper and put it up like, you know, like I was young in the 80s, and so it's. There's still a lot of that kind of spirit to it, like poster art kind of thing. Blank.
[00:02:42 - 00:02:43] Claude Schryer
Tell me what the project is.
[00:02:43 - 00:03:25] anonymous
Right, right. So the project is I draw pictures of animals, and they're local animals, like southern Ontario animals. A lot of them are animals that you find in the city. So I haven't done any raccoons yet because people. People have been bugging me about doing raccoons, but I'm like, well, I think they're a little too familiar. So I've done, you know, squirrels and opossums and all the local things, but also other slightly more outside the city kind of critters like moose and a lynx and a bear and things that you're not going to see so much in downtown. But. But I do call them downtown critters.
[00:03:26 - 00:03:34] Claude Schryer
All objective with the project. What would you like viewers to feel or experience when they see the critters?
[00:03:34 - 00:06:06] anonymous
Yeah, yeah. It's funny because there's just. Recently there's been a whole series of coyote attacks in one neighborhood not too far from here. Very developed, like, lots of condo buildings. And the coyotes have been attacking some small unaccompanied dogs, that kind of thing. So I guess part of it is like, part of it is remembering that the animals are here. A lot of them still.
Like it began with. It began with when we moved into this building here. And we're in a very sort of construction heavy area of town where everything's getting built up. And so in an empty construction lot, there was a family of bunnies underneath a dumpster. And that was. That was the beginning of the idea of like, oh, there's some bunnies. And then somebody in the building said, oh, that they'd seen a fox who was, you know, coming after the bunnies, that kind of thing.
And so there's this. And, you know, we're meters away from the gardener. It's. It's right there. It's like so. So urban. And the fact that these little fuzzy mammals are trying to make a go of it in such a hostile environment was kind of part of like, I just felt.
I felt something for them that they're living in such an inhospitable place. And so then from there I just started thinking about the animals who do live here. The animals who used to live here. It kind of grew. Grew from that. And so it is kind of a feeling of knowing, like a reminder that they're here, that this is their space, that they still are sometimes here amongst us. And then sometimes they've left, sometimes they've had to go find something a little better.
And in fact, the city is building this huge park not too far away where I'm hoping that some of them will start to find some home kind of stuff. Well, we have, I would say, remnants of frog. He was quite glorious when he first went up and now he's quite tattered looking. I'm not sure if we should like, scrape them right down and start afresh. There's a feeling of. I mean, because, you know, the happy spot for putting up the critters has.
[00:06:06 - 00:06:11] Claude Schryer
Is this going to get you in trouble with City of Toronto ?
[00:06:15 - 00:07:31] anonymous
It's a bit of gray area. I did read the graffiti code and it's a bit of a gray area. But so the Happy spot for, like, putting them up has been underneath the gardener, because that way it doesn't interfere with anybody's business. And I find, because, you know, if you live here in the neighborhood, you have to cross that underneath the garden frequently. So it's also for the humans who live here and have to go underneath there. And, I mean, people have sent me emails, you know, strangers have sent me emails saying, oh, my God, like, what kind of crazy, wonderful person can you be to be putting up this stuff around? Because it makes me so happy when I'm, you know, I go for my jog and it's like under the traffic and it's, you know, the smell of it. Even just the cement, it just feels so grimy and gritty and rough and. And then you're like, oh, look, a frog.
And brings joy. So. So there's that piece of it. And I guess it's also, like. It's sort of brutal to think of animals in that situation underneath the gardener. But it's also us who's underneath the gardener. So.
[00:07:34 - 00:08:14] Claude Schryer
Well, I. We're going to visit them, literally. And the sound, being a sound person, the sound of that crushing trucks and cars constantly crossing, is also oppressive. So the whole thing is kind of oppressive. And yet you're trying to create an aesthetic experience of beauty of nature and fellow living beings. Right? The frogs and the serpents and the coyotes are our equals in my mind. I appreciate that you're honoring them that way, you know, with these big, beautifully drawn gestures.
[00:08:16 - 00:09:14] anonymous
There have been some emails from strangers that came in that were like, oh, my gosh, like, this is so cool. Like, what? It's just so fun. Keep doing it. And at night when we go out, you know, guy will be going by on his bike and he'll say, keep them coming. And over here at Sherburne, there was a bunch of kind of interactive graffiti that happened where somebody had gone with spray paint and spray painted sort of around the animals and put love and big letters and big eyes kind of looking at the animals. A collaboration, interactive or dialogue or something like that was. I was so moved. I was so moved by that. And then, very strangely, the city came and covered up the spray paint, but left the animals.
And then a year later, they came and they covered up the animals. Okay.
[00:09:18 - 00:09:23] Claude Schryer
And then all that's left is our memory. I'm telling you the story of something that's not there anymore.
[00:09:23 - 00:09:30] anonymous
Well, I wonder if they were like, no, no, Kathryn, come on. You gotta refresh. We want some Fresh ones. These guys are getting tired.
[00:09:35 - 00:10:02] Claude Schryer
I guess. The tradition of postering and putting up images of people and animals is all around the world. Right. It's often sad. Somebody has passed or somebody's missing and you put up their photo. It's not quite what you're doing, but in a way, it is like a missing person. If it's a species that no longer lives and are we looking for them?
Are we being sad? There's that ambiguity. Right. Am I reading into your work here?
[00:10:02 - 00:10:49] anonymous
Not at all. There's some people who I've described it to who say, oh, my God, that's so sad. Because it's as if they're sort of the lost animals. And then other people are like, it makes me so happy to pass by it, you know, when I'm out doing my errands. So it does, depending how you come at it. But I would say in terms of the inspiration, my favorite artist is jr, the French guy who puts posters of photos, photos of people in lots of different places. He's, like, just so inspiring.
It's different, you know, like a different. Clearly a different source and a different thing, but the interaction with a place. Yeah.
[00:10:50 - 00:11:03] Claude Schryer
And what about the sound of the space? Does that affect you in any way? There's no correlation there between the massive rumbling and the images you put on the wall.
[00:11:04 - 00:11:31] anonymous
It is. I guess I feel like I feel sympathy for both the human and the animals and the sound, because the sound is a. The sound is probably the biggest part of the assault. When you go underneath there, and then the smell and fear, like when you cross the lakeshore there, you sometimes feel like you're taking your life in your hands. And I'm sure plenty of animals.
[00:11:32 - 00:11:36] Claude Schryer
What's the significance of a raven on the hawk?
[00:11:36 - 00:13:33] anonymous
Yeah, the hawks are the hawk. Hawks are something you see all the time over. Over different places in the city. I mean, we used to see them all the time, but, you know, we lived midtown and had a backyard, and there was lots of hawks there. But even down here, sometimes you see them circling and circling. So they must get some pretty good action.
I mean, I. I do have to refresh because the city got a little bit. Last fall, the city got a little bit fussy and covered over a bunch of them. So they. They need refreshing. And I also want to kind of organize them better because I realized at one point at Parliament, I thought, well, it's right near the Parliament slip, which, you know, is like the lake comes right up to that intersection at Parliament. And so I put a muskie and a turtle and a fisher cat, or a fisher properly said, because I knew that a guy had just caught a muskie in the lake out here in the harbor.
So it's trying to have more of a relationship of which animals are in which place and how the animals each relate to each other. So the fisher cat might. He might try to catch a fish and that kind of thing. So that's one thing is to a refresh and maybe just a bit more of a cohesive narrative within each intersection where I've been putting them. Beyond that, I know there's people like friends who would like to bring it to other neighborhoods around the city. And then there was that little jaunt in Ottawa. Ottawa was much more uptight about covering them up very quickly.
So there is that kind of, you know, more ideas about other places to go. Nothing too high profile at this point.
[00:13:33 - 00:13:49] Claude Schryer
But yeah, well, that sounds like it's part of the aesthetic for it to be relatively simple and not like, ordinary or integrating with everyday life as opposed to a big spectacle.
[00:13:51 - 00:14:01] anonymous
One friend of mine said she's event planner, kind of good marketing kind of person, and she's like, I think we should talk to Roots about getting you on their T shirts and sweatshirts and stuff.
[00:14:03 - 00:14:20] Claude Schryer
Maybe one day, as cultural workers, you know, do to get. Become more engaged in, say, the valorization of nature or awareness about species and their habitat.
[00:14:20 - 00:14:58] anonymous
You know, at the beginning of the year, for example, I did a meditation or like a journey is called, with my shamanic teacher. And the question that we were supposed to ask was about where you find the most joy and where you find the most meaning in your life. So if you take that question into what your life is and who you are as a person, then you find the answers for your own path, right?