Many Little Plans is the title for an integrated public artwork to be permanently installed in the St. Patrick subway station in the heart of downtown Toronto. I was awarded the commission in 2017. It will be installed upon the completion of an extensive subway refitting.

Jane Jacobs, Toronto’s revered urban activist, advised making “many little plans” as key to creating a healthy urban environment. She emphasized that “The diversity of a good neighborhood can only be achieved when we allow many different people to pursue their own little plans, individually and collectively.” * This condition describes perfectly the area surrounding St. Patrick Station.

My artwork work consists of more than four hundred ceramic tiles to be installed in the six alcoves on the subway platform. Each tile contains the silhouette of a person filled with a unique pattern, as if its shape were cut from a piece of patterned fabric. For the patterns I looked to sources in the Toronto neighborhood as well as to my personal image archive. Above all else I was drawn to treasures in the nearby Textile Museum of Canada, whose collection includes 15,000-plus objects from more than 200 regions of the world. The selection and juxtaposition of these patterned people will create an interconnectedness across cultural differences that together form a complex, living pattern.

Among the silhouettes, you will find the occasional photographic portrait. These photographs were taken in the neighborhood surrounding the station with the full participation and consent of each subject. The portraits and silhouettes together comprise a compendium of ages, genders, ethnicities, and walks of life, reminding viewers of the vibrant diversity of Toronto’s urban population.

“Pattern is calming,” wrote the Austrian architect and designer Josef Frank in 1934. “The calmness comes from the fact that the mind is rested when it is absorbed by seeing pattern.”

In this work no two tiles are alike. But like a neighborhood and like a city, the individual tiles come together across the distance to form larger patterns. An even longer viewing distance suggests a series of gridded rectangles. The work’s locations, in the 32-foot length of the alcove area of each subway platform, afford ample opportunity for all viewing distances.

I believe that this work will sit comfortably within the context of the modern aesthetic of the St. Patrick station, while at the same time rewarding scrutiny with the playful variety of its characters. Like Jane Jacobs’ precept, the artwork will play its small part in a larger whole, insinuating itself gently but confidently into the context of Toronto’s urban environment. An offering that mirrors and celebrates the importance of a respectful and shared social space.

*From “Ten Big Ideas” written by Nate Storing for the Jane’s Walk Project Office C.2014

Photographic assistance by Emma Kreiner and Mark Van Wormer
Production by Mosaika Art and Design