Is it still graffiti
if it’s beautiful?
    Beyond the parking lot on the west side of Clarence Street between Dundas and Queens is a sight to lift your spirits and make you smile.
    This bright, playful mural not only turns the once-drab side of the building at 196 Dundas into a treat for the eye but also cleverly directs your attention to other aspects of downtown that are well worth your consideration. It’s a celebration of the city’s core.
     You note the allusions one by one: the Market Tower's clock; miscellaneous details of heritage architecture, the crenellation of chimneys that crown our surviving stock of 19th-century buildings; the Victoria Park gates and the green oasis beyond . . .
    Below all these is a vivid confusion of coloured shapes that I take to be the signature, or perhaps a manifesto, of the artist, a ‘tagger’ who has gone impressively upmarket but still acknowledges a cultural link to the defacers of post boxes and railway cars. Lower still, a welter of this and that — lesser things that one is tempted to think may have been added by friends or rivals yet to make that artistic leap; tributes perhaps, or spite.
    Graffiti this may be, but art it undoubtedly is as well — a stimulating visual pick-me-up.