Bloor Street | Banner Project

Images: Dyan Marie 2008, 1-4 of 29, photobased digitally-developed images, street banners, 23 inches X 52.5 inches each, install Bloor street between Dufferin and Lansdowne, Toronto.

From the outside, curator Peter Dykhuis’ decision to pair Marshall’s rural paintings with Dyan Marie’s digitally manipulated photos of Toronto urban street scenes is an odd one, but I think it really works. There’s a shared sense of activism, a mix of realism and abstraction. In 2007, Toronto Star writer Christopher Hume said of Marie’s neighbourhood, “Indeed, by the time Bloor hits Lansdowne Avenue, it has transformed into a distinctly unpleasant district that has almost nothing to recommend it.” Perhaps Marie is setting out to prove critics wrong with her energetic “un-still lives”: long swaths of vivid colours manipulated from street flowerboxes. – SUE CARTER FLINN
Dyan Marie, Un-still Lives with Traffic: Boy Reading, 2007

HALIFAX Akimblog, May 24, 2010

Photography of Holly King, Dyan Marie & Diana Thorneycroft

January 6-March 20, 2011

Toronto artist Dyan Marie’s series Un-still Lives with Traffic is a photographic declaration of the vitality found in the everyday activities of her neighbourhood. Through digital manipulation, Marie emphasizes the colours and foliage in what would otherwise be bland urban settings. With these overt manipulations, her images become near abstractions, celebrating colour as much as community.

Curator, Exhibition Organized by Glenbow Museum, Calgary