Lionel is on a mission “to connect, to inspire and to provoke” the people of Guelph with his attention-grabbing street art installations, such as the one titled Where are you sleeping tonight? set up last week on a Wyndham Street North sidewalk.
That piece features an overturned and modified shopping cart filled with stones on one end, with suitcases at the other and a wooden bench platform between them where people can sit.
The idea, explained Lionel, who's true identity GuelphToday agreed to keep secret, is simply to make people pause and think about homelessness, addiction and other “unpleasantness” exacerbated by the pandemic.
“Where are you sleeping tonight?’ You get to go home. These people don't have a home to go to,” he said. “Nobody grows up and says, ‘Someday I want to smoke crack on the street and pass out.’ Nobody says that. So it was about personalizing the issue.”
This is far from Lionel’s first street art installation in the city.
He’s also behind last year’s silhouette painting of the Basilica of Our Lady on Norfolk Street, with running paint in various colours coming down from the top of a retaining wall (known as Reign of Colour), as well as Do Not Feed Bear, which saw the often-decorated Begging Bear sculpture in front of the Art Gallery of Guelph boxed in, with a hole cut out for its extended paw.
All three of these installations have spurred numerous social media posts and generated a variety of conversations about their meaning.
A smile bursts onto Lionel’s face when asked for his thoughts on people talking about and sharing photos of his work, but he’s reluctant to suggest there’s any specific message behind them he wants to promote. It’s more about inspiring people to think about issues for themselves.
“Art is a dance between the artist and the person who views it,” he said. “What's important is that you looked at it and that was your interpretation of it, and that's valid.”
Lionel has also 'hacked' several bus shelter advertising spaces in order to display his work.
Asked what social change or reaction he’s hoping to inspire through his art, Lionel says that’s not up to him to decide, but he likes to put them in very visible locations so the issues can't be ignored.
“I believe in the process, we have a fairly well-functioning democracy in this country, and that means that the politicians that we elect do what we want them to do,” he said.
“If the public is interested solely in minimizing their exposure to cost, make my taxes go down and that is the only thing that's important, then we'll elect people that will make that come true. If we think, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I do want to reduce my exposure to risk and harm, but I sure wouldn't mind doing it by bringing other people up and how can we solve complex social problems from the perspective of caring for other people?’ then we will elect like-minded people to various offices who will execute on those things.
"We get what we ask for.”
Lionel has been an artist for many years, but only turned to street art relatively recently, making trips to Toronto to hone his abilities before letting them loose on Guelph.
His street art efforts began in large part in response to limited work hours during the pandemic.
“I realized that I had spent my whole life compromising with creative work in many cases, but not really focused on my artistic career,” he said.
“These ideas come to me. I don't always understand them. I don't always necessarily even think they may be good ideas, but I feel this compulsion to resolve it.”
Lionel’s first local installation idea came to fruition last year.
He’d been eyeing up an abandoned and empty traffic sign along the Hanlon Expressway, near Clair Road, for a couple years.
Typically, these signs let drivers know what commercial opportunities exist up ahead – gas stations, restaurants and more.
Lionel, too, wanted to let drivers be aware of what to expect in front of them, but he flipped the script to highlight the “welcoming community” and “good people” of the city.
“I'm proud to live in Guelph. A lot of the work that I've done is a celebration of Guelph,” he added. “Some of (my art) is social critique, but some of it is actually being proud of this town.”
Anonymity is important to Lionel, not just because he’s invading public and/or privately owned spaces without permission, but because he feels putting his face forward would distract from the art itself.
To see more examples of Lionel's work, check out his Instagram page at www.instagram.com/lionel.streetart/.
