Art in the Open

The Well is a 7.8-acre open-air experience of food, shopping and entertainment covered by the largest latticed glass roof of its type in North America, casting dynamic shadows on the mid-block passages of Toronto’s King West Village.

Now, add an art crawl to the list of things you can do at the Allied-RioCan joint venture. Whether you’re strolling the colonnades, criss-crossing the three-storey space via bridges or surfacing into the restaurant-lined atrium, there’s public art to be seen in both traditional and unexpected forms.

Take Emergence by Brooklyn-based artist Dustin Yellin. Standing more than 10 feet tall, the stainless-steel figural sculpture situated at the Wellington Street entrance is more than meets the eye. Approach it and you’ll notice the agglomeration of Canadian and Southern Ontario–inspired and sci-fi references, including a blue jay, a trillium flower, the Canadarm, a five-pin-bowling pin and a wormhole to a distant galaxy.

A decidedly quieter (but no less inspired) contribution to the arts program at The Well can be found at Draper Park, at the western edge of the site. A cast-bronze kitty, modelled after resident feline Dizzy, greets and guards beds of fragrant catnip and cast-metal chairs. Designed by Montreal-based Claude Cormier et Associés, the tiny park is a foil to CCxA’s east-end dog-themed Berczy Park.

Elsewhere within The Well complex, murals delight and surprise and functional artworks—sinuous and blocky reclaimed-lumber benches by Toronto designers Brothers Dressler—provide a perch for taking in the scene. Nearby, off a vast glazed office lobby at Front and Spadina, The Globe and Mail newspaper’s salvaged art deco doors are a monument to the site’s storied past (and present, since the Toronto Star relocated its head office here) in publishing.

Add to this the art collection at FourFifty (a selection of works is visible in the residential building’s lobby), the paid-entry Arcadia Earth immersive art installation and the weekly artisanal market and the obvious takeaway is—apart from that crafted Mandy’s salad—that art is alive and well and very much woven into the fabric of daily life at The Well.