Illustrator sheds light on downtown's ignored

Illustrator sheds light on downtown's ignored. Comic book creator Jason Kieffer at his illustration table in Cabbagetown, where he was born, raised and continues to live. His latest book, 'The Rabble of Downtown Toronto', has been both well received and cited as not compassionate to its subjects. Photo/COURTESY

However, in a recent email interview with The City Centre Mirror, the lifelong Cabbagetown resident said he disagrees with that interpretation. Kieffer considers the book as being "more complicated than that".

Despite the title of the book, and the somewhat clinical approach to presenting its characters - those suffering from one form or another of mental or emotional illness - Kieffer took pen to paper to illustrate his experiences growing up and continuing to live in the downtown neighbourhood.

"My book is a product of my subjective experience of the city. I don't see how it's insensitive to express what I've experienced," he said, admitting his book, which took two years to complete, can be blunt. "The reader needs to be asking themselves why the book effects them the way it does and what that means, if they want to take anything away from it."

After 27 years of observing not only his immediate neighbourhood but a much larger area encompassing Bloor Street to the north, King Street to the south, Parliament Street to the east and Bathurst Street to the west, Kieffer created a handbook of characters who inhabit the downtown core. Profiling 40 individuals - Escaped Mental Patient, King Actor/Dancer, Valentina, Alex the Joke Dealer, Zanta, Norman, The Bandage Man and many more - Kieffer interacted with many of them on a regular basis, bringing the reality that is the downtown core to readers. He noted he hadn't seen many of these individuals in years.

"If I spent my life outside of the downtown core, I wouldn't be able to address the things that I have in any sort of real or honest way. While working on the book, I watched one of the women I depicted gradually be destroyed mentally and physically by drugs. It's difficult for me to witness so much of this going on in my community and that's one of the reasons why I'm addressing it."

Growing up in downtown Toronto gives Kieffer a personal understanding of issues like homelessness and mental illness, having experienced them on a daily basis, "in a real, direct kind of way." Ten years ago, he began addressing those subjects in his work.

"It's a problem I'm tying to work out slowly through my art and in myself," he said. "And it's something that people in our city need to be thinking about and working through themselves as well, if they aren't already."

Each illustrated character comes with a map of the area they frequent and accompanied by 'Additional Information', which is often far too blunt to be comfortable. But Kieffer explained he wanted to experiment with the ways he approached the subjects. He decided to "go with a more fragmented, observational sort of approach", which expressed an "us and them" sort of problem.

"Many people in the city put up a wall between themselves and the sorts of people I've written about," he said. "The book expresses that wall and hopefully, as a result, breaks it down."

With gentrification creeping into every corner of the city, one question quickly arises when reading Kieffer's book: Where will the people ignored by society, and most Torontonians, go?

"The area's changing a lot and people are being displaced," he said. "With Regent Park being redone, a lot of the low-income housing in the neighbourhood is being relocated. I really don't like the direction things are going - I disagree with these kinds of approaches."

Kieffer recalled an incident he witnessed a few days prior to the interview where a man was standing in front of a coffee shop that recently opened in the neighbourhood. A police officer "got all up in his face" and told him to leave when all he was doing was standing on the sidewalk.

"It seems like it's getting more and more difficult for people in the area, who have extremely difficult lives as it is, to just live their lives."

Kieffer said he hopes The Rabble of Downtown Toronto causes people to think about these subjects and the situation in the City of Toronto.

"It seems that my comic has created dialogue and has added to the ongoing discussion of these issues, which is great. I see my role as an artist to be one of sparking discussions. And hopefully those discussions will not centre around my actions and intentions, but will engage the real problems we face as a city."

Kieffer will be giving a presentation on The Rabble of Downtown Toronto Thursday, April 22 at 8 p.m. at The Central (603 Markham St.) and will be interviewed by fellow cartoonist Dave Lapp. For more information about the comic, visit www.jasonkieffer.com