Mural with love, liberty and hustle was unveiled on the walls of the Liberty Market Building

Mural with love, liberty and hustle was unveiled on the walls of the Liberty Market Building

‘Love Liberty’ & ‘Hustle’ are the words splashed across two new murals in the heart of Liberty Village. Created by Canadian-born, self-taught artist Ben Johnston, the murals were painted on the walls of the Liberty Market Building, 171 East Liberty St., in the galleria strip.

“We had this brick wall and we thought there was so much we could do to bring people through the galleria and encourage people to come and visit and use this as a beacon to encourage people to come down and check out the neighbourhood,” said Lifetime developments vice-president, Brian Brown.

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“But more so it really captures the pride that people have about the neighbourhood.”

The murals were commissioned by Lifetime Developments, the owners of the building and were unveiled to the public June 9.

Both art pieces are meant to capture the neighbourhood’s character.

“For love liberty, whether you’re sitting on a patio here, or you’re buying a cupcake or flowers, the moment you walk through the building it really has this vibrant personality to it,” Brian said. “Hustle, really captures the entrepreneurial spirit of the neighbourhood and if you talk to the people who work here or have offices here, it’s that spirit that’s clearly here.”

The two large scale murals also represent its industrial history.

Brown said he found Johnston on Instagram about a year ago and was instantly drawn to his typography style of work.

“His work is phenomenal. It’s just so creative and it’s really an art in itself,” he said. “So we reached out to him about a year ago and over the last year we’ve been working on this collaboration trying to figure out what the right words were to capture how people feel about the building and about working and living in the village.”

Lifetime Developments hopes the murals, will become a photo-worthy neighbourhood attraction and icon and encourage people who snap photos to use the hashtag #LoveLibertyTO in their captions.

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