But not neon signs and street signs. Here we have signs written on cardboard, signs written in chalk, signs sprayed with paint, etched in dust, and printed on stickers. Toronto is covered in signs of all types.

Here's a tribute to the makeshift signs all around us. Many are humourous, others are serious, but all of them came from the cameras of blogTO readers that submitted them to the blogTO Flickr pool over the last few months. Thanks, as always for your submissions, everyone!

1.Truth in advertising 2.Church Excuse 3.Free Rolling Papers 4....we do want we want

5.freestyle graffiti? 6.then what's graffiti 7.Love Behind Bars 8.Stop driving

9.IMG_8601.JPG 10.Untitled 11.important balls 12.Stoop and scoop, please.

13.smurfiliciously dangerous 14.must be time for pie ... 15.no buy no hope 16.Red door

As you continue to check out the Contact photo shows over the next couple weeks, be sure to keep an eye out for some rather strangely outfitted bus shelters scattered along the Queen West strip. More precisely stretching from Shaw to Gladstone, Douglas Coupland's Warflowers will be taking over these usually bland structures for the duration of this year's Contact festival.

Playing off of this year's theme of The Constructed Image, Coupland combines photos of Japanese ikebana arrangements with military iconography to create these almost hypnotic combinations of line and plane. The symbols are inspired by decals from plastic model airplane kits, and this childlike and obviously playful sentiment comes through, like most of Coupland's work, quite strongly.

The flower arrangements are from the rikka school of ikebana, which is supposed to be the most challenging of all styles. Coupland explains that, "the contradiction of rikka is that an extraordinary amount of artifice is used to create a natural aesthetic. They evoke landscape but they're about as natural as microwave ovens." A large part of what I love about Coupland's work (and of course his writing) is the subtle irony he always manages to implant in a way that never seems forced, but always very necessary.

At the end of the day, I suppose they are just simply posters on bus shelters. But he has stated that this series is about as close to self-portraiture as he's ever come, so please forgive this rather obvious fan for perhaps diving a little deeper than necessary into the meaning behind Warflowers. I tend to get carried away with the things I love.

On this week's podcast, Andrea Nene speaks with film programmer, Alan Tong about Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project and other films at Contact this weekend.

Also on this week's podcast:
*Executive director, Scott Ferguson tells me what's to come at this year's Inside Out
* Movie reviews for Waitress and 28 Weeks Later


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Listen | Download the podcast
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Search | Search the audio on Podzinger

We're only through week one and a half of CONTACT and there's still plenty of exhibits that haven't yet opened. Here are my picks for some of the launch parties to fit in your schedule this Friday and Saturday.

May 11th (Tonight!)

Tonight is all about Ossington or just off Ossington. My first stop will be Gallery TPW where Winnipeg artist Dominique Ray's Selling Venus / Venus au miroir presents a portrait of exotic dancers, and of the artist herself taking on the role of a stripper, at the Crazy Horse dance club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I stopped by the gallery yesterday for a preview and I have to say it's the best put together exhibit I've seen in the new TPW space yet.

The blogTO Contact Flickr Forum aims to feature some of the most intriguing images taken by fellow Torontonians and submitted to the special blogTO @ Contact pool. Submissions are welcome right up until the end of May!

This sampling of eclectic images, regardless of whether or not they themselves demonstrate the Contact festival's "constructed image" theme, do collectively form a unique "constructed image" of our thriving city, through the eyes and words of our readers and Flickr pool members.

Please continue for full-sized images and words from the photographers...

Yesterday I checked out an intriguing collection of photos on display in the main banking hall of Scotia Plaza in the Financial District. Called Threads of Hope, the exhibit is the product of efforts made by Krista Pawley (a Scotiabank employee) and CASS.

In January of this year, they handed out 22 disposable cameras to men, women and children living is Southern Sudan with the intent that each of them document their lives. Speaking with Krista yesterday, she mentioned how she tought participants (comprised of child soldiers, former slaves, nurses, teachers and school children) how to use the cameras and then quickly need to moderate their enthusiasm so they wouldn't take all the allocated photos (there were 27 on each camera) at once.