Some new faces have taken up residence on the four pillars of the Adelaide St. underpass.

The bold, colourful faces are just one aspect of the new murals that now brighten a once-desolate underpass in Corktown. The transformation is more than just a slap of fresh paint to cover the typical grey of transportation infrastructure; it’s a series by street artists Essencia Art Collective called Frozen Moments.

“Each pillar is kind of like a personification for a certain historical aspect of Corktown,” said Essencia Art Collective co-founder and co-director Elisa Monreal, a.k.a. Shalak Attack, the lead artist and project director.

A turtle, representing the area’s First Nations history, and a ship crossing the high seas carrying Irish settlers give revellers an idea of the community’s history, on The Past pillar.

In contrast, The Future pillar depicts a booming Toronto cityscape, complete with condo buildings and the latest streetcar. The Worker pillar recalls Corktown’s working-class roots, depicting a brick mason, gears and a factory billowing smoke, while The Possibility pillar shows all the opportunity the city has to offer through the eyes of a child.

The series was funded by the city’s StreetARToronto program, which started in 2012 to counteract graffiti vandalism with street and mural art. This is the first year of the StreetARToronto Underpass Program (StART UP). Four other underpasses were also revamped through the program: at Warden Ave. and St. Clair Ave. E.; Danforth Ave. and Kingston Rd.; Davenport Rd. and Dupont St.; and the Monarch Park pedestrian tunnel.

Choosing the Corktown pillars was serendipitous, said Kristina Hausmanis, a project lead with StreetARTToronto, also know as StART.

Last year at a launch event for StART’s 2014 programs, Arthur Sinclair, the vice-president of the Corktown Resident and Business Association, arrived with photos of the orphaned pillars, looking for a revamp. It just happened to be the same year StART UP launched.

“The impetusand the desire from the community made it a great fit,” Hausmanis said.

The location of the pillars is a prominent space in Corktown, with lots of people passing by on foot and on the streetcar, Sinclair said.

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“The area really intrigued me because it was dark and dingy. It wasn’t a place that you really wanted to be in; it was a place you wanted to pass through.”

Toronto-based Monreal, her sister Gilda Monreal, a.k.a. Fiya Bruxa, and her husband Bruno Sant’Angelo Revitte, a.k.a. Bruno Smoky, applied to participated in StART UP last spring. They submitted a design proposal for the pillars in late August and were chosen by a selection committee in September. The work began in October and took about a week per pillar.

“It was like beautiful, creative construction work,” Gilda said about moving around three- and four-storey scaffolding for a month.

Sinclair, who lives just up the street from the murals, said the images are both highly visible from a moving vehicle and tell a more detailed story up close. He said he spends lots of time watching people discover the pillars, which are painted on all four sides.

“One of the things I think street art does, it makes people very aware of their surroundings. People’s eyes rise up from trailing along the sidewalk. It’s incredible what that does for the psyche of a community.”