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So I head over to Bathurst Street after lunch Tuesday, psyched to meet Patrick and Patrick, and have a meaningful conversation about the global explosion of street art.

It is not to be.

“They couldn’t make it. We do work for them,” explains a tall, smiling young man in forest-green coveralls. From a can of low-pressure black paint, he sprays the outlines of the letter “D” in the word “DESPIERTA” (Spanish for “awake”), rendered in peach-coloured letters as tall as he is on a teal background. An artist from Oakland, he does not want his name in the newspaper.

Nearby, Nick Popovici from Washington, D.C., paints the head of a black dog (a trademark of Faile), dipping his brush into a can of Behr exterior flat paint. The dog appears on the panel of a huge rendering of a muscle car, labeled “1986 Challenger.” Elsewhere, huge orange letters read, “Pay the Toll and Deliver the Love.” Pink and green letters read, “No Change My Heart Will Fear.”

Further down, holding a pot of pink paint, Martha Marie Skou Nielsen from Denmark paints roses.

Each artist holds a glossy colour printout of a rendering of the mural. A summer student at the City of Toronto measured the wall and sent the specs to Brooklyn. Ms. Zendel did expect the artists to come to Toronto to execute the work.

“That piece I guess is disappointing,” agrees Joe Mihevc, the local councillor. Still, he saw Faile’s concept at a public forum at a library, and likes it.

Itinerant muralist is a new job category. Mr. Popovici and the Oakland man painted a mural for Faile in Austria two months ago, and another in Dallas last month. Messrs. McNeil and Miller did visit Dallas for that commission, a Dallas newspaper reports.