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The Brantford Station Gallery
5 Wadsworth St. Brantford, ON (CNR/VIA Rail Station)

Business Hours
Monday-Wednesday: 7am-11am
Thursday-Friday: 7am-2pm
Saturday: subject to change
Sunday: 12pm-5pm

 

LIVE
Music Performances

Come join us and listen to awesome live music while enjoying a delicious light lunch with desserts, tea, Fair Trade Baden coffee and our fine flavored house blends.

The Brantford Station Gallery presents a live concert series of various musicians 2pm to 4pm every Sunday.

Suggested donation of $5 to $10 (all proceeds go to the artists)

WiFi Available

Posted By VINCENT BALL
Brantford Expositor
July 2009

Mike Tutt became a kind of urban treasure hunter when he spent several years tearing down walls and renovating old downtown buildings a few years ago.

But back then, even he didn't know what he'd end up doing with all the milk bottle caps, old linoleum, posters, newspapers and other artefacts he'd find on a daily basis.

"Some people thought I was a little odd because I'd save all this stuff," Tutt said Saturday. "But I just felt that I had to save it and thought I'd figure out what to do with it all sooner or later."
He turned treasure into art and the results of his love affair with Brantford and its much-maligned downtown, has been shown throughout Southern Ontario. On Saturday, his work was on display during an opening reception at The Station Coffee House and Gallery operated by Tutt and his wife Linda.

"Between 2000 and 2006, I was working on a lot of different projects in the downtown and I was always finding interesting stuff," Tutt said. "It was always a huge thrill for me to be pulling down a wall and finding something like a milk bottle cap, or old copies of The Expositor.

"Probably, the most interesting thing I ever found was an intact medicine cabinet. It still had some Wilkinson razors, some pills, and some tubes of Vaseline."

The medicine cabinet was found behind a wall on the second floor of a building on the south side of Colborne Street. Tutt was working on a project that would see the building transformed into apartments.

But there have been other interesting finds as well.

There are some old Bicycle playing cards and one day he found five or six large poster-style advertisements for drug stores. The posters are huge, were in reasonably good shape and are featured in his art work.

Tutt can trace his roots to Brantford and the downtown back five generations and it has been especially gratifying to find items that are connected in some way to previous generations.

A couple of signs advertising tie and shirt sales and tropical suits can be traced back to the old downtown Eaton's store where his grandfather Jack Northover was involved with advertising. He also has a page from a 1909 edition of The Expositor.

A lot of his findings are framed and covered by old windows that were taken from the various downtown buildings where he worked during that six -year period.

"What you're seeing here is a culmination of about nine years of work," Tutt said.

Tutt and his wife Linda opened The Station Coffee House and Gallery in February and are pleased with the success their venture has enjoyed over the past six months. Located at West and Grey Streets by the Via Rail train station, the coffee house and gallery has already attracted several performers and artists.

The reception Saturday included performances by entertainer Ginger St. James with special guest Alfie Smith.

"We're booked right through until the end of 2009 and we're starting to do bookings for 2010 now," Tutt said. "In September, Kevin Hearn, of The Barenaked Ladies will have an exhibit of his artwork here and in October we have Tom Wilson, a Hamilton musician and artist coming in."