More than skin deep

New art exhibit opens at women’s centre

BY SEAN MCQUAID “MORE THAN SKIN DEEP”, AN ART exhibition devoted primarily to “exploring women's relationships with their bodies,” ~ opened at the UPEIl Women's Centre on the evening of March ||. Linda Kerr (of the Atlantic Veterinary College) emceed the event, which opened with presentations by Carla Rice and Lesley Anne Bourne.

Rice discussed the artwork on display, referring favourably to her perception of the pieces’ presentation of “goddess’’ images. Bourne read from her Skinny Girls collection of poetry, the title poem being a commentary on women’s destructive feelings of physical inadequacy. After the speeches and readings, those in attendance mingled and took in the artwork. Women’s Centre volunteer Stacy Dunn estimated that about fifty people attended the opening, a number considered excellent given the inclement weather that evening.

The show includes almost forty pieces ina variety of media, constituting a veritable visual smorgasbord. While not all the pieces will appeal to most viewers, there is something for almost every taste: painting, sculpture, quilting, photography, ink and pencil drawings, etchings, aquatint, and more.

Most of the pieces are paintings. Some are simplistic, unremarkable, or simply unattractive (such as Milner’s “Mother and Child” and Wigmore's “Untitled”; others are rather inaccessible in terms of their meaning (Curtis's “Sleeping Cat Wakes” is confusing though unique in style and with hints of deeper meaning, but

quilting,

Milner's “The Man Inside” is a seemingly senseless bit of

incongruity, featuring a stick figure cast adrift against some admittedly attractive background mist). There are far more good paintings than bad ones, though: Donna Lynn Wigmore's “Life of a Woman: Healing From the Past” (described by one centre volunteer as a manifestation of women’s “collective unconscious”) is a hauntingly compelling image of darkness, its savage brushstrokes sculpting dark grey tonalities into abstract forms. Karen Gallant's “Untitled” painting of a

The show includes almost forty pieces in a variety of media, constituting a veritable visual smorgasbord. While not all the pieces will appeal to most viewers, there is something for almost every taste: painting, sculpture,

photography, ink and pencil drawings, etchings, aquatint, and more. _

female nude at a waterfall is an endearingly meditative piece-- its tranquillity and lyric charm recall mythical water nymphs, and the soothing blues and greens of its colour scheme give the picture a pervasive, aquatic atmosphere. The icing on the cake for this piece is an exterior addition to the painting's surface, a piece of material representing the drapery that the woman is casting off; it gives the work an extra three-dimensional hook for the viewer.

Karen Drew's “Hope” and “Power” are goddess-like images of exceptional vitality and power, recalling Celticmanuscript illumination and animal style art in their wildly, organically intricate decorative elements (though Power's goddess figure also resembles an Incan, Mayan, or Aztec figure in its feathered, spectacularly adorned form); these are brilliantly colourful pieces, real eye-catchers that snag and hold viewers with technical sophistication and imagination.

Dale McNevin's “Refugees, again” is a Sresge poignant depiction of a mother and child in ‘var- torn Sarajevo; beyond its skilful, concretely realistic technical execution, the piece is noteworthy for its poignant commentary on the sufferings of war, made all the more effective by an image that evokes the centuries-old image of Madonna and Child.

Elizabeth Milner’s “More Than Just Skin Deep” is an arresting work, a polychromatic abstraction of the female figure. The Rubenesque form is fascinatingly anonymous (its face obscured in a fog of colour), and hence universal. The painting is awash in sensually stimulating blues, purples, and other colours, and the swirling hues combine with the generous proportions of the figure to suggest a fullness of life, perhaps a Gaea- figure.

Lorraine Quinn's “Distorted Vision” evokes one of the show's major themes with its disturbing image of a woman staring unhappily into a mirror reflection that is, at least in her eyes, much darker and much less attractive than she actually is.

Less obvious but even more fascinating is Andrea Redmond’s ‘“Lamentation"’, an impressionistic painting depicting a woman

playinga harp before backdrop of Stonehenge- like rock formations on a dark, mysterious, rolling landscape, while a fox and raven look on. It’s a compellingly enigmatic piece, with something of the otherworldy tone of di Chirico and the dreamlike quality of Fuseli (particularly in the fiery-eyed fox). The flowing brushstrokes merge into an impressionist dream-vision of shadowy atmosphere and colour.

Sculpture is also well-represented, with such pieces as Janet Norman-Bain’s unique sculpted leather mask, “Heather Rhymster”; Sandy Kowalik’s “Particle Perception” is a fascinating piece comprised of a black plaster mask with a fragmented, mirrored interior (the reflected soul?); Jan Mollison’s “Icons of Inner Thought” tries to literally display the contents of a woman's mind through the symbols and objects inside an open-topped, sculpted cranium; and Tina Davis's “More Than Skin Deep” wooden carving of a face emerging from a piece of driftwood is simply beautiful in both its appearance and its sentiment, marking it as one of the most eloquent and effective expressions of the show's themes, and of the ideal of beauty for that matter.

Photography is in evidence as well, with such pieces as Marion Copleston's “Boot Dance” (a quaint depiction of the jubilant freedom of childhood) and “Micheline” (an

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enigmatic forest scene that resemble: concrete realization of a Rousseau pain and particularly Cheryl Nicholson's “Cir Strength”, an ambitious symbolic p composition in a stark, massive metal fr

Many of the show's pieces are in | unusual media. Anne Mazer's cotton qui are whimsical figure studies, almost Rubenesque relief sculptures in cloth. Str still is Shelley Limbert’s “The Rainbow Wi which consists of an abstract painting woman (with portions of her ana represented as vibrant, multi-coloured sp and shapes) partially enshrouded by which is bound by copper wire (whict entwines a clay doll) and inscribed with a| describing how women are compell “enshroud” their bodies but learn to 2 them (unlock “the rainbow”) as they m It’s certainly a visually and concep imaginative piece, if not one of the attractive ones.

Thematic or issue-oriented art is subverted to its cause, with no value bey¢ own propaganda; that is not the case f most part with the new Women's C exhibit, which has pieces that are wortt as art inand of themselves. Though it is g towards women, this art show, like the ¢ is not only for women. The exhibitior until April 9, and art lovers of all g¢ should feel free to check it out.