Woodstock Art Gallery launches new exhibits – Woodstock Sentinel Review

Three new exhibits will be on display at the Woodstock Art Gallery starting this weekend.

The gallery will host a free reception from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday to launch the new showings.

The main floor will feature Dance Me to the End of Love, inspired by the Leonard Cohen song of the same name and put together by well-known Ontario curator Linda Jansma.

The works come from the gallery’s own collection and focus on the mysteries of life, such as the search of beauty, love, longing and loss.

“There’s a lightheartedness to the exhibition with some beautiful pieces that lift your spirits and others that tug on more sombre emotions people can have,” Woodstock gallery director and curator Mary Reid said.

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Jansma first started looking at the gallery’s collection and, while she was putting it together, was listening to Cohen. Dance Me to the End of Love began playing – a song that looks at moments in a person’s life – and Jansma saw a powerful thread that related to the exhibit, Reid said.

The lyrics and, in turn, the works on display, show a sequence of a person’s moments in life.

Jansma will also be giving a walk and talk at 3 p.m. Saturday on the exhibit.

The gallery’s second floor will highlight art from local women in Given Her Due: Oxford County Women Artists 1880 to 1980. The works will examine the region’s female artists, including Eva Bradshaw, Better McArthur, Jaquie Poole, Fryke Oostenbrug, Blanche Longworth, Violet Erie (Smiley) Edwards and several others.

Reid said the exhibit gradually came together as people in the community would reach out with past works from female family members.

As more people came forward, connections were made between the artists knowing one another or learning from the same people.

“With the works we have (in our collection) and the private collectors, we’ve created a survey of about hundred years of women artists in our community that have never really been given their due. It highlights their extraordinary amount of creativity.”

Connor MacKinnon, the assistant curator of education, will also debut his first exhibit as a curator. The Plates of Printers will feature original printing plates and their corresponding prints. The exhibit takes an educational look at the process of printmaking, highlighting printing plates as art objects.

Reid said the planning for the exhibits takes about a year but, with MacKinnon starting his internship in September, it came together in about four months.

The Plates of Printers will run until the end of March, while the works of local female artists goes until June. The Dance Me to the End of Love exhibit will run for a full year.

The works will also allow the museum to “extend the engagement with our local schools,” Reid said, with the gallery a popular spot for day camps and class trips.

Reid added the three exhibits will give people an experience of local history.

“It’ll help enlighten a piece of history in Oxford County, particularly one Woodstock people may not know about and give a new appreciation,” she said. “The Plates of Printers will give a new appreciation with the technical aspect that goes into a print.

“I see Dance Me to the End of Love as a chance you could keep coming back and it still keeps speaking to you and someone’s appreciation can deepen. If you spend time with his lyrics and poetry, that’s very powerful.”