When Ash Hart lived on Windsor’s streets, she picked up garbage and transformed it into works of art.
Now, the 39-year-old artist’s creations are on display in a Walkerville gallery alongside pieces by dozens of others who have experienced homelessness.
The Colours of Resilience Exhibition at Artspeak Gallery is the brainchild of Batool Yahya, a local artist who has worked with people experiencing homelessness for several years. Using a grant from the City of Windsor’s Arts Culture and Heritage Fund, Yahya rented the gallery space, gathered supplies, and held workshops to showcase some of the city’s talent.
The goal, Yahya said, is to show the artists that their creative endeavours are worth pursuing.
“If they had the same opportunities as I did as someone who isn’t actively experiencing homelessness, they would thrive,” she said.
In addition to experiencing homelessness, Cody Farrugia, 25, spent more than two years in a prison near Kingston after committing a string of robberies at Mac’s convenience stores. He wrote and illustrated a comic book about the incidents, as well as an album of music to go with it, under the name Robber Mac.
“I’ve changed my life around now. I’m not that person. Now I’m just writing about it and making music about it,” Farrugia said.
Farrugia said he isn’t using his art to brag about his past. He’s using it to tell his version of the story, which was covered by local media.
“I’m trying to make up for what I did. I don’t want to be one of those rappers out there bragging — I was a bad guy who’s trying to become a good guy.”
Rachel Edgerton, whose artist name is Ma’iingan, said seeing her art on display felt “new” to her.
“We need more things like this in Windsor because it gives an opportunity for people to see the people who need help, and not associate them with trends like substance abuse,” she said. “Instead, associate them with drawings and paintings. We’re all people, right?”
Edgerton, 26, was homeless for six years and now lives in an apartment. She’s been making art since she was a child as a way to escape reality, she said.
“You can’t put everybody under the same title and expect them to have the same problems. At the end of the day, we’re all different and we all go through things differently.
“I feel like, if people can create art like this, then they’re not all bad, right?”
Funds from the highest bidders on each piece will go directly to the artists. Any money collected for pieces with unknown or volunteer artists will go towards artist workshops.
The bidding response so far has been “insane,” Yahya said.
“You’re supporting actual legitimate artists. You’re not just supporting people because they’re experiencing homelessness. You’re giving artists a chance to make it.”
All of Hart’s art on display at the exhibition has sold.
“It’s wild. I want to continue — I don’t want it to be just for this. I want to show other people that they can rise above,” Hart said.
“I hope this would also give people awareness that we’re human. People are not out to be terrible.
The Colours of Resilience exhibition runs until Sunday. Bidding on art closes at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
Artspeak Gallery will be open to showcase the exhibition’s final days on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate Cracked.com
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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 CBC.ca
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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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