In 2020, Mariposa Arts Theatre (MAT) celebrated its 50th anniversary. This exhibition celebrates the history organisation’s history and the people who have made it all possible over the years. On display will be costumes, props, playbills, and more from past productions. We’re even including a small stage as an interactive element. Susan Canfield, director of MAT, said “MAT is honoured and excited to present 53 years of memories to our faithful and loyal audiences and the cast and crews of our over 200 productions. Film Night has provided over 20 years of Canadian, award-winning, and international films through TIFF. This is also an excellent opportunity for new audiences to have a front row centre seat to Orillia’s theatrical legacy.”
Home Sweet Home
Sept. 9, 2023 to Jan. 6, 2024
This work by local artist Jennifer Zardo will be among those featured in the exhibition, Home Sweet Home, which opens Sept. 9 at the Orillia Museum of Art and History. Supplied Photo
This is local artist Jennifer Zardo’s first solo exhibition at OMAH, featuring prints, paintings, drawings and sculpture focused on the importance of a place to call home. Her work is made up of complex narratives expressed as biomorphic images between humans and nature. The artist often uses diverse processes and mediums to coexist within a single artwork to support this notion of togetherness. Jennifer received her Fine Arts-Advanced Diploma from the School of Design and Visual Art at Georgian College, Barrie, ON in 1996 and has been exhibiting both locally and internationally ever since.
One of Jennifer’s instructors at Georgian College, Ted Fullerton said, “One of the great pleasures and privileges having had the opportunity to teach in a post-secondary art institution and to have engaged with aspiring student artists that have evolved artistically and professionally is to experience their artistic endeavours and to see and know them now as a peer.
Jennifer Zardo is such an artist. As a student she was committed to expressing her own creative voice with passion, enthusiasm and endless energy. The creative process was and still is a defining factor in the realization of her unique visual expression. It is with great pride that my and Jennifer’s work is being exhibited at OMAH as overlapping exhibitions. It does not get any better than this as a previous post secondary art educator.”
Tanya Cunnington, OMAH’s Arts Programming Coordinator used to facilitate life-drawing classes at OMAH, which Jennifer attended.
“I always admired that she would arrive with huge pieces of paper to draw on, and really utilise the whole pad from corner to corner. Now, as a curator, I am so pleased to see that she is exhibiting artworks that display the same exuberance and ambition,” said Cunnington.
A Collection-Inspired Exhibition: A Close up on Carmichael
Sept. 23, 2023 to Jan. 6, 2024
This museum collection inspired exhibition is all about Orillia-born Group of Seven member Franklin Carmichael. This exhibit coincides with OMAH’s upcoming Tradition Transformed exhibition (Oct. 14, 2023- Jan. 13, 2024), our annual juried landscape exhibition which is itself inspired by his artistic legacy. This exhibition will feature artifacts from Carmichael’s life, including the easel he worked on to paint some of his incredible art. Join us for A Close up on Carmichael to see a small selection of art (original and reproductions) and objects to learn more about this artist’s life.
Our thematic, collections inspired exhibitions enable us to showcase art and artefacts donated by members of our community.
OMAH’s programming coordinators design and develop programs that complement the exhibitions. Coming up this fall, there will be a theatre class inspired by 50 Years of Mariposa Arts Theatre. Throughout September we will launch details about our programs. Details and registration information will be found on our website at orilliamuseum.org
OMAH is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and until 7 p.m. on Thursdays.
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.
