Art
Women and Girls: Baring your soul through art – Tbnewswatch.com
Sharing your stories and self-expression are two of the most powerful ways to liberate yourself. For some, those come through conversations, and for some who are unable to open up, that form of self-expression comes through art. Stories, poems, words, paint, sketches, songs, dance, you name it. For a local Thunder Bay woman, that self-expression had come from a random selfie with a few words written on it and flipped to Black & White.
Little did she know that the moment of liberation from sharing her story back in 2018 would result in countless women following suit in an effort to express themselves and share their stories through art.
An artistic expression of personal stories
Finding a safe space to express your stories could be difficult, especially for women. A space in which women can share stories without any judgement is the dealbreaker for a lot of women. In order to provide that space, Marlo Ellis, a local artist from Thunder Bay, started a private Facebook page in which women who have gone through similar and different experiences could voice their stories. As great as that initiative was, a lot of women, having gone through different types of experiences, had participated silently. A spark, unknown at the time, came when Ellis shared a selfie of herself with words written on her body flipped in Black & White, to express the pain she had undergone. Women, who participated silently earlier, saw the courage in this form of self-expression and followed suit. For Ellis, this created another euphoric moment, where she printed all of these pictures and displayed it at a gallery that would invite thousands of people to witness these women sharing their stories through art.
The gallery back in 2018 was displayed in Bay Village Coffee House in Thunder Bay, and has since been displayed in Calgary, Toronto, and several parts of Canada.
“Everyone has stories to tell and as humans we should understand that we are not the only ones experiencing something. Many of us experience something similar and everyone of us have had different experiences. I believe that the voices of these women should be heard, and everyone deserves a safe space to be heard, and that is why I started this gallery where women can express themselves and witness others’ expression. We heal ourselves and others when we share our stories. Stories are the invisible thread that holds us together,” Ellis, the brain behind this incredible space shares.
Selfies in Black & White
Selfies are the pictures you can take without a photographer. That was the idea behind selfies as the form of expression to give it a personal touch. Black & White strips the picture of all colours, make up, etc., making the expression a raw form of artistic expression. Ellis says, “everyone has a cellphone, and the selfies make this form of self-expression more personal and more raw, and since the women can take these pictures all by themselves, it makes them feel more powerful. It’s got more contrast, it’s natural, and it takes away the focus from things like colour of the lips, the skin, the make-up, and the outfit. Instead, it lights focus on the person sharing the story and the story they are sharing.”
Results
“Best thing about this gallery is knowing the impact it’s had on the women in the pictures. They get to be seen and heard. The one-way conversations make it a very safe bubble for those in their own shell. It’s also been a healing process for those who come to the gallery. These women in the pictures have become healers and they’re surrounded by an army of women. It is very evocative,” says Ellis with pride.
This gallery in Thunder Bay has been completely funded by the local businesses owned by women in Thunder Bay. Although the funding is challenging, and Ellis is determined to get it more exposure. All proceeds from the gallery goes to the women domestic abuse shelters.
What’s the deal with Leonardo’s harpsichord-viola? Why were Impressionists obsessed with the color purple? Art Bites brings you a surprising fact, lesser-known anecdote, or curious event from art history. These delightful nuggets shed light on the lives of famed artists and decode their practices, while adding new layers of intrigue to celebrated masterpieces.
Beauty is pain. Elizabeth Siddal, one of art history’s most famous muses, had intimate experience with this adage. Siddal first met artist Walter Deverell in 1849, the year she turned 20, while working for a London milliner and soon became a favored model of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists. She was featured in William Holman Hunt’s A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids (1849–50) and most famously in John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52). It was during her contribution to the latter painting, that she fell ill.
Beauty was a matter of pain for Millais, too. In a rare move for artists of the era, he spent five months painting scenery for Ophelia in a hut along Surrey’s Hogsmill River. “My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced,” Millais remarked, describing “muscular” flies and powerful winds. “The painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.”
The Tate notes that Millais devoted only four months to portraying Ophelia herself. Siddal agreed to stand in for the doomed beauty. She spent long hours in a bathtub at the artist’s Gower Street studio, wearing a cheap gown Millais acquired. “Today I have purchased a really splendid lady’s ancient dress—all flowered over in silver embroidery,” he wrote. “It cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds.” The dress is still in the Tate.
Millais arranged oil lamps beneath Siddall’s tub to keep her bathwater warm. One of those lamps went out. Millais didn’t notice, and Siddal didn’t complain—by then she knew that beauty means pain. The water grew so frigid that Siddall fell ill with pneumonia. Siddall’s father ordered Millais to cover her extensive medical bills. The artist allegedly made off paying the least possible amount.
Siddal in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith (1866–68; 1872–73). Collection of the Delaware Art Museum.
Siddal made a full recovery from her Ophelia-induced illness, but the bout proved foreshadowing. Siddall likely met Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti while they both sat for Deverell’s massive oil painting Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV (1850). Siddall fell for Rossetti, who made her his sole model. In 1853, Rossetti took Siddall on as an art student. He taught her to draw, and advised her to drop the last letter from her surname. By 1857, Siddal became one of the only women to exhibit alongside the Pre-Raphaelites. Over the next 15 years, she produced numerous drawings, paintings, and poems, often inspired by Lord Tennyson, her favorite poet since discovering his verses on a butter wrapping as a kid.
As time wore on, Siddal grew fearful that her philandering beau would abandon her for a younger muse. While Rossetti resisted their marriage due to Siddal’s working class background, the two wed in 1860. It wasn’t enough to stave off her consumptive melancholy. Siddal died from a laudanum overdose, a rumored suicide, in 1862—decades before 1894, when Ophelia was included the original Henry Tate gift. It’s one of the museum’s most popular paintings today, due in no small part to Siddal’s sublime beauty, the pain it brought her.
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TORONTO – The union representing hundreds of striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers says it’s reached a tentative deal with the museum.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says they reached the deal late last night, after 16 hours of bargaining.
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The union representing hundreds of striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers says it’s reached a tentative deal with the museum.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says they reached the deal late last night, after 16 hours of bargaining.
The downtown Toronto museum has been closed for a month while more than 400 workers represented by OPSEU – including assistant curators, archivists and food and hospitality staff – were on strike.
They walked off the job after rejecting an offer from the AGO, which the union said failed to address key issues such as wage increases, protections for part-time workers and contracting out positions.
The union didn’t share details about their new tentative deal, which will soon go to a vote among the members, and the AGO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
No information was immediately available about when the AGO would reopen.
The union has previously said that part-time employees make up more than 60 per cent of the AGO’s work force, and they earn an average of $34,380 per year.
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Striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers reach tentative deal with museum – Toronto Star
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