Wonder Women Event at Robert McLaughlin Gallery

To kick off International Women’s Week we were invited to take part in RMG Fridays at the Robert Mclauughlin Art Gallery in Oshawa for their Wonder Women event. Celebrating women artists, film makers and doers. We screened a short two minute video titled Women of the Lake and held a community art project in the Studio.

The short piece Women of the Lake explored connection to place and intergenerational relationships we have with the women in our family, using a monologue that reflected on our great Mummu, a minnow catcher on Beaver Lake and paddling the river.

The two art projects that we coordinated included sharing our classic hand-printing process used to create all of the Woodland Notepads. Participants were encouraged to make their own mark, whether a windswept tree, black bear or a paddle. The other project was a contemporary embroidery activity working with ‘domestic materials’ including thread and needles; having participants stitch trees behind a women canoeing using different colours of threads and patchwork to celebrate women on the lake.

Another visual piece we added were photographs of Women of the Lake from history that we were able to dig up in archives and elsewhere, including Marilyn Bell, first person to swim across Lake Ontario, a group of women enjoying summer in a canoe in the 1960s, a Mohawk woman carrying her baby in a cradleboard and a photo of our great Mummu in her later years still canoeing.

Most of all we enjoyed chatting with locals who came to join in the activities. We met some creatives who were exploring art mediums on their own time, oil painter, photographer, art teacher and some others arriving at the gallery to reminisce and get their hands dirty.

Thanks for a great time wonder women!

- WS