Team Torso: an artistic fundraiser - Sunshine Coast

Many people give their time in different ways to improve conditions for the breast cancer community. Here we can discuss what's happening and what needs to happen. We can also celebrate the successes, acknowledge the input and learn how we can help or become involved.
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Janine
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Team Torso: an artistic fundraiser - Sunshine Coast

Postby Janine » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:27 pm

from Coast Reporter - Voice of the Sunshine Coast
- what a great idea!

"
BREAST CANCER AWARENESS
By Jan DeGrass/Arts and Enterainment Writer

Twelve women artists from all parts of the Coast are now at work on an unusual project — painting female torsos cast in cement in support of breast cancer awareness.
The idea, generated by two local art gallery owners, was sparked when they found a discarded plastic clothing dummy designed to model bathing suits. Dragon boat team member and woodworker Kathy Lewis and team supporter Jackson Berger saw artistic possibilities in the discard.

Last spring, they opened an art gallery on the highway, The Dragon and Unicorn, featuring local crafts, and you may have seen Lewis, a breast cancer survivor, pulling hard for the Sunshine Dragons Abreast, a team of such survivors.

Pender Harbour’s Rick Harmer is one of the artists to show his cement sculptures at the Gallery. During a conversation one day last summer, he suggested to Lewis and Berger that instead of using a plastic dummy, they have a look at one of his cement figures. It was a slender, young woman’s torso.

“It was just gorgeous,” says Berger. Unlike some cement sculptures, these ones were hollow and light enough to hang; they provided a unique surface suitable for embellishment.

“Let’s get artists to work on them,” he suggested.

The seeds of a great fundraising idea were planted. Lewis and Berger realized they could easily find enough women artists in various mediums to create their own distinctive mark on one of these cement canvases. Once painted, they would be displayed and then auctioned to raise funds for the team’s forthcoming journey to the Sunshine Coast of Australia to compete in a four-day dragon boat regatta of breast cancer survivors.

Harmer donated the 12 torsos and the women were quick to get on board. Gibsons artist Lenore Conacher, a cancer survivor, contributed some names and decided to paint one herself. Before long, all 12 were taken.

Everyone was excited.

“When we showed each artist the torso you could see the ideas forming in their eyes,” said Berger.

The list includes such painters as Gerhilde Stul-ken, Greta Guzek, Gambier Island’s Carol Whittaker, Garden Bay’s Motoko, Helen Downing Hunter, Anita Lindblom and Yzabelle Delisle Milton.

Oil painter Judy Heyer was, as Berger says, an emotional choice as a torso painter, since she is both an artist and a breast cancer survivor. Also included are weaver Yvonne Stowell, fabric artist Ursula Bentz and stained glass artist Pauulet Hohn. Each one, it turned out, had a family member or close friend who had been touched by cancer. The artists were free to paint in whatever medium they chose; most have painted acrylic on a primed surface, and likely some fabric and glass will be involved.

There was only one requirement: each torso must include the recognizable cancer awareness pink ribbon. Each artist will also prepare a statement about her creation.

“From what I’ve heard, it’s a challenge,” says Berger. “It’s not a blank canvas; it’s a body.”

The torso project has created a buzz in the arts community, more so in that each artist has yet to see what the other is doing.

The torsos are due to be collected by the end of January, followed by the group exhibit, then auctioned off in the spring with funds to go towards dragon boat team travel and one other cancer-related organization."
Janine

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