Art galleries are often filled with paintings and sculptures of beautiful people such as the Venus de Milo or the statue of David. Artist Mary Lynn Baker, on the other hand, creates art for the rest of us – the overweight, middle-aged, “normal” people that many art pieces ignore.
In her upcoming exhibition, “Let’s Dance!,” scheduled to run until April 25 at the Shenkman Arts Centre, Baker shows off this underrepresented group with a series of paintings and sculptures of people in the middle of an activity normally reserved for weddings and other celebrations – dancing.
“I was interested in ordinary people and how they are kind of transported out of themselves when they dance,” says Baker.
“The one thing that everybody loves to do at a wedding, or any kind of celebration, is the conga line or the Macarena or the high kick or whatever . . . so I’ve done a whole series based on that idea. They’re not beautiful people; they’re middle-aged people, fat people, skinny people . . . and they’re just really enjoying themselves.”
This show will be the first time that Baker’s paper-mâché sculptures are displayed along with the paintings that they emulate. These sculptures have drawn attention from the art community in the past and, despite being made of newspaper and paint, they often take on the look of fine porcelain, which gives the characters of her paintings more dimension, says Baker.
Though the paintings and sculptures are not modeled on real people, Baker says she uses situations from her daily life as inspiration for her work.
For example, a trip to a country-western bar in Edmonton spawned two paintings of people round dancing.
“I love to watch people, like most people do,” says Baker.
Though she doesn’t work from photographs or live models, she says sometimes people she knows will show up in the faces of her characters without her realizing it until after the work is finished.
“I find I don’t have any say. Whatever pops into my head is what goes on the canvas,” she says.
Art is something that Baker says she always knew she would be doing. Her past as a draftsperson for the government has equipped her with many skills necessary for creating art, such as accuracy and detail.
As a resident of Addison, Ontario and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Baker has been creating art in this province for many years. The programmers at the gallery in which her pieces will be displayed, Trinity A at Shenkman Arts Centre, recognize this fact and are allowing free studio space and attendance to highlight the work of local artists, says City of Ottawa arts programmer Penelope Kokkinos.
This community art space came into being during the amalgamation of the city of Ottawa as a way to show off artists living within 150 kilometres of Ottawa, and the process of selecting artists involves a peer review board and an application by the artist themselves.
This is how “Let’s Dance!” came to the Shenkman Arts Centre, beating out many of the approximately 100 applications.