Tonight I did something out of the ordinary, with my husband. We went to the “Vernissage” or Opening night of a charity art exhibition – with mandatory masks and vaccination passports, of course. The art show is being held at an art gallery in a trendy part of Montréal, called Griffintown, just a short walk from the downtown area.
The building itself is fantastic, like something out of Alice in Wonderland! It was built in 1875 as a steel foundry, and because of this each of the gallery rooms is a few steps up or down from the other. The rooms are all interconnected by seemingly random little stairways from one area to another. The CAMAC or Centre d’art Montréal Art Centre (1) includes not only this multi-level gallery space, but also a café, a museum, and an art studio.
The coolest thing about this art exhibition to me, though, is that two of my own watercolour paintings are on display there! It’s a charity art exposition, with a twinned online art auction, to raise funds for the community outreach activities of the local Rotary Club. (2) The art exposition will continue until the evening of Sunday December 12, 2021, as it has been extended past the original ten-day period. And although this charity art sale was set up for each artist to receive 50% of any auction sale of their artwork, I donated 100% of my two paintings to the Westmount Rotary Club – if they sell, of course!
These two paintings were experiments for me, one semi-abstract and one fully abstract watercolour. I’d heard that most of the artworks in this type of fundraising art auction were abstract or semi-abstract pieces, so I decided to donate two paintings in the same vein. The semi-abstract, by the way, is meant to be an elephant throwing water over its back.
Unfortunately there were too many people at the Vernissage to get decent photos of the many small exposition rooms, so my sweetheart husband waited for quite a while to snap these two shots of me beside my paintings. You can, however, view these and all the other artworks on the auction website.
©Sandra Woods 
©Sandra Woods
It’s basically a long list of photos, of all 306 donated or partially-donated artworks, each with a base price or current “highest bid”. You won’t see the artist’s name – or any other details – until you click on a photo of an artwork. Then you’ll see the artist’s name, along with their own 200-character text and other information about the artwork. If you click on the blue “Thank you to our donor” text, you’ll be hopped over to the artist’s web page:
https://bidandraise.com/auctions/rotaryart2021/items
I don’t have an art website, so I posted my Artist’s Statement here on my blog and had the auction website link directly there. By the way, my 2 little paintings are #187 and #188, if you happen to stop by the auction website! Funds raised from this auction will support efforts to eradicate homelessness and other community services of the Rotary Club of Westmount.
If you’re wondering about that strange contraption on my right hand and arm, it’s a dynamic splint for my rare disease; Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), or Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) as it was known until a few years ago. In some ways it’s because of CRPS that I was at this gallery opening tonight, given that I began learning to paint – less than a year ago – as a form of DIY (do it yourself) movement-based therapy for my affected hand and lower arm.
As both an autoimmune disease and a neuro-inflammatory condition, CRPS can cause a fairly long list of symptoms; some of which are fairly bizarre. These can include skin sensitivity, joint deformations and pain, changes in the colour, temperature, or even texture of the skin, a wide range of different types of neuropathic (nerve) pain, cognitive issues, and more.
I was struck with CRPS in 2016 and, despite world-class care at a multidisciplinary pain management clinic within one of Montréal’s two university hospital networks, a mild cognitive impairment developed at the end of 2018. These cognitive changes forced me to step away from a career that I adored, at the end of 2018, so I’m also using art and creation-based learning as tools to help me deal with that. My medical team, by the way, fully supports my DIY art-as-healthcare experiment.
Have a fantastic weekend, whatever it is that you end up doing!
References:
(1) Centre d’art Montréal Art Centre (CAMAC). Facebook page. Undated. Accessed 12 Nov 2021:
https://www.facebook.com/MontrealArtCentre/
(2) Rotary Club of Westmount. Our impact. Webpage. Undated. Accessed 12 Nov 2021: https://portal.clubrunner.ca/3072/page/membership