April 1, 2006 • The Art of Charity
Provided courtesy of Muskoka Magazine
Over 1,500 art lovers turned up at Deerhurst’s Resort Peninsula Ballroom in February
to celebrate Valentine’s Day and to bid on silent auction art pieces to raise over $10,000 for Chrysalis, Huntsville’s new women’s shelter being constructed this spring. The annual gala invitation only event is an opportunity for up to 50 Huntsville artists to showcase their work.
The Huntsville Art Crowd’s Love of the Arts Weekend has become the must-see February event in Muskoka. The two-day gala connects art, fundraising and 1,500 art-lovers, and joins perennial favourites, chocolate and flowers, as the ideal way to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The gallery-style show was more of an exhibition than a sale and was comprised of 50 members of the Huntsville Art Crowd, each showcasing three of their best works. HAC president Henry Farnsworth explains why the group chose to combine an art exhibition with a fundraiser for Chrysalis, Huntsville’s new women’s shelter: “At a planning session for Love of the Arts we came to the conclusion that Valentine’s isn’t just about romantic love. “We all share in a love of family and community too, and we couldn’t think of a better way to express it than to support a project like Chrysalis.
Taking a loved one to this annual event is guaranteed to make your loved one feel pampered while benefiting a deserving cause.” HAC didn’t want the show to infringe on another event, which meant the summer months were all but gone, so they looked at filling what they perceived to be a ‘social void’ in the middle of a long winter. Summertime is jam-packed with things to see and do in the arts community, but we tend to hunker down in winter. An event such as Love of the Arts encourages people to get out and socialize. And, it livens up a long Muskoka winter. Photographer Kelly Holinshead offered this comment: “I was blown away by the vibrant colour of the art work, the Valentine theme décor and the profusion of flowers on display.” She says with a laugh, “It held out the promise of spring which we sometimes think will never come.”
Barb Lamy, a volunteer for the Love of the Arts show, couldn’t stop herself from burying her face in a fragrant bouquet of fresh-cut flowers that were arranged in a beautiful flower pot designed by HAC member Sharon Stock-Feren.b The gala by-invitation-only opening on the Friday night attracted notables such as Tony Clement, the new MP for the riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka. He and other attendees thoroughly enjoyed the music provided by the Nota Bene Chamber Singers, the Suzuki Strings and singer Darryl Hollinsworth.
Deerhurst’s Peninsula Ballroom was the perfect backdrop for the elegant event, which rivaled any such production anywhere for organization and execution. Pretty tents placed around the exhibit space created pockets of calm and serenity in a very busy, very large display area.
Guests strolled, sipped wine, shopped and reviewed a new Chrysalis promotional DVD created by videographer George Young. The Huntsville Art Crowd (HAC) began with a fledgling handful of artists and artisans almost 20 years ago. The membership swelled at first and then it dwindled to two dozen members before it was revitalized little more than a year ago.
Today, HAC is soaring high with well over 100 enthusiastic and talented members working across the artistic spectrum. One unique aspect of the group is its lack of boundaries. Thus, not only do members encompass both full-time professional artists and craftspeople, but those members hail from Muskoka, Haliburton, Parry Sound, and
Toronto as well as smaller communities in between.
Many of the members credit the new club executive with the group’s recent success. Soapstone and alabaster sculptor Ron Leach of Gravenhurst, comments on the great effort that was put forth by the organizers to reflect Muskoka in their work. “My work is wildlife inspired and is rendered both in a realistic style and in abstract,” he says. “Here in Muskoka, I find that residents and visitors seem to prefer the former rendition while in the city my abstract sales dominate.”
When asked to speculate as to why that might be, Leach suggests, “I think that we feel very close to nature here and perhaps we relate better to an authentic rendering.” Leach also makes the point of how appreciative northern residents are of art. “They really ‘get’ what we are trying to convey as artists. I sometimes think that we tend to overlook that. I also believe that a good part of the success of Love of the Arts was related to its larger purpose – the fundraising for Chrysalis.”
Not to rest on its laurels, HAC is currently completing the details for an art tour to begin this summer. They’ve also established a bursary to provide a yearly award to one promising art student of Huntsville High School. Perhaps most ambitious of all, HAC hopes to work with Huntsville officials, the chamber of commerce and Huntsville Festival of the Arts to establish a public art gallery in downtown Huntsville in the not-too-distant future.
Artist, environmental activist, and Chrysalis supporter, Terry Gill comments that in living outside of a major city, there are times when he feels isolated from the arts community at large. “On occasion it’s great to have some actual physical interaction with others who are working to bring art to life. Geography sometimes dictates that we creative types often toil in relative solitude, so meeting with other like-minded people within the
aegis of an organization such as HAC is a welcome break.”
He adds, “So many Muskoka artists don’t have the luxury of having their own studio, so having a venue like Deerhurst in which to exhibit, elevates the entire experience to a
whole other level. I was proud to be a part of this talented arts community and the Muskoka community at large.” He chuckles adding, “We had so much fun and the show was an eye-opener for me (and I hope for the region) to be reminded of the incredible talent that we have here in Muskoka.”
The birth of the Chrysalis project very closely mirrors that of the rebirth of the Huntsville Art Crowd. In early 2005, a group of concerned Huntsville citizens approached the Muskoka Women’s Advocacy Group (MWAG) about building a women’s shelter in Huntsville. The impetus for the Huntsville proposal was a lack of services for abused women and their children in Huntsville and the surrounding area.
Those needing shelter and other violence-against-women programs were not accessing the services available in Bracebridge due to the lack of workable public transportation between the two towns, which created a substantial barrier for many women employed in Huntsville or with children attending local area schools.
Young mothers, single women with employment barriers, women recovering from addictions, women needing secure housing and other vulnerable women and children
often have limited financial supports. Due to the constant pressure imposed by the lack of decent and affordable housing in Huntsville, it is often difficult for these families to progress. A consensus was reached that a Huntsville shelter should encompass both emergency shelter and support and offer rent-geared-to-income housing, a combination of which makes sense from a security and human support perspective.
Shelter staff working on a 24/7 basis will monitor security, be available for immediate assistance, and provide referrals to other community programs. The facility will be located between downtown and the Commerce Park area and will offer a safe, secure and free six-bed shelter, and a 10-unit rent-geared-to-income facility located in close proximity to common areas which will offer training and a host of other services.
The community will ultimately benefit by participating in the transformation of vulnerable women and their children into strong, healthy and independent families. Fuelled by the passion of the community and the generosity of local businesses and residents, Chrysalis made huge gains in the past year.
An idea borne of Chrysalis co-chairs Claude Doughty, Liz Aben and Scott Aitchison’s decision to tackle the need for a Huntsville women’s shelter, Chrysalis will break ground early in 2006. The trio worked hard throughout 2005 advocating for the need of an
organization like Chrysalis in a community where issues of domestic violence and abuse are often swept under the rug simply due to geographic isolation.
“Many women don’t have the means to get down to Bracebridge’s Interval House, to the area’s closest shelter. How does a woman without transportation pack up her kids and life and go to the highway and hope for the best, especially in the winter months?” asks Doughty.
2005 saw a Chrysalis committee form, pulling together volunteers dedicated to making a difference in the lives of those touched by violence. Chrysalis committee members
organized numerous events across Huntsville, and the community rallied behind the cause, supporting bake sales, contests to name the building and an early and successful fundraising effort at Pickerel Lake Lodge in Burk’s Falls. Group North Properties owner
Peter Mark and Development Manager Paul Wittig were among the first to offer their help. Wittig commented at the marche-style diner that he hosted, that GNP recognized the importance of a Huntsville shelter to women in the Almaguin area, and indeed to all the catchment areas in which Group North owns and operates resort properties. Not surprisingly, that comment helped to expand the boundaries of contributions.
Donations made ‘In Memoriam’ and inspiringly generous offers of services have flooded the Chrysalis team. A number of local companies, as well as local service organizations including the Rotary ‘Sunrisers’ club and a number of small community church women’s groups, have made Chrysalis their charity of choice. All continue to help raise awareness for the Chrysalis cause.
As a writer and project supporter, I have been quoted as saying, “Fundraising is obviously an ongoing and necessary function of bringing the shelter to fruition. Things are going well, but everyone involved realizes that funding whether it be donations to grants are what is needed to get us up and running.
Co-chair of communications Tracy Pender agrees with me. She says, “The community has just embraced this cause so completely. Events like Love of the Arts are a concrete
expression of the level of interest and the wholehearted commitment within the community.” The strong profile of a woman’s face melded with the silhouette of a butterfly was designed as the logo by Johanne Stewart of Dreams Becoming Reality Marketing. This gloriously pink image adorns cars and windows across the region and accompanies presentation packages to corporations, clubs and individuals interested in so-called ‘naming opportunities.’
The finishing touches have been made to the web site www.chrysalishuntsville.com that recently went ‘live.’ ‘It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open myourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert’ as Jacques Yves Cousteau once said, but the Huntsville Art Crowd and all of those generous people who support Chrysalis and other community projects live the quotation day by day.
The $10,000 raised and donated to Chrysalis could have gone into member benefits, but as a group, the decision was made to ‘play a role in the concert of life.’ At its root, the Huntsville Art Crowd is an art organization dedicated to promoting the arts and crafts of its members. The decision to benefit Chrysalis through art proves that HAC is a great deal more than that. |
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