THUNDER BAY – The Creative Company is hosting a new gallery from The Uncommon Woman, The Uncommon Woman Black and White Gallery, which is a series of more than 60 black and white photos that allow women to express their stories visually.
The Gallery showing is in support of Beendigen: Anishinabe Woman’s Crisis Home and Family Healing agency.
“In 2018, there was a need in the Uncommon Woman for more opportunities for women who weren’t ready to share their stories yet via words, to express through, some modality, their painful stories and how they have risen up from their pain,” said Marlo Ellis, Founder and CEO of The Uncommon Woman.
“And so, I thought about what it was that I could do, and I thought well everybody has a cellphone, and everybody loves to take pictures of themselves, well, most people do, and so I was inspired to take a selfie and write a word on my body that represented some of the pain that I had experienced in my own life.”
Ellis then posted that photo in a private Facebook group and invited other women in the group to do the same, soon after there was a “tsunami” of images that came through.”
“It was so powerful and they were so evocative that I actually printed them off and spread them out on my living room floor and I realized that what I had was a gallery of stories and of photos and images of women who had experienced painful times in their lives, but, who had risen back up,” Ellis said.
“And I saw that it was an inspiration and it was also really healing for them, and so, The Uncommon Woman Black and White Gallery was born from that experience.”
The Creative Company’s owner and founder Deena Kruger also contributed to this Gallery along with many other women from Thunder Bay.
“When Marlo asked me to be a part of this, Instantly it was a yes, and then I said yes we’ll figure it out, and when I read up more about it on her site, and, you know, looked at the past galleries that she has done, she’d asked me if I wanted to do a picture,” Kruger said.
“And I kind of sat with it for a bit, and then I was like, okay, I’ll do one, just the process of even doing it and just thinking ‘What is my story?', and it forced me to kind of go back through the decades of my life and think of different things and I couldn’t just pick one word so I picked a few and It kind of was like a combination of my story up to this point.”
The Gallery kicks off with a grand opening event on Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. and will continue to be on display from Oct. 5 to Oct. 8.
Tickets to the opening event are available at the door as well as on their website.
Attendees can also donate $50 to have their own photo put on the “Living Wall” 100 per cent of those donations also go to Beendigan.
