Posts Tagged ‘narrow lounge’

Open Wide, grace-gallery and Pamela Masik – by Malcolm Parry, Vancouver Sun

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

Passia Pandora and I attended the grace-gallery reception for Pamela Masik and the downtown eastside Women’s exhibition on Thursday, January 14, 2010 at grace-gallery. The following is a write up and picture of Passia and me from Malcolm Parry of the Vancouver Sun. Liza J. Lee

OPEN WIDE: As for other blooms, photographer Passia Pandora’s My Solstice Garden exhibition of flower studies (www.libertegallery.com) stands far apart from the pistils and stamens of the hugely erotic works she shows internationally. Pandora and arts organizer-promoter Liza Lee attended Rachel Zottenberg’s Main-at-Third Grace Gallery Thursday. That’s when Downtown Eastside women exhibited works they’d created for a series titled A Day In The Life devised by painter Pamela Masik with the Union Gospel Mission. Behind the Grace Gallery, a door marked only by a red-and-white light accesses a small-but-smashing bar-eatery called The Narrow. That’s not the kind of mind required for viewing Pandora’s works.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca 604-929-8456

http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=cc5173b4-e31f-4cdb-bbf9-6f4dfdb02166

grace-gallery presents ‘A Day In The Life’

The resultant work of the art program: The Creative Journey, created by renowned artist Pamela Masik, hosted by the Union Gospel Mission.

Masik founded this program to help women of the Downtown East Side express themselves through art. “These women are survivors,” says Masik. “I believe it is our collective responsibility to empower them to heal and grow, and live a self-sustaining, healthy lifestyle.” For Masik The Creative Journey was a natural extension of her own work. She recently completed The Forgotten series, 69 eight by ten foot portraits of women who have been missing from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side for more than a decade.

In The Creative Journey, Masik led the women through an eight week course, helping them to find their own artistic voice and create several pieces, a selection of which have been chosen to hang on the walls of GRACE. The women, many of them friends of The Forgotten came away with more than just art. “Life out there is hard, so it was good to get in off the street and express ourselves,” says Elizabeth. “We became friends, got updates from each other and supported each other every week. We’re healing together.”