SILVER WATER—Silver Water artist Christine Mick is using art as her way to promote inclusivity through ‘The Rainbow Connection: Painting with Pride’ as she continues to host painting workshops on Manitoulin and the North Shore.
“This campaign is to celebrate Pride and promote awareness of inclusivity,” Ms. Mick told The Expositor.
Ms. Mick, of Paint S-CAPES Social Painting Events, is bringing Pride to many communities of the Highway 17 corridor of Northeastern Ontario. She is teaching her unique painting in every community that is celebrating Pride (Sudbury, North Bay, Sturgeon Falls, Espanola, Manitoulin Island, Elliot Lake and Sault Ste. Marie).
“I developed this inclusivity campaign for our community, spanning from my family roots on Algonquin/Nipissing territory (Mattawa/North Bay) to Manitoulin to the North Shore/Algoma (Sault Ste. Marie),” said Ms. Mick.
She visited Elliot Lake in May, Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie in July, and last Friday, August 20 at the Sheguiandah Centennial Museum for a glass workshop. She will be visiting North Bay, Sturgeon Falls (West Nipissing) and Espanola in September.
“Every community except for Sudbury and Manitoulin will be painting with acrylics,” Ms. Mick said. “As a special treat, my two home bases, Manitoulin Island and Sudbury will have the advantage of participating in my very popular, unique, signature stained-glass-effect painting workshop).”
“After every workshop I create a very cool video that recaps the progress of the class and incudes photos of guests and individual cameos of each of them with their paintings, as well as a group photo,” said Ms. Mick.
She explained, “This year with all the towns in the area taking part in Pride, my goal with this series, which I have dubbed ‘The Rainbow Connection: Painting With Pride,’ is to make one video at the end of all pride celebrations where participants from all communities will be in that one video. They will also be painting the same image for one region to the other, so it will look like we are one big happy family, expect everyone is painting in their own community.”
“It will look like we are connected to the community like one big family,” said Ms. Mick, who started painting about 15 years ago and began teaching art in 2014. “I started by teaching art in a women’s shelter when I was a residential counsellor there.”
“That video will be produced and released in mid-to end September,” continued Ms. Mick.
