The streets of Ottawa were cold and icy on the evening of Jan. 7, but at Venus Envy things were just starting to heat up.
Over 200 people showed up for the third annual Filthy Dirty Art Show, according to Venus Envy founder Shelley Taylor. Art-loving Ottawa residents poured into the small space to drink, socialize, and explore the sexier side of the Ottawa art scene.
The show is about more than the art itself. It’s also a fundraiser for the Venus Envy Bursary Fund. The fund supports two students in the Ottawa area with $1,500 paid towards their studies.
The fund, which began in 2001 at Venus Envy’s Halifax location, was initially created to support women’s education. It’s changed over the years, Taylor, who is also the chair of the Bursary Fund Board, said.
“We recognized that a lot of factors impact a person’s ability to pay for and finish school. So we made the fund more reflective of this and offered it more specifically to folks who are community organizers, activists, basically to people who work to make the Ottawa area a better place to live, regardless of gender and/or identity,” she said in an email.
This year the fund will also give a $1,000 donation to the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.
Musician and board member Andrea Simms-Karp said the bursary helps marginalized people, such as those in the queer community, to pursue an education. Simms-Karp has been involved with the fund for eight years.
“The board of directors specifically is such a dynamic group of really interesting, warm people,” Simms-Karp said. “It’s not the kind of thing you want to stop doing.”
Carleton student Rebekah Elkerton was one of the artists with work on display. She’s currently working on a master’s thesis in women’s studies focusing on Indigenous women in the arts.
Elkerton creates vibrant paintings of women with unnatural skin tones “with the aim of decolonizing stereotypical images of women.”
“I want people to look at the picture and embrace it . . . in a way that relates to them without a racialized element,” she said.
Elkerton said she loves doing shows with Venus Envy, particularly shows that include the work of multiple artists.
“I get to see artists that I’ve never seen before and they’re always doing something so creative and playful and beautiful,” she said. As a student, she said, it’s especially rewarding to support the bursary fund.
Glass artist Evelyn Duberry said she didn’t have much trouble picking out her favourite piece.
“The rat with the penis on its back,” she said, referring to Alex Hutcheon’s unusual leather-burnt image “Phalloratsy.” Duberry liked it so much she considered buying it.
“I hate rodents but for some reason that piece, I found it one of the most striking ones,” she laughed.
“The naked women in reclining poses and voluptuous bodies—I love all of those,” she added.
Duberry said she found the work at Venus Envy inspiring. She had only one suggestion to improve the art selection: “It needs more naked men.”
She said Ottawa residents should make an effort to attend shows like this one.
“We live in a very conservative city so everybody should come and explore this at least once,” she said.
