ABOMINABLE? NO, MAN

The timing couldn’t be better.

Just as local women head into bathing-suit season obsessed with dieting, bikini-waxing and shaving, a clan of delightfully fat, hairy she-beasts arrives at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Ladies Sasquatch, an exhibition by Toronto artist Allyson Mitchell, is a "community" of six towering sculptured creatures whose pelts are made from kitschy domestic textiles such as shag carpet, sofa cushions, afghans, rug-hooking projects, and especially fun fur.

"Dozens of sasquatch sightings occur around the world every year," notes the printed material for the show, which opened Saturday and runs until Aug. 16.

"Why is it that none of these beasts are ever reported as female?"

The plush Bigfoot babes, each seven to 10 feet tall, have been installed as a sort of mock-diorama in a small gallery. Their impact is both funny and awe-inspiring.

Four stand upright. One crouches. One, inspired by tales of a feral girl raised by dogs, prowls on all fours.

You can almost hear them roar -- and smell them -- as they gather around a glowing bonfire, its ring of rocks made from throw pillows.

"They're fantasy, utopian wild women of the forest," says Mitchell, 41, a playfully provocative lesbian feminist who holds a PhD in women's studies and teaches in that department at York University.

The Yeti-Bettys are each mounted on a rug that looks like your grandma's bathmat, complete with pom-poms or tassels. Mitchell, who grew up in Port Perry, Ont., and didn't go to art school, says her crafty sensibility was influenced by her mother being a Brownie leader.

She collects, reworks and "honours" women's cast-off craft projects. The cosy, homey qualities of such textiles, she says, act as a "cushion" for the political content of her artworks.

She especially likes textiles from the 1970s. That chimes in, she notes, with her drive to reclaim the forceful feminism of that period, which she says has become unfashionable.

Mitchell made three of the sasquatches in 2005-06 and completed the other three "gals" this year. Asked how long it takes to make one labour-intensive sculpture, she quips, "A lifetime."

The exhibition is being circulated by the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ont. The WAG is the largest institution to present it so far. Mitchell is delighted that WAG contemporary-art curator Mary Reid is giving the show exposure.

"It's an amazing opportunity to have the work seen by different audiences.... It allows for the dialogue to get opened up, instead of it just being within my scene," says Mitchell, who is also a filmmaker and performance artist.

In a witty meeting of the genteel and the untamed, gallery-goers must pass through the WAG's current exhibition of elegant teapots and other silver works to find these elusive giantesses in a tucked-away space. Mitchell loves the juxtaposition, noting that her sasquatches represent "a different kind of ladylike."

The gals, named Silverback, Tawny, Midge, Bunny, Maxy and Oxana, have fierce, gaping mouths with bear-like teeth, which Mitchell gets from taxidermy suppliers. Their hairstyles, including a mullet, pay tribute to lesbian fashion. Lit as if by firelight, they cast shadows, suggesting to the viewer that more of them might be lurking.

Maxy has a "refrigerator-back" physique and a tattoo. The show responds with humour and pride to the stereotype that lesbian feminists are monsters. "It's like a reclaiming of an insult, or a deep-seated cultural fear."

Hair sprouts from all the "wrong" places on these unabashedly natural hulks. That's partly a response, Mitchell says, to the long tradition in the fine-art world -- and the porn industry -- of depicting women's bodies as hairless for the male viewer.

"There's something about women's body hair that obviously freaks people out. These girls aren't running from their hair. They're celebrating it."

Arranged around the sasquatches are small, creepy rodent-like creatures called familiars. Their pelts are made of ultra-feminine pink fun fur.

Discussing them, Mitchell refers to "this super-sweet, cute, other kind of monstrosity, like the 'Paris Hilton mixed with Martha Stewart' kind of insanity of feminine perfection.

"It feels, sometimes, like these pink creatures are actually scarier than the great big monsters."

Mitchell, who was a longtime member of a fat activist group, adds that the sasquatches celebrate "larger women's bodies -- a big butt like on Midge, or heavy, tree-trunk thighs like on Silverback."

The artist says she is OK with viewers stroking her girls, "as long as they're respectful and gentle and their hands are clean."

Her cheeky attitude comes through in the most irresistible part of the ladies' anatomies.

"I used the softest, most expensive fun fur for their butts."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

ART PREVIEW

Allyson Mitchell: Ladies Sasquatch

Winnipeg Art Gallery, to Aug. 16

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 31, 2009 D1