Colette Whiten facts for kids

Colette Whiten (born in 1945 in Birmingham, England) is a Canadian artist. She creates sculptures and art installations, and also does performance art. Colette Whiten lives and works in Toronto, Canada. She has won the prestigious Governor General's Medal for her art.

About Colette Whiten's Early Life and Education

Colette Whiten was born in Birmingham, England. She studied art at the Ontario College of Art and graduated in 1972. She received the Governor General's Medal when she finished her studies.

Colette Whiten's Art Career

In the 1960s and 1970s, a popular art style was "Minimalism." This style focused on very simple shapes and forms. Colette Whiten's art was different. She included elements of performance in her sculptures. This meant the way she made the art was part of the art itself.

How Colette Whiten Made Her Early Sculptures

Colette Whiten created large wooden structures that looked like scaffolding. She designed each structure for a specific male model. The structures would hold the models in certain poses. Then, a team would help her make plaster casts of their bodies.

To make these casts, the men's bodies were first shaved and covered in a special jelly. This helped the plaster come off easily. After the plaster dried, the casts were used to create body parts made of fiberglass.

Exhibitions and Art Process

In 1972, Colette Whiten showed her body-part sculptures at the Ontario College of Art. She also displayed the wooden structures she used to make them. Along with these, she showed photos and slides that documented her art-making process.

The way she presented the art made the body casts look like separate limbs. The structures looked like tools used to hold people. For Colette Whiten, the act of creating the art was often as important as the finished sculpture itself.

Some people thought her work might be about women's rights, especially since she, a woman, was directing male models. However, Colette Whiten said her art was not specifically about feminism. One of her fiberglass sculptures shows a man sucking his thumb.

Public Art: People Sculpture

In 1983, Colette Whiten created a public artwork called People Sculpture. This sculpture is made of steel panels that rust over time, giving it a unique look. The panels have cutouts of human figures.

The Sudbury Chamber of Commerce asked her to create this piece. You can find People Sculpture in a small park in downtown Sudbury, Ontario, at the corner of Brady and Paris streets.

New Directions: Stitched and Beaded Art

In the mid-1980s, Colette Whiten started making smaller artworks using stitching. She used cross-stitch, a traditional craft often done by women. The images for these artworks came from daily newspapers.

Her first series of stitched works focused on male newsmakers, like political leaders. She showed these powerful men using a craft traditionally seen as feminine. Later, she made another series of needlepoint works. These also used images from the media, but they showed groups of women, often mourning or protesting.

In 1992, Colette Whiten returned to making large-scale art. This time, she created beaded images. These images were also inspired by big events shown in the news. In these artworks, she explored how the media shapes what we understand about current events. Some of her beaded pieces showed actual news headlines, while others used news photographs.

Other Works and Teaching

Colette Whiten also created a sculpture called La Scala with Paul Kipps. This large sculpture is on public display in downtown Toronto.

Besides making art, Colette Whiten has also taught art to students. She has been a teacher at the Ontario College of Art since 1974. She also taught at York University from 1975 to 1977.

Colette Whiten's art is shown and sold through the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto.

Awards and Achievements

Colette Whiten has received several important awards for her artistic work:

• In 1972, she received the Governor General's Academic Medal when she graduated from the Ontario College of Art. This was for her first exhibition of cast sculptures.
• In 1991, she received the Visual Arts Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation.
• In 2013, Colette Whiten was awarded the Governor General's Award in the Visual and Media Arts category. This is one of Canada's highest honors for artists.

Exhibitions

Selected Exhibitions of Colette Whiten's Art

• Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, 1973
• "8e Biennale de Paris," Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1973
• "Some Canadian Women Artists," National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1975
• "Colette Whiten: New Needleworks," The Power Plant, Toronto, 1992
• "Wack!: Art and the Feminist Revolution," The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2007