February 24, 2011

Toronto's Art Bar: Dawn Kresan

Dawn will be reading from her chapbook Framed at Clinton's, 693 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, on Tuesday, March 1, from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm.

Framed explores the life of Elizabeth Siddal, who was married to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From the working class, Siddal’s association with influential artists and their upper-class patrons was life altering. As a model, then pupil, she quickly developed artistic ambitions. She is best known as the inspiration for her husband’s paintings. Although her husband and the art critic John Ruskin supported her artistic development, they did so while upholding the doctrine that a woman’s primary duty was to her family. 

In Framed, Kresan regards class and gender as rigid structures that confined Siddal and the primary lens through which she was viewed.

Chapbook edition is limited to 60 copies, signed and numbered by the author. The binding has been hand sewn with linen thread. Laser printed on Neenah columns text paper in classic natural white. Collage end papers created with text and images from Russell Ash’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1995). The cover has been laser printed on handmade St. Armand Ontario flax canal papers. 
Published by Palimpsest Press in 2009.

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