Cheryl-Ann Webster WHAT Multi-Media Artist WHERE Webster Wood Home Studio in Woodlawn, 832-5501 WHEN "Beautiful Women Project" in full swing; check it out at www.websterwood.com/bwp WHY "Knowing that our bodies are beautiful, just as they are, is a message more women need to see and hear."   See samples of the Beautiful Women Project	Previous Artist Trading Cards

Cheryl-Ann Webster - Body Imaged
By Sally Hansen

What does a mother do when her thirteen-year-old daughter tells her that her best friend is saving for breast implants, and that all her friends would like surgery too, so they "can get a better boyfriend?" If you're Cheryl-Ann Webster, you use your talents as a mixed-media sculptor to carve out a powerful emotional response that conveys your message in a way that words cannot.

You create a body of work comprising decorated clay sculptures of 125 actual female torsos aged 19 to 91. You work incessantly with the support of your husband, your fellow artists, and an ever-growing community of concerned and talented volunteers to counteract the ubiquitous message that undermines the self-esteem of every female of every age every time she opens a magazine, turns on the television, reads the paper, or goes to a movie - "You're not good enough the way you are."

Full Frontal Attack
Cheryl-Ann's non-profit Beautiful Women Project has evolved to challenge the media's virtually unachievable images of beauty and to provoke public dialogue about body image and self-worth. Her clay sculptures are the actual contours of 125 volunteers who allowed plaster moulds to dry on their greased bodies to create the moulds for Webster's fired clay frontal torsos. Cheryl-Ann told me that the only condition was that the models had to relax - they weren't allowed to hold in their stomachs or arch their rib cages. Predictably, my conditioned female reaction was "Wow - I wouldn't want to do that! Imagine, not holding your stomach in when someone was looking!"

The good news is that after I looked at about two dozen sculptures, I started feeling better about myself - not one torso has perfectly symmetrical breasts, and every torso I saw had a tummy bulge. It was very validating to see a collection of "average" female shapes instead of the paragons of artificial beauty constantly paraded in front of me to manipulate me into wanting yet another cure for my perceived imperfections.

Cheryl-Ann Webster was born in England where she earned her diploma in Art and Design at Lowestoft School of Art after completing a B.A. Honours degree in Culture and Communications from the University of Lancaster in 1998. She met her Canadian husband when she was on a student exchange program at Carleton University, and the couple moved to Woodlawn where she set up her WebsterWood Studio. She has always used her art, and particularly this project, to raise social awareness.

Since its inception in 2003, the Beautiful Women Project has taken on a life of its own, changing Cheryl-Ann's life in the process. "I started the BWP to convince young girls that they are born beautiful, not made that way by a surgeon's blade. But the more I spoke to other women about their own body image concerns, and the more I learned about the dangers of cosmetic surgery and that girls as young as six and seven are in hospital with eating disorders, the more I felt compelled to challenge the media's stereotypical images of beauty." As a result, she has curtailed her other artistic endeavours to meet her project deadlines. I recommend a visit to her website at www.websterwood.com/studio to learn more about her many other artistic accomplishments and pursuits.

The Project is in its second phase; all the casts have been made, and Cheryl-Ann, with a lot of support from fellow volunteer artist Linda Northey, is sculpting, firing and decorating the more than 100 clay torsos that eventually will go on exhibit. The difficult decision to decorate the pieces was made by the models; they overwhelmingly urged her to personalize the almost clinical moulds of their natural bodies with symbols of their lives.

Thus far the costs of the project have been borne by the Websters and an ever-growing corps of friends, family and volunteers who share Cheryl-Ann's goal of raising awareness of the serious consequences of linking self-worth and physical appearance. Cheryl-Ann, who devotes almost all of her own time to this non-profit venture, emphasises that it is the generous contributions of more than sixty supporters that has enabled her to bring the Project to its current state. She tells me she couldn't have made it to this point without the support of Laurie Gordon of Kingston who is serving as project manager and chief writer, Richard Gill, local clay sculptor who resolved technical issues, the donation of all the plaster for the casts by Richard and Gina Cook of Kanata, the generous donation of enormous quantities of clay by Tucker's Pottery Supplies of Richmond Hill, professional photography by Lightwisps of Woodlawn, and all the skills, efforts, financial and moral support of a myriad of other contributors.

The final phase of the Project will be to realise Cheryl-Ann's dream of touring her non-profit exhibition across Canada and beyond in public, free-admission galleries to provoke dialogue about body image and self-esteem. Webster faces many daunting tasks to meet her self-imposed goal of launching her first exhibition of over 100 Beautiful Women sculptures by March, 2006, but her only real concern is the necessity to secure continued financial support for the expenses involved in mounting the exhibitions. She has foregone earning a living for three years to launch this project, and does not have the resources for the printing of PR materials, the packing and crating of over 100 fragile sculptures, the shipping and insurance fees, and all the other expenses associated with a creative endeavour of this complexity.

The Beautiful Women Project website at <www.websterwood.com/bwp> (provided by artist Catherine Gutsche of C@lico Communications) is one of the best sites I have visited in quite a while; I can't urge you strongly enough to take an in-depth look to fully appreciate the scope, relevance and importance of this project. Please give some thought as to how you might be able to support her full frontal attack on exposing the harmful mythology of beauty being foisted on girls of all ages. The dialog she provokes will also be relevant to the attack on boys as the next market growth target. It is well under way. Have you noticed that the plastic male doll, GI Joe, has gotten more buff?