Exhibit of Masks from Around the World Opens at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts

Exhibit of Masks from Around the World Opens at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts
By Katie Hall

When Ross Creek’s executive director Chris O’Neill was looking for a final show for the Ross Creek Gallery’s Intersections series, she spoke to Sara Lee Lewis, a long-term supporter who has an extraordinary collection of masks from around the world, just down the road in Wolfville.

Opening on December 2, 2018, the Lewis Mask Collection is the happy result of that initial conversation over a year ago. The exhibition is a display of international masks collected by Sara Lee and her late husband, Herb Lewis. “Lee and Herb Lewis were passionate collectors who delighted in not only objects of great beauty and craftsmanship, but especially in performance masks from different cultures, often buying them directly from the artists themselves,” says O’Neill, who has been fascinated by the masks in the Lewis home for years. “The collection brings together works by artists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the South Pacific, and also the spirit of the collectors themselves, who assembled seemingly unrelated objects into a beautiful whole that you can’t see anywhere else.”

The Lewis Mask Collection will be opening at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts on December 2, 2018, during one of the Centre’s Community Arts Days: Masks & Merry-Making. The event will run from 1pm to 4pm and is open to the public. The Community Art Day will include all-ages arts activities, food, and performance inspired by the masks’ countries of origin, and seasonal sweets. Sara Lee Lewis will be attendance from 1pm to 3 pm. To find out more about the exhibits or the Community Arts Day, please visit artscentre.ca.