Artist Julie Keller (top photo) in her performance piece, Imported. Keller has studied painting and drawing, and is currently in the third year of a sculpture program; she’s also teaching.

Concerned with issues of identity, she started wearing the neutral mask to focus attention on the landscapes on her body, the result of 20 years of accumulated tattoos. However, she found that the spectator’s eyes are still drawn inexorably to the face, even if it’s blank. For Keller, her tattoos are mementos, signposts in a richly varied and peripatetic life. Now a resident of Westmount, with children, married for 23 years, she sees her art as an exploration of social class, and of the many masks a woman wears, at home and in the world.

In the bottom photo, master’s of fine arts student Catherine Sylvain models one of her works at the open house. She says, “Mon travail a évolué en sculpture autour de l’idée de contenant pour le corps, de lieu pour le corps, donnant naissance à des formes amplifiées pouvant s’apparenter à des réceptacles, des enveloppes, des formes lieux en rapport au vêtement ou à la demeure, des espaces circonscrits.”