JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

Marie Collier, who has an exhibit on display at Montgomery Museum in Christiansburg, began taking art classes while working as a secretary and later as electives while working toward an English degree from George Mason University.

Courtesy of Suzie Ross

"Doll Face" is a piece by Suzie Ross of Floyd. Ross, 64, is a lawyer turned stay-at-home mom turned artist. She has a print on display with the Jacksonville Center's exhibit, "All This I Am."

| Amy Matzke-Fawcett

amy.matzke-fawcett@roanoke.com, 381-1674

Three New River Valley venues are taking part in a statewide effort to recognize women in the arts.

Pulaski's Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley, Floyd's Jacksonville Center for the Arts and Christiansburg's Montgomery Museum & Lewis Miller Regional Art Center will have shows opening this month as part of "Minds Wide Open: Women in the Arts."

The yearlong series put on by the Virginia Commission for the Arts is meant to highlight dance, poetry, painting and other art produced by Virginia women.

"Although I think that women artists have many avenues to show their work, I also think that many women do not have a voice and that women's issues are not always addressed," said artist Suzie Ross of Floyd. "I think the theme for the show is a good one."

Ross, 64, is a lawyer turned stay-at-home mom turned artist. She has a print on display with the Jacksonville Center's exhibit, "All This I Am."

Over the years, Ross said she's witnessed much of the struggle for women's rights, and that has impacted her as a person, although it's not the sole focus of her art.

"I think it is a piece of who I am," she said.

She often uses images of women, especially those from her family albums, in her work. Her piece for the show is a salt print, a type of photography popular in the 19th century, of a doll's face partly covered in cheesecloth, dried flowers and plants.

"I selected that piece for the show because I think it relates to women," Ross said. "I thought it was related because dolls can't speak, and we question, 'Do women really have a voice?' "

Growing up in McDowell County, W.Va., artist Marie Collier said she never thought art was a career option.

"Growing up, I thought there were only four choices after graduating high school: wife, teacher, secretary or nurse," said Collier, now 69 and living in Blacksburg. "Being an artist was not one of those choices."

An exhibit of Collier's paintings at the Montgomery Museum opened this week as part of "Minds Wide Open." The museum is also showing sculpture by the Backyard Stone Carvers, a group of male and female stoneworkers.

"I remember reading a book that said women who want to be artists need to set aside time in the housework to do their art," Collier said. "It wasn't like that for men."

Collier began taking art classes while working as a secretary and later as electives while working toward an English degree from George Mason University.

It took her many years before she stopped taking beginner's classes and truly thought of herself as artist, she said.

"Minds Wide Open" is as much about celebrating local women and men who use women as the subject of their work as the female artists themselves, said Judy Ison, director of the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley.

"Menagerie," an exhibit welcoming all types of art, opens this week at the Fine Arts Center as part of the statewide celebration.

"It's not necessarily just women in the arts, just any genre of artistic movement that involves women or is about women," Ison said.

All the Fine Arts Center's exhibits for 2010 are related to women or done by women, Ison said. The previous exhibit "Theda's Studio: Photos and Nostalgia" was a collection of photographs by Theda and Rudolph Farmer of Pulaski and the annual Youth Art Month show in February had a women's theme.

Other local events linked to "Minds Wide Open" have included "Muse: A Celebration of Women in the Arts" and "For Memories' Sake," a documentary by Ashley Maynor, both in Blacksburg.

For a full list of events across the state, including upcoming events in the New River and Roanoke valleys, visit www.vamindswideopen.org.