The art exhibition, “Imperfect Beauty,” on display at the Dittmar Gallery in Norris, features the work of three courageous women who embark on an outspoken crusade that challenges society’s perception of beauty, aging and human value.

Showcasing over thirty pieces of artwork, the exhibition is a collective attempt by artists Debra Grall, Davida Schulman and Sigrid Wonsil to improve cotemporary perceptions of women.

Much of the work stands in retaliation to the often sexually-degrading manner in which the media represents women.

“The exhibit is a celebration of the beauty to be found in aging, infirmity and natural body shape,” said Elizabeth Kendall Matthews, a Dittmar assistant.

The artists use unconventional models to celebrate aging and other natural life changes, according to the artists’ own descriptions.

“I tried to look at a population that is generally invisible,” Grall said of women ages 60 and up. Grall’s “Snow” series is featured at Dittmar. “I wanted to represent what the ideal beauty is in the classic sense.”

A white-haired woman is the focus of Grall’s “Snow” series. Some of her pieces, including “Woman in Blue Drinking Tea,” offer images of a woman who has found enough courage and self-confidence within herself to value the process of aging.

Wonsil, a nurse who for years has witnessed patients suffering from chemotherapy and other debilitating illnesses, wanted to use her artistic talent to reveal the often unnoticed charm that lies within individuals who become invisible after growing ill.

“As an artist working as a nurse, I came to realize that everyone is beautiful,” she writes in her artist statement at the gallery. “When I look at art, I want my mind to be taken somewhere I would not ordinarily go.”

In “Emesis Basin,” Wonsil uncovers the grace and strength her mother displayed after suffering a series of paralyzing strokes. A pink representation of vomit is the most striking image in this piece. Wonsil writes that she wanted to emphasize such bold color usage in order to “sugarcoat the hard realities of illness and aging.”

Wonsil’s “Helen at the Podium” captures an aging woman’s devotion to the church. Helen, the subject of the painting, suffers from a spinal deformity; but as Wonsil insists, the ailment “doesn’t stop her from public community service.”

But Schulman takes the most powerful stance against the media’s fixation on conventional youth and beauty.

In a piece titled, “Self-portrait with Dolls,” Schulman is pictured looking at the mirror with a doll in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. She said in her statement that she wanted the piece to reveal society’s twisted correlation between dolls and women.

“Girls are expected to be compliant like dolls, but dolls are empty-headed and soulless,” she writes. nyou

Who: Women’s Coalition

When: Thurs., Feb. 6 at 6 p.m.

Where: The Dittmar Gallery

How much: Free. The night includes Belly dancing lessons, talks for “Imperfect Beauty” artists and scenes from “The Vagina Monologues.”

Medill junior Bahar Takhtehchian is an nyou writer. She can be reached at [email protected].