ARTIST PROFILE
Maria Parrella-Ilaria
If you ask her parents they’ll say her favourite plaything
as a child was her portable green chalk board—she was forever
drawing and scribbling. Now in her adult years, the green chalk
board has been replaced by canvas and paper; the chalk, by acrylics
and oils.
Maria Parrella-Ilaria has been creating images, objects and spaces
for over two decades now. Having trained in the fine arts—painting
and drawing at Toronto’s Ontario College of Art and Design,
she went on to pursue a BFA in Art Education at Concordia University
in Montreal, where she focused on textile design—dyeing and
weaving. Her art training helped to prepare her for graduate studies
in art psychotherapy (art therapy). She completed her Master of
Arts in Art Therapy at Concordia in the early nineties, and, after
a six month stint of post-graduate research in Padua, Italy, finally
returned to the Sault.
While Parrella-Ilaria had spent over a decade pursing a career as a gallery exhibitor, her graduate training sensitized her to the value of the arts on a community level. Thus upon her return to the Sault, she moved from creating a personal body of work to creating a public/community based art space known as the Fireball Coffee and Creative Arts House. The café operated from 1995 until 2002 and supported original music, visual and literary arts. In 1999 the Fireball received the Arts Council of Sault Ste. Marie and District’s President’s Award to Business in recognition of its generous contribution to the arts.
Most recently, the Fireball has been transformed into OpenART Studios,
a combination fine art studio and client work space for Parrella-Ilaria’s
private practice in art psychotherapy. Parrella-Ilaria is once
again actively exhibiting her work which, a decade later, continues
to look at issues pertaining to memory, sexuality and cultural
identity; her private practice offers clients the opportunity to
use any variety of art media in the service of self-expression
and personal growth.
Through OpenARTs, Parrella-Ilaria has created
art therapy programs for various agencies including the Algoma
Treatment and Remand Centre, ARCH Day Hospice and local elementary
schools. Her most recent project, delivered in partnership with
the Art Gallery of Algoma, is the ARTreach Certificate Program,
an exciting series of intensive studio-based workshops that brings
together professional artists and highschool students.
For more information on OpenART Studios and OpenARTs projects/services,
go to http://www.openartstudios.ca or
call 705-256-9368.
