A lot of superficial differences distinguish Lawrence from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

More than 1,000 miles and an international border separate the two cities. Ottawa is the national capital of our neighbor to the north; Lawrence isn’t even the capital of Kansas.

Ottawa is home to more than a million people. Lawrence, college students included, doesn’t break the 100,000 mark.

But most folks in both cities speak English, albeit with slightly different accents. We drive on the same side of the road.

And a handful of women artists working in both cities have discovered the similarities don’t stop there.

“Artists have a whole range of common interests: funding, patronage, exhibition space, public critique and dialogue about what constitutes art,” says Roberta Huebener, a mixed media and calligraphy artist in Ottawa. “You could probably take a little group of artists in just about any couple of towns in Canada and the U.S., and I’m willing to bet you that they could get along.”

That’s exactly what’s happened with 18 artists – nine local and nine from Ottawa – who are coming together this week in Lawrence for a series of exhibitions, panel discussions, workshops and a community-created installation. “Convergence” is the second half of a cultural exchange art exhibition called “Common Ground” that took the Lawrence artists to Ottawa for similar events in 2002.

Instant bonds were forged.

“One of the things that struck us when we met these women artists in Canada was how much we had in common: our dedication to our work, our professionalism and enthusiasm,” says Lawrence artist Diana Dunkley. “There’s a lot of overlap of theme, substance, style, material, mediums.”

And there’s a shared commitment to international collaboration.

“I think it’s important that we’re connecting with people from another country,” says Lawrence artist Jan Gaumnitz. “We need to do more reaching out.”

Community involvement

The artists met serendipitously.

Maureen Korp, curator for “Common Ground” and author of “Sacred Art of the Earth,” came to Lawrence in 2000 to give a talk at Kansas University. While on campus, she visited the “Women’s Works” exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology, where artworks by the F.A.N. Club, a Lawrence women’s art collective, were being shown.

She began talking with some of the F.A.N. Club members (all of the Lawrence artists in “Convergence” are members of the collective) and suggested that the Lawrence group pair with a similar group of artists in Canada for a show.

The women began communicating in a flurry of e-mails and making artwork fed by the excitement of collaboration. The culmination was a high-profile exhibition and series of workshops in May and June of 2002 in Ottawa.

Promises were made to have a reciprocal event in Lawrence.

That event begins Monday with a panel discussion on convergence in the visual arts at the Lawrence Public Library and the opening of a group exhibition at the Lawrence Arts Center.

At KU’s Art and Design Gallery, a collaborative installation called “Paths & Structures” will be on view. On Saturday, invited community members dipped their shoes in glitter and walked paths in the gallery that conceptually linked Lawrence and Ottawa. Their imprints created a route around which artists then created geography and topography in assigned blocks based on a street map of downtown Lawrence.

Also in the gallery is a 30-by-30-foot “Labyrinth” created from felted rocks. During a feltmaking workshop on Wednesday, community members will create rocks that will be included in a cairn in the middle of the labyrinth.

“One of the goals of the show is to bring art to as large a percentage of the community as possible,” Dunkley says.

Working together

The spirit and theme of the show have shaped some of the artists’ work. Margaret Rose, of Lawrence, created “Cross My Heart, Hope to Die, Stick a Hundred Needles in My Eye, Why Do We Just Swallow the Lies” out of anger over what she calls politicized distortions of truth.

“When I hear things like ‘compassionate conservative’ and ‘no child left behind,'” she says, “there’s something about these pretty phrases that makes us swallow them and believe in them, but really the agenda is different.”

She used hearts, skeletons, needles, embroidery and fishing lures to make the piece, but she asked other people to make those objects.

“The idea of collaboration kind of pushed me outside my comfort zone,” she says. “I would never have asked people to make components for my work before. That was very exciting.”

Renowned Canadian art quilter Ann Bird will show a trio of wall pieces that includes images of the lower leg. It’s a running series, she explains, inspired by a life of movement. Bird’s grandparents were American, and she has lived in several cities in the U.S. and Canada.

“Because I’ve been traveling so much all across both countries, I’m very much aware of the similarities and differences between our cultures,” she says. “I just love them both. I sometimes wish there was no border.”

Women’s work

Perhaps the most obvious commonality among the artists is their gender, and they don’t shy away from it. In fact, they say it’s fairly apparent in their artwork.

Bird notices a female touch in the inclusion of needlework traditions, references to goddesses and emotional elements.

“Whatever emotions I have on a daily basis I know effect the work as I’m designing it or creating it,” she says. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m sitting there thinking about my grandchildren or the horrors of the hurricane aftermath along the Gulf Coast, all of those go into my work.

“I couldn’t exactly tell you how. It affects the fluidity, the rhythm.”

“It is an all-woman show,” Gaumnitz says, “and I think in some ways it’s feminine in that it’s more about feelings than you might find in a typical show.”

Needless to say, it hasn’t been difficult for these artists to find common ground. So when people ask Roberta Huebener why she wants to make art with women a thousand miles away, the answer is easy.

“Why not?” Huebener says. “It’s fun. … It’s a good way to break down the idea of separateness. The reality is it’s not that hard for people to get along with one another.”