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" Following Tali Lennox&amp;#039;s successful debut, the latest artist-in-residence at the Catherine Ahnell Gallery in New York City is Rebecca Dayan. The triple threat\u2014actress, model, artist\u2014debuted her &amp;quot;Assumption&amp;quot; exhibit last night to a crowd of NYC It kids. The range of watercolors of Dayan&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;powerful&amp;quot; friends explores the theme of the word &amp;#039;virgin&amp;#039;, allowing the French-raised Dayan to delve into ideas of femininity and Christianity. See how this artist\u00A0came to be and why the word &amp;#039;virgin&amp;#039; is such a loaded one.  HB: When did you fall in love with art, and when did you decide you wanted to be an artist?  RD: I grew up in south of France and my parents kind of raised me in a very \u2013 I mean they weren&amp;#039;t artists, but they had a lot of artists around them and they would take me to the museums, places that just had a lot of history and art. I was always kind of raised around it and then I started drawing when I was a kid. Later on, I found all these textbooks of my mom&amp;#039;s. She was drawing portraits of women and girls all over them. I wanted to imitate her and I thought she was drawing super photographically well. I guess I just wanted to do the same thing that she was doing. So that&amp;#039;s what sparked it when I was a child.  When the moment came to choose something to study after high school, it was kind of logical for me to go to art school. So that&amp;#039;s what I did, and then I studied fashion design and went into acting at the same time. HB: Why is watercolor the medium you gravitated towards? RD: It was kind of an accident, really. Before, I used to like working with graphite, and charcoal, and colored pencils the most, and I don&amp;#039;t know, I had some watercolor around, and I just picked it up. I think I started using those colored crayons that you add water to it and they become watercolor. I wanted to do bigger scale stuff, and the medium allows for images to appear a little bit like fragile. I like water color because it&amp;#039;s very feminine and it&amp;#039;s almost not there. It&amp;#039;s kind of like a stain a little bit. And the colors are very luminous. So that&amp;#039;s why I like it the most. And it&amp;#039;s easy to take everywhere with you, and you don&amp;#039;t have to have a studio.   HB: Tell us about your subject matter for this show and using women you know. RD: When the gallery first booked me, they asked &amp;#039;What are you going to be working on?&amp;#039; and originally I didn&amp;#039;t really know. At the time, I was reading this script for\u00A0a\u00A0movie that\u00A0was going to be filmed in a convent. And I helped the writer/director\u00A0rewrite my part\u2014so I just did a lot of research on it.  There were all of these things about religion and I came across a lot of different things but mainly, the idea that sparked my curiosity is the meaning of the word &amp;#039;virgin&amp;#039;,\u00A0which originally did not mean what we think of\u00A0today. Before Christianity, it didn&amp;#039;t have any sexual connotation. In Judaism, it just meant &amp;#039;a woman who is not married.&amp;#039; And if you go back\u00A0even before that, into polytheism, whether it&amp;#039;s ancient Greece or\u00A0Rome, all the goddesses were called virgins. It meant, &amp;#039;a powerful woman&amp;#039; because it had nothing to do with sexuality or with being chaste.  It also comes from a time when\u00A0sex was sacred, in the sense that it was celebrated for the good reason that it created life. And everything that was linked to that, especially women, women&amp;#039;s vaginas and all of that, were celebrated. That all completely changed with growth of Christianity. Sex became taboo and impure and women had to hide all those things. So obviously I haven&amp;#039;t done six years of research and I&amp;#039;m not trying to publish a theory, but it just sparked my interest and I thought it would be kind of an interesting thing to reclaim the meaning of this word, or just question it a little bit.  HB: How did you go about doing that? RD: I asked all of these women, my friends, whom I think are strong, independent young women to pose\u2014imitating poses that are classical depictions of the Virgin Mary. I took pictures of the poses and then I drew from those pictures. And that&amp;#039;s why the show is called &amp;quot;Assumption.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s kind of a play on the word because of the assumption of the Virgin Mary and assumption as in assuming what something is or means.  HB: Did you grow up Catholic? RD: Not at all. I didn&amp;#039;t really grow up religious, but I was always interested in any kind of symbolism. The world that we live in is a symbolic world. And the origin of this symbol, the virgin, and the meaning in general is interesting to me.  HB: Working in this gallery seems like a unique experience where you&amp;#039;re given free reign to spend a lot of time working on your art, as you also live in the space for a month. What has that been like for you?  RD: It&amp;#039;s been one of the best learning experiences I&amp;#039;ve had for sure. One month can be a lot of time, but it&amp;#039;s also quite short. So it doesn&amp;#039;t leave you too much room for second-guessing, which is great I think, especially for someone like me who&amp;#039;s constantly second-guessing everything. And you have to just follow your instincts, which is a great lesson. I spent the first week kind of trying out different techniques. I was trying to do something different, and then I went back to what I usually do, just because I was listening to people who were like, &amp;#039;Oh you know, watercolor is not very well-regarded in the art world.&amp;#039; I was just confused because I wanted to say something that was meaningful and then in the end, I was thinking, &amp;#039;Okay, I&amp;#039;m going to do what I know how to do and what I like doing, and if people like it, great, and if they don&amp;#039;t, well at least I would have had enjoyed myself.&amp;#039; I came to a conclusion very quickly that was just like, &amp;#039;Okay f8ck with everybody. I&amp;#039;m going to do what I want to do.&amp;#039; It was obviously amazing to be in this space, living and working. I&amp;#039;m really bummed that it&amp;#039;s over.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/a12149/qa-with-rebecca-dayan/>