Break Away: Featuring artists Chelsea Bradway and Bobbi Gibb

A new art gallery show, "Break Away," celebrating women's empowerment in honor of International Women's Month, opens March 8 at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts (HCA) and continues through April 20th in the Lotvin Family Gallery. Located near the start of the Boston Marathon in Hopkinton, MA, the "Break Away" exhibition will feature two formidable female artists: Bobbi Gibb and Chelsea Bradway.

A public reception with these two artists will take place at the HCA on Friday, March 10th from 6 to 7 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. The HCA plans to offer additional programming around this exhibition.

Bobbi Gibb is known to many as an icon of women's empowerment as the first woman ever to run and complete the Boston Marathon. Bobbi will exhibit a broad selection of her bronze figurines of the human body in motion, impressionistic paintings, and abstract paintings representing the patterns within her that reflect the patterns of nature and the universe. The exhibit will also include historical photographs and articles about Bobbi and her barrier-breaking 1966 run.

In 1966, Bobbi Gibb became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, finishing ahead of two- thirds of the men at a time when it was believed that women were not physiologically able to run marathon distances and were not allowed to compete in events longer than one and a half miles. Her feat disproved widely held beliefs about women and was a pivotal event galvanizing the second wave of the women’s movement. A Renaissance woman who worked in patent law and neuroscience and also studied sculpture and painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bobbi's artistic oeuvre includes realistic portrait heads, bronze figurines of the human body in motion, and both impressionistic and abstract paintings. Gibbs notes, “I sculpt how it feels to run from the inside. I catch the feeling of speed, joy and freedom I feel when I run.”

Chelsea Bradway is a New England photographer drawn to photograph people in situations that bring the viewer’s awareness of their strength, beauty and everyday struggles. Born in the Berkshires, Chelsea traveled to Paris, Belgium and England, which influenced her artistic scope of the larger community that surrounds each of us. Bradway's body of work will showcase woman of all ages, and how differently they view female empowerment. “By creating a safe place for females to feel empowered, beautiful, strong, and comfortable in their own skin, a wondrous tapestry was born.” Bradway continues, “I want to show the audience that all women are a force to be reckoned with, regardless of age, ethnicity, background, sexual orientation, social status, or political views”.

Watch the CBS News Boston report on the Exhibition as reported by Levan Reid. Click Here