The idea for Arianna Richardson's exhibition now on display at Olds' Mountain View Museum bloomed during a six-week road trip across the Prairies last summer.
The idea for Arianna Richardson’s exhibition now on display at Olds’ Mountain View Museum bloomed during a six-week road trip across the Prairies last summer.
One of the aims of the journey was to discover how people in rural small towns across Canada forge their identities using their surroundings.
So, Richardson, a recent graduate of the University of Lethbridge’s fine arts program, began to piece together a collection of souvenirs, vintage items found in thrift shops and garage sales and crafts she created through hobbies such as embroidery to raise questions about how such items, symbols and activities help define a community’s identity.
"I just started finding all these things in the thrift stores, which interested me because it’s like, why did the people get rid of these things and what does it mean when they’re discarded and sold for nothing, what’s their value?" she said, adding she decided to "reanimate" the items she found through the collection in order to give them "new value" and "examine them in the current day."
Richardson’s collection, dubbed the Canada Collection in Olds, is now a travelling exhibition that will reside at the museum until Sept. 28.
Olds is the second stop for the exhibition after Forestburg and in each town, the collection evolves to incorporate aspects of the community.
For example, along with the souvenirs Richardson has collected across parts of Canada for the exhibition such as pennants, woodcuts and plastic beer bottles, she has included a number of hobby kits including lunch sacks with Olds, Alberta, embroidered on the side.
There are also hobby kits for driftwood crafts and making your own pennant.
Richardson even created "Hobbyist" laundry detergent.
She created all the kits by hand over the course of roughly a month and the community-specific kits, such as the Olds lunch sacks, are for sale.
The goal of the exhibition, Richardson said, is to encourage people to think about the connections between symbols such as souvenirs or crafts and the identity of the community from which those items come.
She added she hopes the collection will make people question their own relationship to such symbols.
"What does it make you feel or think about? Does it make you happy? Does it make you laugh? Does it remind you of the weird vacations you took with your family?" she said.
The exhibition’s curator, David Smith, who will also graduate from the University of Lethbridge this winter with majors in art history and museum studies, said he managed to find a space for the collection at the Mountain View Museum after meeting Michelle Jorgensen, the museum’s curator and administrative assistant, at a collections management workshop last fall.
He said the museum is an ideal location for the exhibition since many of the permanent items in the museum’s collection reinforce the idea of defining a community’s identity through remnants of the past.
As for where the collection goes next, Smith said he’s still working that out.
Jorgensen said the timing of the exhibition is perfect as it ties in with the beginning of the school year.
She said she hopes students will come to see the exhibition since it has many connections to social studies, art and geography.
"Arianna’s work is more a Canadian feel. While it’s not from our area specifically, it’s interesting to see how we relate to other regions and other identities," she said.
The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday to Friday.
