Bighorn Library in Exshaw is hosting a series of exhibitions through fall and early winter in a continuing move to find ways to remain engaging and relevant.
The first exhibition on display at the library is The Forest.
Developed by the Alberta Society of Artists (ASA) for the Alberta Foundation of the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX) in 2011, The Forest features art work by Alberta artists that “reflects the grandeur of regional forests and expresses legitimate concern over their sustainability in an era of industrial and urban encroachment,” according to a release from the ASA.
Bighorn librarian Rose Reid said Monday The Forest, which will be on display in the library for the next two weeks, is the first of three exhibitions, with support from Graymont, the library will feature this fall and early winter.
The Alberta Flood Rose Project, a fundraiser for the Red Cross, will open at the library in early October. It features numerous small-scale images (4 in. by 4 in.) of Alberta’s provincial flower, the wild rose, presented together in larger pieces. Large prints of each piece have already been auctioned off with proceeds going to the Red Cross for flood relief work. However, the exhibition side of this project is being presented in the communities, including Exshaw, most damaged by the June floods.
“The Alberta flood roses will be up for a month and it is going to be quite stunning and beautiful,” Reid said.
Once the Alberta Flood Rose Project comes down, it will be replaced by a show featuring quilts inspired by the fantastic, Precambrian creatures of the Burgess Shale.
“I’m most excited about the one that is going to land over Christmas,” Reid said. “I can hardly wait. That’s the one I’m most excited about seeing myself because I love quilting and I love fossils.”
Reid is hoping, as part of this drive to bring art into the library, to foster partnerships with local schools as a way to promote the arts and to give teachers a way to include the arts in the curriculum.
“Classes studying geology, dinosaurs or fossils, it might be a good time to come down to the library,” she said, adding art – and making it available to students and the community – helps to keep the library relevant.
“I like anything that expands people’s notions of what a library is for and I think this is one way,” Reid said.
“(Art) is an important part of a growing child’s mind and sadly that is what is being cut back. That’s one of the first areas when they want to make cut backs, they take a whack at the arts.
“For lots of kids, the arts are a part of what inspired us to become who we are in the end, it is very, very important. This is the way for us to fill that gap a bit.”
Bighorn Library will also be unveiling its new mural by Canmore artist Dea Fischer Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. as part of Alberta Arts Days to replace the old mural, which had been damaged in the flooding.
Fischer’s mural will be mounted on large boards that can be removed from the mural’s location at the end of the ramp that leads to the library door to avoid future damage.
The mural will feature the now closed Exshaw Creek trail.
