SINCLAIR, Man. – Standing beside Highway 2, near Sinclair, Man., the two-storey house covered with mouldering cedar shingles looks like any of the thousands of abandoned yard sites that dot the prairie landscape.
Heather Benning, the artist-in-residence of nearby Redvers, Sask., spotted the 12 foot by 24 foot derelict with a tattered roof and a buckling foundation while driving to Brandon two years ago.
Instead of forgetting it, she decided to convert it into an art installation in a bid to get people thinking about the depopulation of the Prairies, its underlying causes and future consequences.
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Benning was inspired to resurrect the farmhouse by the experiences of her childhood growing up on a farm. On her father’s property near Humboldt, Sask., was an abandoned house that she spent many days playing in with friends.
With the permission of the owners of the Manitoba property, Alan and Lisa Jones, she tore out the north-facing wall and replaced it with plexiglass to give a full view of its contents, which she recreated to look like a child’s dollhouse. The shingles on the north side were in better condition, so she used them to patch the holes in the roof.
“It’s the perfect dimensions for a dollhouse. You can see into every room,” said Benning, 27, who recently received a fine arts degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
At a cost of roughly $7,000, mainly for the large Plexiglas panels that offer a view into the building’s interior, she repaired the crumbling plaster, repainted the walls and installed new flooring and 1950s-vintage appliances.
With few trees for shelter in the yard, virtually no insulation in the tar-papered, shiplap board walls and no heat sources other than a large kitchen stove, life during the long prairie winter must have been harsh for the inhabitants who abandoned it in the 1960s.
Looking through the transparent wall into the house gives a visitor the eerie feeling of peering back in time, with all the conflicting emotions that such an experience brings. The interior is inviting, with its couch, chairs and kitchen table, yet the glass, like the passage of time, prevents you from actually going inside.
In an inscription on the north-facing window, Benning has written, “this dollhouse is nothing less than a chilling monument to the decline of the prairie farm. At some point it will be torn down when it once again becomes unstable; when this dollhouse of our past becomes the ruin of our future.”
