Uninhabitable and slated for demolition this Kensington-area house will temporariily serve as an art exhibit.

A house slated for demolition seems like it’s dead and done, but eight local artists are breathing new life into a Kensington home by creating art out of salvaged materials and the house itself.

Caitlind Brown, curator of the project, was approached by an art school comrade about doing a commissioned art installation as a wedding gift for an artistic-minded couple, who happened to be two of her best friends.

Initially, the idea was an installation on the front lawn. Once Brown caught wind that the couple, Sara Simpson and John Johnston, were planning to tear down the old house due to it being inhabitable, she decided to use the house as the canvas.

“The analogy I really like to use is a champagne bottle being smashed over the prow of their new life,” she says. “That’s the idea of this house filled with art being demolished internally to create art and then being demolished completely.”

The team Brown has assembled consists of John Frosst, Andrew Frosst, Wayne Garrett, Daniel J. Kirk, Lane Shordee, Lauren Simms and Ian Ward. Brown will also be participating along with curating. The project is still in its early stages, but each artist will be given free rein as to what they create, focusing on their individual styles and strengths.

“The group I’ve assembled are mostly people that I’ve worked with before, but they’ve also got a pretty similar interest in architectural spaces, re-imagined spaces or I sort of thought they’d be capable of it,” says Brown. “I trust all of these artists and have so much faith in them.”

The project won’t be a static exhibit. Simpson has two children, and there are a lot of children in the neighbourhood, so the exhibit is interactive and kid-friendly. One of the commissioner’s stipulations was children in the neighbourhood would have sections of the house reserved so they could create their own masterpieces.

“If it’s not kid-friendly, then it needs to be supervised, and that’s one thing I’ve put into the guidelines for the artists,” says Brown. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be challenging. All of it’s going to be sort of weird and challenging, but I love the idea of the whole project turning into a crazy funhouse.”

An added twist is that since the art is constructed from the house and other discarded materials, it will be demolished along with it.

“I am super stoked about it,” says Brown. “You know from the very beginning that there’s an end point, and everything in the middle is what actually counts. There’s something really freeing about nothing is intended to be permanent, and it probably couldn’t be permanent because we’d run into problems with bylaws.”

She hopes this can get the ball rolling for other homeowners to consider letting artists reinvent a space before it gets demolished.

Brown says the magic of the project is being able to dissect the concept of a house, using the large pool of resources at hand to reimagine it. Since the house isn’t being used for its intended purpose anymore, objects within it are not limited to their traditional function, opening up endless possibilities.

“You’re taking all the functionality out of these items,” says Brown. “So suddenly these items are just objects.”

Brown aims to show audiences that destruction can be a form of creation.

“You’re taking a space and sort of wrecking it in order to make this entirely new understanding of this space happen,” she says.

Garrett, who is collaborating with Brown on a project for the house, says it’s still in the stages of scheming and dreaming. A musician, he is toying with the idea of turning part of the house into a giant musical instrument.“I may as well work with what I know and contribute something I feel more competent with.”

He says it’s important to bring awareness to old spaces, especially since Calgary tends to follow a trend of knocking down buildings that aren’t even that old and replacing them with something generic.

“It’s really cool of them to give us this opportunity, and I think it’s an example of putting that space to use and not just discarding it completely,” says Garrett.

Simpson, who married Johnston in May, says she feels bad tearing down their house because it feels like a waste, but the property is unsafe due to asbestos, windows not meeting fire codes and other structural factors. The group hired an outside consultant to test for asbestos, finding it in the exterior walls and attic of the house — areas that the artists won’t be allowed to disturb, Brown says. “The interior of the house has not been disturbed in a way that would pose a risk to the general public,” she adds.

The theme of recycling the house to create something new fits into the importance of sustainability to Simpson’s family. They will be adding a variety of eco-friendly features to their new home. “It’s kind of like if you look at reduce, reuse, recycle, this is one way to reuse the house before we tear it down... this is the repurposing of it,” says Simpson.

To learn more about the project and the artist’s progress, visit housedemolitionproject.wordpress.com.