Day 22 – Weyburn, SK – Deleau, MB – The dollhouse
Gas Bought: ?L @ $? = $6.91
Km’s traveled: 243.8km
Overall average: 41.4km/hr
Moving average: 53.1km/hr
Total time: 5hr 53min
Moving time: 4hr 35min
Stopped: 1hr 17min
Driving today was a hot one out 32+ today! It was so hot when I stopped to eat my bike’s kickstand started going through the asphalt.
I made it into Manitoba following highway 13 from Weyburn, SK which turns into the #2 highway through Manitoba.
Not long after entering Manitoba I came across this lifesize “dollhouse” done by Heather Benning in 2007
dollhouse pic.
The Dollhouse project, undertaken by Heather Benning, involves restoring the interior of this weathered two-story house. The restoration reflects the period when the house was abandoned in 1968. All of the furniture staged in the house is from the era. The north-facing wall has been replaced with plexiglass to showcase the interio
r, laid open on the bald prairie to highlight its unlivability. Once a quiet, typical farm house on the prairie, the house now shares its surroundings with oilfield pump jacks. This Dollhouse is nothing less than a chilling monument to the decline of the prairie farm.
“The Dollhouse project will exist as long as it stands. At some point it will be torn down when it once again become unstable; when this dollhouse of our past will become the ruin of our future.” – Naomi Potter
This project was completed while Benning was an Artist in Residence for the town of Redvers, which is 30km west of the Dollhouse. She receives funding from the Saskatchewan Arts Board.
Benning grew up on a farm near Humboldt. She was accepted into the Fine Arts Department at the University of Regina in 2000. She attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2004.
“Dollhouse”
Heather Benning
2007
I stopped at a free park in Deleau, MB for the night. I passed a bicycle on the road today and two cops, I’m really surprised they haven’t stopped me yet with how loaded down I am.
