When Shelburne-area artist Don Miller was invited to do an installation at the Minarovich Gallery at the Elora Centre for the Arts, he chose the Parthenon in Athens.
"Found History" is a recreation at 1:1 scale of three columns from the exterior of the classic Greek landmark, done in papier mache - as much of them that fits inside the gallery space.
The installation took 10 days to build - seven of construction and three of cleanup, Miller told a group who gathered for Thursday's opening at the gallery.
It's the first installation actually built in the gallery itself, said the show's curator Julie Rene de Cotret, who along with local artist Jefferson Campbell-Cooper helped with the construction.
Miller said he made a conscious decision to leave the backs of the columns open to show the construction, and decided to remove the supports and let the columns be free-standing in the space.
Originally, he'd wanted to recreate a section of the building, but decided on the row of columns after seeing the gallery space.
"For me, the gallery space was really conducive to this," he said. "It's quite interesting to have the columns engulfing the lighting tracks." It also creates some dramatic lighting effects, with the front of the columns majestically lit and the back side somewhat darker.
Leaving the backs of the columns open allows people to see the newspapers used as base for the papier mache.
"I thought more people would be in there reading the stories," Miller said. The selection of newspapers was completely random - although one visitor remarked there seems to be a lot of stock market and financial news, which links to Greece's current financial troubles.
Rene de Contret pointed out that in ancient times the Parthenon was used to store the state's wealth, and during the modern country's financial troubles it was suggested that the historic building be used as collateral for bailout loans.
As for his inspiration, Miller likened the process to the Richard Dreyfuss character in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, who's so obsessed by the alien's landing site he builds a huge model of it in his living room, trying all kinds of different materials until he comes up with what works.
"Found History" is on display at the Elora Centre for the Arts until March 5.
Next door in the centre, the Harris Collective group of artists has a new group show, Seven by Seven, featuring works by seven members of the collective, that runs until Feb. 12.
The arts centre is located at 75 Melville St., Elora. For information call 519-846-9698 or go to www.eloracentreforthearts.ca.