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Fascination Station is a satellite exhibition coinciding with Arianna Richardson’s main space exhibition “Surface all the way through” in the CADA Open Spaces gallery located at the Centre Street LRT platform. This extension of the work (supported by TNG, CADA, and STEPS Public Art) includes fascinators created by members of the public during the Fascination Station Workshop at TNG (graciously funded by STEPS Public Art).

Arianna Richardson is a sculptor, performance artist, sewist, and mother from Lethbridge, AB in Treaty 7 territory. She is a lifelong crafter and thrift-store enthusiast, constantly collecting plastic-based trash and discarded craft materials. Richardson sometimes performs under the pseudonym, The Hobbyist, taking her hobby-craft pursuits outdoors to activate public spaces and talk to people about trash. While she isn’t making art, Arianna works as Lead Prepator at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and as a sessional instructor teaching Spatial Practice at the University of Lethbridge.
Richardson holds a BFA (2013) in Studio Arts from the University of Lethbridge and an MFA (2018) from NSCAD in Halifax, NS. Her first artist book, Garbage Party: A Collection of Thoughts About Trash, was self-released in March 2021.

STEPS Public Art is a Canadian charity and social enterprise fostering vibrant communities through public art. They offer public art services and run charitable programs that support equity-deserving artists and engage communities across the country.

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“Richardson’s Fascinators help us to consider our own monstrous relations to plastic—their beauty attracting and horrifying us at the same time. The artist asks us to more closely consider how the allure of bright, cheap, and abundant plastic goods dazzles and blinds us to their inevitable afterlife in landfills and ocean garbage patches.” - Morgan Martino, Plastic Entanglements, 2025

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Thank you to all of the participants of the Fascination Station Workshop:

Jia Yang Wang, Beck Irvine, Sarah Almquist, Evan Brien, Ling Zhou, Kae A Liu, Miya Nishi, Nina Belcourt, Rovylinda Rodriguez, Adarah Bentley, Camryn Carnell, Logan Waldo, Chelsea Schwartz, Dianne Miranda and Melisa Centofanti