Project 05 of 17
Route 22 Art Gallery
Brand & Campaign · Cochrane, Alberta
Nine takes. Five of them indoors. Six photographs from the floor.
Route 22 Artist Collective Gallery has been on Cochrane's main street since 2020, and opened this 2,200-square-foot room in June 2025 to mark its fifth year.
Atom2Adam Studio filmed it from the inside. Five takes in the air between hung canvases and shelves of ceramics — one of them straight through the doorway into the 425-square-foot Makerspace without stopping — then four more outside, seven hours later, on the painted parapet that carries the name. Nothing was moved and nothing was staged. The gallery stayed open; people keep walking through the frame. The show on the wall was GAZE, a solo exhibition by collective member Ele Davis.
- Subject
- Route 22 Artist Collective Gallery, 208 1 Street West, Cochrane, Alberta — a juried collective of local artists, founded in 2020, in a 2,200-square-foot room it opened in June 2025 on its fifth anniversary.
- Intent
- Move through a gallery the way a visitor does, at the height of a person's eyes, without touching anything in it.
- Seen
- Hung canvases and the white card beside each one, turned bowls on a glass shelf, a slatwall of small framed work, a card rack, timber shelves of ceramics and carved birds, a counter with sunflowers on it — and outside, a red parapet, angled stalls, and the foothills.
- Made
- Nine aerial takes: five indoors inside six minutes, four outdoors seven hours later inside three. Six photographs from the floor. Nothing was staged, nothing was moved, and the gallery stayed open.
I
The gaze
ELE DAVIS | GAZE — the portrait that stares out, beside the hands that hide.
The show on the wall was called GAZE. So we sent in something that does nothing else.
GAZE was a solo exhibition by Ele Davis, a member of the collective. Its own statement sets one painting against the other — an unblinking, introspective presence, and a visceral act of self-preservation — and says the work is only completed by the viewer's own gaze, bridging the eyes that watch and the hands that hide.
The hung wall beyond it, a white card beside every piece.
II
The wall
Along the hung wall, at the height of a person's eyes.
The collective shows painting, photography, ceramics, wood, fibre art, glasswork and stone sculpture, and the work is juried before it hangs. Every piece on the wall carries a small white card with the maker's name on it, which is the difference between a gallery and a shop.
Turned bowls and ceramics on the glass shelf, under the paintings.
Back from the counter and its sunflowers, out through the opening.
III
The rooms
One take: out of the Makerspace, through the doorway, across the gallery.
The gallery is two thousand two hundred square feet. The Makerspace on the other side of the doorway is another four hundred and twenty-five, and it is where the workshops and the classes happen. The third take crosses between the two without stopping.
The opening between the two rooms, small canvases in a row above it.
The Makerspace wall: a painted road into the hills, three tall panels.
Tables and chairs set under the work, waiting for a class.
IV
The makers
The two timber shelf units at the centre of the room.
Route 22 was founded in 2020 and took this main-street address in June 2025, marking five years with a grand opening. The collective describes itself as the intersection where art, culture and community converge, and the shelves are the plainest proof of it: one town's potters, turners, painters and photographers on the same three shelves.
Along the shelves: carved birds, turned bowls, glazed ceramics, small canvases.
Small framed work on the slatwall, the card rack beside it.
The corner: a sculpture on its plinth, platters and a bison above.
V
The flight
The aircraft, hovering between the shelves.
Five interior takes, from 10:59 to 11:05 by the camera's own clock — a little under six minutes of flying inside the room. Nothing was cleared, nothing was moved and nobody was asked to leave; in the third take someone is standing by the dark wall as the camera goes past. The aircraft is small enough to sit on one of the gallery's plinths, which is the only reason any of this is possible indoors.
Mid-air beside a plinth and a turned bowl.
VI
The street
Held on the parapet, the hills standing behind the roofline.
The front is a false one: a curved parapet built up above the roofline and painted deep red, carrying the short form of the name in white with a blossom above it. Twelve numbers up the same street, at 220, is MacKay's Ice Cream — the first film this studio made in Cochrane. Both shops face the same angled stalls.
The painted blossom above the name.
The timber porch, the lamp and the banner beneath the sign.
VII
The town
Rising off the parapet until the foothills fill the frame.
Highway 22 is Cochrane's main north-south artery and is officially named the Cowboy Trail, five hundred and seventy-four kilometres of it running along the Alberta foothills. Those are the hills standing over the roofline in every exterior take.
The ridge above the rooftops, north of the street.
Two thousand two hundred square feet, nine takes, and not one wall touched.
Off the roof and back: the block, the stalls, and the road out.
Detail → Whole
Next06 / St. Peter's Lutheran Church
Route 22 Art Gallery ends. 17 projects in the collection.
