In 2002, the Kelowna Art Gallery invited Alan C. Elder of Ottawa to organize an exhibition entitled: Designing a Modern Identity: The New Spirit of British Columbia 1945-1960.  After World War II, public galleries and industry joined forces to promote modernist design in Canada, with British Columbia and Vancouver at the forefront of this effort. Prominently featured were wood products, especially chairs and tables.

It seemed natural, then, that a follow-up exhibition providing a survey of the state of design in British Columbia at the beginning of the 21st century would be of equal interest. Once again it seemed appropriate to focus on wood as the prime material for home-grown product and furniture design.

What constitutes that resource, however, has undergone subtle shifts. Designers today not only use wood in its traditional forms, such as veneers, plywood, etc., but also in medium density fibreboards (M.D.F.) and other innovative wood products. Reclaimed wood taken from older buildings in the process of demolition is also used by many designers, all of whom are ecologically-aware and concerned with the long-term viability of the forests.

Occasionally designers utilize wood from imported species such as English walnut (which also grows in British Columbia) and, of course, various fruit woods, familiar to us in Okanagan orchards but not really exploited commercially as a building or design material. Through these considerations, one is forced to re-define what the nature of domestic wood is, since the presence (or lack thereof) of pearwood, cherry and walnut woods is due mainly to the fact that the numbers of available trees do not warrant milling on an economic scale.

The selection of objects for the exhibition was, at the outset, oriented towards those items which were designed for a larger market, and could be produced in series either by mass-production or in craftsman workshops. This meant excluding the excellent one-of-a-kind works commonly associated with fine craft production, or custom-made work usually built in specific settings.

The focus of Wood for Life: By Design is on furniture, although some smaller objects have also been included.  An important component of the exhibition (in the Reynolds Gallery) is on the design process itself, and introduces the viewer to the process, as well as to the various tools available to designers today, including the computer-assisted design (CAD) process. A brief section on characteristics of B.C. woods is also part of the display, enabling the viewer to appreciate the unique qualities of particular B.C. wood products. The availability of the Rotary Courtyard as an exhibition space has allowed the display of outdoor furniture as well.  

The resulting exhibition is a range of objects created by B.C. designers within the last five years or so, reflecting the materials they use and the various approaches they have to the objects they create. Inevitably, this reflects the variety of education and training of the designers, including the European-trained Nicolas Meyer and Izabella Gereb, British-trained John Bird, designers trained at the Kootenay School of the Arts and Selkirk College in Nelson, as well as designers who graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. Some designers included are self-trained. The work of designers is discussed in the exhibition's catalogue essay within the evolving context of their roles as creators, producers and manufacturers. It is also discussed within the context of the huge mass-market furniture industry and how fine design continues to be secondary to the requirements of mass-marketing.