Scott Price's exhibit of drawings and doodles, on display at Studio 204, is overshadowed by the imminent closing of the gallery.

'We are going down, we're losing the space at the end of the month,' Price said in an interview at the show's opening.

Studio 204, a small, single-room gallery located in the alley behind Main Street, between Second and Third avenues in Whitehorse, is operated by a collective of local artists.

The closure is the result of the rental agreement being terminated by the landlord, to allow for the expansion of a neighbouring business. At present, the collective is uncertain about its future.

'We want to break down the variables,' said Price. 'What are we here for? We're a laboratory for experimentation, we're a studio, we're a gallery, a meeting place, so we're looking at that and those elements.

'The Downtown Business Association is keen on us staying alive and well, so that's a positive thing,' he added.

Entitled 700 Pins, Price's exhibit is a hodgepodge collection of drawings, sketches, doodles and other works spanning 45 years, beginning when he was just six.

Despite the smallness of the gallery, which is a square room perhaps 15 feet wide, Price has managed to fill it with an enormous amount of art.

The walls of the gallery are papered with hundreds of drawings. There are rows and rows of them, one after another, lining the the walls from the floor to the ceiling.

'This is a total, full-on, off-the-top of my head collage,' said Price, when asked about the odd, quilt-like arrangement of the work. 'There's not a lot of organization.

'I had the original notion of being organized and having grids, but in the end I realized that the only thing that follows throughout is one line about eyes lining up other than that, I just decided I didn't care too much about the strength of the pieces, I just decided that I'd let it go.'

Even the spaces around the large, storefront window are filled with drawings.

'I like to draw a lot,' he said.

'I've got a lot of ideas in my head, things inspire me, the radio inspires me, articles in the paper. I had to stop somewhere I could have filled the ceilings and the walls in the back too. For me, it's about viewing it.'

Price was raised in Hamilton, Ont. Then, in the late 1970s, he attended that province's University of Guelph and obtained a formal education in art.

'I wanted to learn more about drawing,' he said. 'I ended up taking sculpture and printmaking classes.'

In 1984, Price decided to accompany a friend on a trip to the Yukon, his first visit to the territory. He ended up spending the winter in a cabin.

'I house-sat a cabin my first winter and spent five months in it,' he said, recollecting on his early days.

'A number of the darker and dismal drawings from that time are on the wall.

'It was my first experience of living alone. I had always lived with people. It turned out that I loved it, I found out that the freedom was pretty amazing to have your own space and do what you want with it.'

Following his initial period in the Yukon, Price moved back and forth several times to work as a studio technician at the university, before finally deciding to stay in the territory.

'I think I always had visions of something I wasn't quite sure of, but I knew there was something that was different that I needed than being in the city,' he confessed.

700 Pins is on display until Nov. 16, after which the gallery will close.

'Once 204 was established, I realized this was a venue for this kind of thing,' he said. 'This is sort of a laboratory for experimentation and for the other-than-ordinary.

'I had the space and the freedom to do it and I really wanted to see what it was about, and it surprised me.

'I was amazed at my divisions between my time living in Guelph and this mad, crazy time in the Yukon.'