RISD’s “Wunderground” show follows a similar trajectory, tracing the rise of the Olneyville arts scene from its early Fort Thunder-centered days in the mid-1990s to the more dispersed, though still vital, art scene of today.

One section, “Providence Poster Art, 1995-2005,” features nearly 2000 posters advertising everything from rock shows and art exhibits to lectures, poetry readings and political rallies. Alternately crude, elegant, subtle and over-the-top, they make quite an impression installed in the museum’s Granoff Galleries, where they cover every inch of available wall space.

The show’s other section, dubbed “Shangri-la-la-land,” fills the museum’s Main Gallery and consists of eight site-specific sculptures and installations. All are new pieces, created especially for the exhibit.

“From the beginning, everyone we talked to was adamant about not doing a Fort Thunder nostalgia show,” says Tannenbaum. “The feeling was that while the Fort remains a touchstone for many of the Olneyville artists, they’ve moved on and therefore the show should reflect that.

“On the other hand, they were very excited about doing a poster show, mainly, I think, because the posters provide such a rich collective history of the Olneyville arts scene.”

At the same time, the show posed some unique curatorial challenges. Perhaps the most important was simply earning the artists’ trust.

“While Providence’s underground arts scene is fairly well known at this point, many of the artists really had no experience working with a mainstream museum,” Tannenbaum says. “On the one hand, I think they were eager to have their work exhibited in their own community. On the other hand, the whole museum thing, with its cult of dead white male artists, was something they were rebelling against.”

Shangri-la-la-land

Another problem was how to showcase one of the most vital aspects of the Fort Thunder/Olneyville arts scene: the posters that advertised concerts, performances and other events. Not only were they made to be used — pasted on walls and lampposts, or pinned to restaurant and café bulletin boards — but the sheer number of posters easily reached into the thousands. “Basically, the more we looked, the more we found,” Tannenbaum says. “We’d talk to one person who referred us to someone else who told us about two or three other people. The circle just kept expanding.”

Then there was the question of who to invite to create new works for the show’s “Shangri-la-la-land” section. Ultimately, Tannenbaum says, she decided on eight artists whose styles and sensibilities provide a representative sampling of the Olneyville aesthetic.

For example, three of the show’s contributors — Mat Brinkman, Jim Drain and Leif Goldberg — are former members of Forcefield. (The group, which also included Ara Peterson, broke up shortly after its success at the 2002 Biennial.) Another contributor is Brian Chippendale, a co-founder (with Brinkman) of Fort Thunder and the drummer for Lightning Bolt.

The show also features the work of Jungil Hong, a Korean-born sculptor and printmaker who often collaborates with Chippendale; Erin Rosenthal, a Providence-born artist and filmmaker who also plays in the rock band Urzog; Pippi Zornoza, a RISD-trained artist who also starred in the cult-horror movie Die You Zombie Bastards!; and Xander Marro, a printmaker and fiber artist who is also the show’s only artist without a RISD pedigree. (She attended Brown University.)

“Obviously, we couldn’t invite every artist with a connection to Fort Thunder or Olneyville,” Tannenbaum says. “Instead, we tried to pick people who were both central to the Olneyville scene and had their own unique artistic voices.”

Though Tannenbaum doesn’t expect many of the projects to be completed before Saturday’s opening — “like most artists, they seem to have an aversion to deadlines,” she says — she does know generally what the artists are planning.

Chippendale, for example, is building a movable shelter called Home on the Run — a caustic reference to the recent surge in development that has displaced many of the Olneyville artists. Brinkman, meanwhile, is creating a 15-foot-tall ogre-like figure that will greet visitors as they enter the gallery.

“It should be pretty impressive,” Tannenbaum says.

“Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to the present” opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 7 at the RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St., Providence. Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and until 9 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month. Admission: $8 adults, $5 seniors, $3 college students with I.D. and $2 ages 5-18. Phone: (401) 454-6500.