A collective of artists is reimagining the role of an art gallery as a way to build connections between neighbours.
"Instead of art being inside in very formalized gallery settings, how can we redefine a gallery as something that's small and outside and shared in the community?" organizer Jaime Calayo said of the Good Neighbour Arts Network. "(We're trying to) flip the idea of where an art gallery is and redefine it in a way that's more inclusive, more accessible, and something that community owns."
Calayo and nine other artists on Edmonton's east side received $25,000 in funding from the Edmonton Arts Council to erect outdoor galleries resembling little free libraries and to fill them with original art.
Calayo and his co-conspirators are mostly parents with busy schedules, so they scaled the project to match the lives they lead. They wanted Good Neighbour to reflect that the east side has an existing sense of connectedness and deepen it by way of art.
"From the outside, it may seem like we need this project, but if you actually embed yourself in these communities, especially on the east side, you feel the neighbourliness immediately," Calayo told Taproot. "The goal of this project is to better connect (artists) to the broader community who aren't involved in the art and design community, to make those connections stronger."
Each of the 10 Good Neighbour galleries has a distinct look anchored on an elongated oval-shaped display, which was designed as a metaphor. "We used that oval shape to call back to those old telephone booths," Calayo said. "When you're engaging with them, you're kind of having a conversation with community."
The galleries in the network are predicated on exchange. They are operated by "stewards," not owners, in the spirit of collective ownership. "The art is not only crafted by the steward of that gallery, but also by the community around it," Calayo said.
Jaime Calayo put together this artistic rendering of some of the oval-shaped galleries in the Good Neighbour Arts Network on Edmonton's east side.
For example, his gallery is stocked with his artistic hockey cards outside the Donnan Arena in King Edward Park, the site of many a hockey game.
"The instructions are very simple: Leave a hockey card, and then take a hockey card — the gallery is built to be a hockey card trading post." Calayo said. "People have started populating it with their own hockey cards, which has been super fun to see, and we've been informally seeing other small pieces of art popping up in in other people's galleries."
Two other examples are AJA Louden's Piney P sticker gallery in Kenilworth and Alex DesCôtes's "flower shop" in Holyrood. The other artists in the network are Andrew Benson, Tikina Brownoff, Daria Hirny, Cory Johnn, Natasia Martin, Meagan McKenzie, and Stephanie Medford.
Each of the galleries contains wallet-sized maps of the entire network to encourage visitors to seek out more than just one. Plus, Good Neighbour keeps a digital map of the galleries and artists on the east side.
The collective has scheduled a self-guided bike tour of all the galleries on May 30, as the end of May is when the current season of Good Neighbour programming technically ends. The galleries aren't closing, Calayo said, but network members will discuss what comes next around that time.
"We hope to develop a working committee to keep the project sustainable — to see what other future grants we could apply for, or maybe look into east-side business sponsorship, and see if we can hand down some of these galleries to new artists," Calayo said. "Maybe we could even erect some additional galleries. I'd love for 10 more galleries to pop up in 2027."
Readers interested in participating in Good Neighbour or a listing on its artist directory can head to the project's contact page.