Gallery Hop Spring 2026 Review
After a brief experiment with Saturday mornings, the city’s self-guided community walk through uptown galleries returned to the original Friday evening format.
Sometimes, when we go “hopping”, we will try to visit all of the participants. For the first hop of 2026, though, we kept a leisurely bounce through half of the venues – and here’s who caught my eye.
Saint John Arts Centre
20 Peel Plaza | Website
Always on the list for the variety within its’ five galleries, we started our Hop at the former Carnegie library (the only one in Eastern Canada). Among this event’s offerings were other-worldly smoke- and fire-glazed pottery, textile art that germinated in waiting rooms and pondered the experience of time lost and aging, and a temporary exhibit of 60+ portraits of Indigenous women with red handprints on their faces, asking “Am I next?” to join the list of murdered and missing Indigenous women in this country.
Downstairs, Eva McCauley‘s latest exhibit, We Cling to Beauty as the World Falls Apart, was a feast. Some of the haunting seascapes and landscapes had photo-quality images of people frolicking unaware in their dripping and smeared acid-bright surroundings. Ethereal, and deeply dystopian.
Mitote Gallery
1 Charlotte Street | Website
Continuing strong at a gallery that – for all its’ nose-thumbing at the establishment – has become a real fixture of the SJ gallery scene. Unlike many of the galleries in town, Mitote celebrates “outsider art” that provokes and provides political commentary. If you know my love of street art (c.f., my sticker art fascination previously documented on my former Substack), you’ll understand why Mitote has probably become my favourite Saint John gallery.
The exhibits featured their mix of regular fixtures (Craig Gower, Tyler LeBlanc) and visiting artists, and it was one of the guest artists causing us to pause an extra beat. Douglas Roy Anderson‘s show was a series of surrealist, gothic collages that consisted of 50+ layers – but only temporarily. He kindly spent a few moments with us to explain that, rather than being glued together, he reused the elements; the paper pieces would be swept back into a bin once he was done with the current arrangements. It reminded me of the joyful play of days gone by, stretched out on a burnt orange shag carpet floor, with a plastic tumbler of Kool-Aid, a bin of Lego pieces, and a limitless imagination.
The willingness to allow one’s artistic creation to physically disappear takes guts. And while I’m sad that I didn’t get a picture of the bear with antlers that first caught our eye (sometimes, the “hopping” is such that I forget to document), in retrospect, perhaps, it was only fitting.
Sheila Howell Gallery
228 Germain Street | Website
Nestled in a rented side room of a former church-turned children’s theatre space, Sheila hosted a cozy time with homemade treats, walls filled with originals and prints, and a commission in progress. This was the most intimate of spaces, in both the size of the space and in spirit, allowing us the opportunity to hear more about some of the decisions she was making as she developed the large landscape of PEI landmarks.
Sometimes, art is good because speaks to us through pure visual stimulation. And in some cases still, it can also make us remember. Perhaps it was the ecclesiastical setting, or the peaceful English garden/country flavour that emanates from her pieces, but the thread to my nan tugged a little.
Glass Roots Studio
Back Alley, 87 Canterbury St | Website
Following a restorative pit stop at Port City Royal, we ambled down Canterbury Street to a basement gallery full of intricate breakables. I was hoping to grab a present; while unsuccessful, I still revelled in the light pouring through the rich colours of vibrant whale tails emerging from curled glass waves, spring fiddlehead and hummingbird ornaments, and stout bear paperweights.
Handworks
12 King Street | Website
Our last stop of the night before wandering home, Handworks is one of the only galleries we visited that, although curated, is more commercial in feeling, simply for the sheer quantity of pieces on display. Representing a large number of artists, there is always new work on offer nestled in the nooks of the shop.
That said, Handworks’ walls and shelves are so full that it always takes me an extra beat to catch the new (to us) works when we’re hopping. But we did find new treats, and were delighted by Cody Pendleton’s bold, tightly-packed schools of fishes, and Louise Baker’s dreamy florals; both made me want to make some wall space.
And with the fifth gallery, we were finished with our first Gallery Hop of 2026! Like others, this Hop filled my cup in a sorely-needed way, sharing in the joy of others’ talents in a community setting and stimulating my own creativity – on a beautiful spring evening, no less.
Leave a Reply