A year ago this past April, John Franklin of Imago partnered with a number of artists, and educators from the Hamilton area to stage the first exhibition evening of its kind, smack dab in the middle of the the most exciting new art market in Ontario, the James Street North Art Crawl.
This event is held monthly in Hamilton (the second Friday night) on a 5 block stretch of galleries, cafes, artist studios, student shows, street vendors.and musicians with routinely up to six thousand people exploring the street.
Supercrawl in September draws over 50,000 each year. The Imago event last year helped launch several young artist’s careers, and drew over 4000 (in one night) of the public into this one street space alone.
What Imago began has led to several new initiatives to support Christian artists in the Hamilton city core, with clear ties to several inner city church projects and the influence of Redeemer University Fine Art department.
This one event has been a great jump start for all of us who work in this area.Most recently James Tughan and Heidi Brannan of the Semaphore Fellowship are exploring the founding of a new cooperative
gallery on James Street North, that will feature, the work of not only established Christian artists, but those just emerging into the field. This gallery will also feature Semaphore’s interest in mission, education
and partnerships with churches in badly needed support (on many levels) for visualartists. Anyone interested in being a part of this venture should contact James at 905-337-8252, or perigee@cogeco.ca
James Tughan is a visual artist living in Oakville, Ontario.