The Parlour gallery is opening up their doors to up and coming artists to exhibit in their brand new space.
 Local artist David Hoffos has reopened “The Parlour Gallery” at its new location  at 407B Second Ave. South. Arianna Richardson’s latest exhibit opens this Saturday.

The Parlour is exactly what it sounds like — a Parlour window downtown which  allows up and coming artists to exhibit their works — primarilly sculpture or multi-media works.

“We’ve  had another space in Chinatown since 2007,”  said Lethbridge based, world renown artist David Hoffas, adding a 2009 fire  at the former location and an eviction some time later forced artists Hoffos,   Mary-Anne McTrowe, Dan Wong and Sonis McAllister and the Barracuda Orchchestre to find a new studio space to work in.

Once they found this one, like in the previous space, they decided to use the streetside window as a new place to exhbit works.

“It’s not a vanity gallery, it is open to any artist,” Hoffos emphasized.
“It’s to give these emerging artist  and up and coming artists  an opportunity to have their first exhibition,” he continued adding he isn’t a curator and doesn’t fund the artists.

“It is a challenge for first time artists to find  a place to display their works or to even  find a space to work, though there are a lot of abandoned buildings dpwntown that could be used,” Hoffos observed.

“I’m looking for artists who are  pretty self-sufficient. They can come and look at this space and they can utilize the space any way they want. A lot of first time artists don’t have access to the Southern Alberta Art Gallery or Trianon, so the Parlour fills a gap,” he continued adding  the space isn’t suited to painting or photographs as there is no place to hang them, though he may build  a backdrop for them later.

The exhibitions are displayed for three weeks and openings are usually co-ordinated with openings at the Trianon, SAAG, Mueller and lately the Bowman.

 He is hoping  because the new space is right around the corner from the Trianon Gallery, that they will get more traffic on the art tours.
Several artists who have had their first exhibitions at the Parlour have gone on to  greater success like Wednesday Lupypciw who is now based in Calgary, Len Komanac who recently exhbited at the SAAG and  Colin Zipp who had the first exhbition in the new location on Jan. 15.

Hoffos would like to see art openings spread  out through the months rather than having them take place all on the same night.

Artists interested in exhibiting at the Parlour are asked to e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . They should provide images of their work and an artist’s statement as well as produce their own publicity material for the show.

A version of this story appears in the March 9 Downtown Magazine

{jcomments on}