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First Fridays Gallery Crawl
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GALLERY GUIDE (2026 Edition)
The City of Red Deer has a well updated gallery guide that includes socials, websites, addresses and phone numbers of all the working galleries in Red Deer. Take a look at it here: https://www.reddeer.ca/media/reddeerca/recreation-and-culture/arts-and-culture/galleries/Red-Deer-Gallery-Guide.pdf
On the first Friday of every month, join the galleries in downtown Red Deer in celebrating local, regional and national artistic talent. The galleries buzz with art experiences, open gallery spaces, social mingling and maybe some entertainment. Suitable for adults, youth, families, date nights, music lovers, culture-vultures and anyone who enjoys kicking off their weekend with a Friday night party. Free to attend.
Please Note: First Friday Red Deer listings will be posted one to two weeks prior to the events to allow all galleries time to get their information to the Red Deer Arts Council.
on September 4th 2026...
Coal in albertA
Artists: Robert Pohl, Arturo Pianzola, Fred Braakman, Nigel Goldup, Court Smith,
Medium: Prints of Black and White Film
Location: Kiwanis Public Art Gallery, Red Deer Public Library – Downtown Branch, 4818 49 Street
Exhibition Dates: August 18th-October 6th
#FirstFridaysRedDeer Opening: September 4th 2026, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.
Red Deer Arts Council and Red Deer Public Library are pleased to present: “Coal in Alberta”
“Coal in Alberta: A Journey to Obsolescence” attempts to illustrate the past history of the coal industry in Alberta. Only traditional black and white film methods were used. The use of old techniques and chemistry stand in perfect harmony with the history of coal. The artists demonstrate the hardship and the costs of the industry in both human and environmental terms. Many lives were shortened by hardship, health issues and accidents and this is demonstrated in their interpretation of the memorials.
The Monochrome Guild’s belief is that a return to coal mining in Alberta is destined to repeat the past and create the same issues and impacts, for what many deem to be, diminishing returns. It is their hope that the exhibition will stimulate some meaningful reflection and consideration on this important matter.
Threads that Connect Us
Photo Credit: Ruba Alnajjar left, Andrea Swainson right
Artists: Amie MacInnis, Andrea Swainson, Annie Burik, Eelkje VanderMeulen-Smart, Emalee Hagen, Hazel Sheehan, Judy Brownlee, Kerry Tronnes, Melanie Holland, Ruba Alnajjar
Medium: Poetry, Textiles, Painting, and Printmaking
Location: Community Gallery, Red Deer Arts Council, #6 – 4919 49 Street, Red Deer, T4N 1V1
Exhibition Dates:September 1 to October 2, 2026
#FirstFridaysRedDeer Opening: September 4th, 2026 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Artist Statement: “Threads that Connect Us” explores the connections between people, place, and medium both literarily and metaphorically. For this Alberta Culture days exhibition, artists created across a wide range of visual, textile, and literary works.
Reflect on your connections to your loved ones through poignant, dense works of pebble’s on wood, or the threads to nature, memory, and identity through the clothing and textile pieces. Local poets consider their connections to the world and eachother, alongside painters and printmakers. These are the Threads that Connect Us.
Serendipity
Artist: Margriet Hogue
Medium: Painting and Textile
Viewpoint Gallery, City of Red Deer Culture Services (old Intermediate School,) 5205 48 Avenue
Dates: July 30 – August 26
First Friday Reception: Friday, September 4, 5 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: Tuesday, September 15, 5 - 6 PM
Exhibition Statement:
Please join me to celebrate the opening of my solo exhibition, Serendipity, which brings together recent work shaped by two enduring influences in my practice: weaving and close observation of the natural world. Alongside abstract paintings that explore relationships between colour and the spatial language of landscape, three woven textiles from the 1980s offer a glimpse into a formative period in my creative practice.
Serendipity explores the discoveries that emerge when curiosity, observation, and experience come together. The exhibition suggests that creativity is shaped not only by intention, but also by a willingness to recognize unexpected connections and follow where they lead. Like the landscapes that inspire these works, such connections emerge gradually, their significance becoming visible over time.
This exhibition feels especially meaningful to me because it brings together work from very different moments in my life and reflects the ways a creative practice can change, deepen, and return to itself over time. I would be very happy to share it with you.
Art Attack for Teens
Artists: various
Dates: July 31 – September 25, 2026
Location: Cooridor Gallery, 4501 47A Ave, lower level of the Don Moore Recreation Centre
Teen Art Attack is a weeklong visual arts intensive for teens age 13-17 hosted by The City of Red Deer at the downtown Culture Services building. Over five days, teens experiment with art materials, techniques, and concepts – both contemporary and historical. Guided by practicing Artists, campers explore acrylic painting, printmaking, sculpture and mixed media. Each piece is the result of hands-on exploration, risk-taking and personal growth. Beyond technique, these artworks reflect the voices of a new generation: bold, thoughtful, and unapologetically free-spirited. At the end of the action-packed week, the students and their instructor put together a showcase of works to be displayed in a real gallery setting – getting a taste of what it’s like to create with the intention of sharing their art.
Maquette for Those Who Stood Upon This Land Before Time
Artists: David More and Charles Meggison, 2005
Dates: September 1 - October 31
Exhibition Description:
A new micro gallery is here! So tiny it showcases just one 3D artwork at a time. Located next to Viewpoint Gallery, you can see small ideas grow into bigger things. The inaugural series features maquettes of the City of Red Deer’s Public Art Collection. What are maquettes? They are small-scale models used to plan finished artworks. September spotlights Those Who Stood Upon This Land Before Time, the striking two-storey sculpture in the Collicutt Centre, which happens to be celebrating 25th anniversary!
Free to visit! Gallery open Monday – Friday, 8am-4:30pm. Closed on holidays. Open late on First Fridays.
Trudy Golley & Company
Artist: SAQA/ Studio Art Quilt Associates
Medium: Ceramics
Location: Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery, 4525 - 47A Avenue
Exhibition Dates: August 15 to November 14, 2026
#FirstFridaysRedDeer September 4th (Artists not in Attendance), October 2, 2026 5pm to 8 pm (Artists in Attendance)
Special Event: Trudy Golley's Curator Talk, Saturday September 12, 2026 at 2 pm
Red Deer artist Trudy Golley is celebrating fifty years of art making with an exhibition that looks forward as much as it looks back. From 2000 to 2024, Golley taught in the Visual Arts Department at Red Deer Polytechnic (RDP), where she led the ceramics program and built it around a simple, generative idea: that shared studios, shared tools, and shared knowledge make for stronger art and better artists.
So how does a longtime instructor mark a retirement, and half a century of work? Not by stepping back. Golley returns to the studio to build new work, mount an exhibition, and seeks out the people she once taught, to see where their own practices have carried them since.
Moving Forward brings together new pieces by Golley alongside recent work from five of her former students, RDP alumni: Dawn Candy, Robin Lambert, Julia Massey, Jen Pankratz, and Kaleb Romano. Each has taken their own distinct direction since leaving Trudy’s nest, but their work still carries traces of the collaborative foundation built together in the studio.
In combination, the exhibition reads as both tribute and conversation, proof that mentorship and shared knowledge do not end when the instruction in the classroom does. They ripple outward, and forward, indefinitely.
Renewal
Artist: SAQA/ Studio Art Quilt Associates
Medium: Quilting
Location: Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery, 4525 - 47A Avenue
Exhibition Dates: September 5 to November 21, 2026
#FirstFridaysRedDeer September 4th, 2026 - 5 pm to 8 pm
Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc., SAQA, is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt. Its vision is that the art quilt is universally respected as a fine art medium. SAQA’s three Canadian regions (Atlantic, Central, Western) have joined together to create this juried exhibition of art quilts.
Renewal is:
◆ Rekindling, looking to a new future, finding hope
◆ Resuming an activity after an interruption
◆ Repair or recycle of something worn and used
◆ Recovering strength
◆ Renewed cycles of life
This exhibition asks its audiences: how do you observe and experience renewal?
Renewal was juried by gallerist David Kaye, curator Leona Herzog and artist/curator Brandt Eisner.
Nature Alberta
Artist(s): Nature Alberta
Medium(s): Mixed
Location: Marjorie Wood Gallery, located in the Kerry Wood Nature Centre at 6300 45 Ave Red Deer AB
Exhibition Dates: July 7 to Sept 20, 2026
First Friday Opening: August 7, 4-6 p.m.
Nature Alberta has empowered people of all walks of life to connect to nature through art in a variety of unique community art projects. The positive energy beaming through the artwork created by hundreds of artists truly embodies Nature Alberta’s Community Connected by a Love of Nature.
Check in with these galleries directly for updated exhibition information:
Artribute Art School, 212 – 4836 50 Street, in the Old Courthouse. Treaty 6 & 7
Art in the Hallway, Northside Community Centre YMCA, 6391 76 Street
Curiosity Art & Framing, 5002 48 Street, Red Deer
Lacombe Performing Arts Centre, 5227 Calgary Edmonton Trail, Lacombe, AB
The Corridor Community Gallery, 4501 47A Ave, inside the Recreation Centre
The White Gallery, downstairs from Sunworks Living, 4913 50 Ave, Red Deer, AB
Lacombe Memorial Centre 5214 – 50 Ave, Lacombe, AB
