A Foothills art gallery is putting it all on the line – and online.
“Our Clothesline Art Market is actually one of the longest-running programs at the Leighton Art Centre (LAC),” said executive director Christina Cuthbertson. “It's a fantastic opportunity to support local artists and gather a sense of community out here in the Foothills.”
June 10-11 is the weekend for the in-person Clothesline Art Market, but early birds may also be looking to the Clothesline Online Art Sale, going live June 1-30.
The online format began with COVID, and now the two models have been blended.
“It’s a nice opportunity to be more inclusive with the sale, given that we can include more people in the online portion than we would have the physical capacity to manage during the market-style event in person,” Cuthbertson said.
“So it’s a great opportunity that way, we also open it a bit earlier than the in-person market.”
For the in-person market, opening at 10 a.m. each of the two days, there will be free guided tours of the property, as well as other attractions.
“We’ll be offering free guided tours at the facility, so that includes historic tours of the Leighton House, the property and the bird box trail,” Cuthbertson said.
“It’s also a great opportunity for people who have never been to the centre before to get a sense of the overall community that gathers here – that's what I enjoy the most about it.
“It will be a festive day for us, we’ll have musicians, a coffee truck coming and ice cream truck."
The LAC’s Education Centre team will be running a booth with activities for children and families, such as arts and crafts.
There will also be a rare opportunity to get up-close and personal with one of the most enchanting spaces of the LAC, the indoor botanical garden, currently host to Calgary artist Michelle Atkinson’s exhibition Human Sprawl, featuring waterjet cut glass sculpture fauna nestled among the garden’s flora.
“The Clothesline weekend is the first opportunity the public will have a chance to come into our little indoor botanical garden atrium and see that exhibition up close,” Cuthbertson said.
“Many of the plants in there are Barbara’s original plantings.”
Of the market sales, 60 per cent of the proceeds go back to the artists, with the rest supporting the LAC, its programs and the planned overhaul of its Education Centre, currently in dire need of replacement.
“It still ends up being an important fundraiser, and as a not-for-profit, it’s a really good chance to raise funds for programming we do throughout the year,” Cuthbertson said. "That programming, of course, takes place in our Education Centre, which needs major infrastructural improvements.”
As such, the LAC is beginning to look for serious funding for the capital project.
“What we have got at the moment is a working model that we think is going to be a facility that will do a number of things for us: improve our accessibility and from a physical standpoint, it will improve our safety, it will improve our water and waste management, and be a much more sustainable than our current infrastructure,” Cuthbertson said.
The LAC is rooted in arts and education, ever since Barbara Leighton brought the one-room schoolhouse, dubbed ‘Ballyhamage,’ onto the property in the 1970s, and incorporated the centre as a society in 1974.
“So we are approaching our 50th year in operation and her ambition was to turn everyone into an artist – she really believed anyone could be an artist,” Cuthbertson said.
There will also be 50/50 raffle tickets for sale through to the end of the art sale.
For more information on the Clothesline Art Market or the LAC, visit leightoncentre.org.
