Four summers of ArtWalk
From a French bakery in 2023 to the Cloudside Hotel this year, a look back at showing our maps in Nelson's summer art walk.
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Every summer the Nelson & District Arts Council turns shops, cafés and hotels around town into galleries for ArtWalk. We've been part of it four years running now, and each one has taught us something about showing work that usually lives on kitchen counters.
2023: Topos & Tapas
Our first ever exhibition was at L&C French Bakery on Radio Avenue. We planned the wall in Photoshop first, moving boards and panels around until the layout felt right, then hung the real thing.
We opened on June 24 with an evening we called Topos & Tapas: fine laser cartography, music from Blutopia and good things to eat.
One visitor wrote to us afterwards about the way "the wood grains formed a natural background for the laser image." That's still how we think about the work: the wood does half of it.
Later that summer we hung a second set at Torchlight Brewing, sharing the space with two other artists. People who saw the boards up in the brewery got in touch afterwards about pieces of their own, which taught us how much a wall can do.
2024: Taylor & Mae
In 2024 we showed at Taylor & Mae Eco Collective on Baker Street. The wall turned into something longer-lasting: the shop went on to carry our boards.
2025: Share Nelson and the museum
Last year we had two venues: Share Nelson, and the Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery, where we hung about a dozen wall pieces alongside our cutting boards and serving platters. The museum shop has carried our boards for years, so showing in the gallery itself felt like a milestone.
2026: Cloudside Hotel
This year our work hung at the Cloudside Hotel on Victoria Street from July 31 to September 4, alongside art workshops on the hotel decks. Thank you to the Cloudside team for having us, and to the Arts Council for another great summer.
What we've learned
People look for home first. They find their street, their trail or their ski run before anything else.
Showing in a café or a brewery, where people linger, is different from a gallery. The work gets lived with for a few weeks.
A wall often leads somewhere else: a shop that wants to carry the boards, or a custom piece for someone who saw the work.
We're already thinking about next summer. If you saw our work at any of these walls, we'd love to hear which piece stopped you.
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