Gallery Closed: Winter Break
2025-12-25 08:00 - 2026-01-01 17:00 (America/Vancouver)
The Vernon Public Art Gallery will be closed during this time and will reopen January 2, 2026.

First Friday Art Trail — Featuring Sara Wiens
2026-01-02 12:00 - 16:00
Date: Friday, January 2, 2026Time: 12:00 PM – 4:00 PMLocation: Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Ave, Downtown VernonAdmission: Free | Everyone welcome

As part of Greater Vernon’s First Friday Art Trail, the Vernon Public Art Gallery is pleased to host local artist Sara Wiens for an open studio experience. Visitors are invited to drop in throughout the day to meet Sara, learn about her creative process, and see her artwork in progress.

About the ArtistGrowing up in the Coast Salish territory of Musqueam, Squamish, Stó:lō, and Tsleil-Waututh nations implanted the power and beauty of the ocean, mountains, and forest in Sara from a young age. Seeking to understand local ecologies and their connection to wider global ecologies has been a stubborn passion. Her work is informed by rigorous academic pursuits paired with local projects focused on equity and accessibility of large ideas and aesthetics for all people. Sara brings together her years in education, community organizing, and consistent interest in conservation to her art practice to move collectors and participants to contemplation and action to protect the natural world. As a parent to 3 teens and partner to another advocate for youth, she values mentoring the next generation with hope. Sara Wiens is a current graduate student in the Ecological and Sustainable Practices MFA program at Emily Carr University. She holds a BA in Studio Arts and a Bachelor of Art Education both from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Currently, she works from her studio situated on the stolen lands of the Secwepemc people of the North Okanagan in Salmon Arm, British Columbia.

artist website

Discover more about the First Friday Art Trail and explore participating artists across Greater Vernon — or get involved as a featured artist at VPAG.

Learn More / Apply to Be a Featured Artist

Kitchen Corner
2026-01-08 18:00 - 2026-03-11 17:00
Samuel Roy-Bois

Topham Brown Memorial GalleryJanuary 8, 2026 to March 11, 2026

Kitchen Corner is the title of a Depression-era photograph by Walker Evans. While not adirect source for the works assembled here, its rediscovery during the preparation of thisexhibition proved resonant. Evans’s image operates as a portrait of a context articulatedthrough objects. Documentary in nature, it renders a modest interior where things—a frayedrag, a slanted broom, a patinated chair—assume the status of characters seemingly asking tobe observed, “objects in a moment of pause between use.”1 What is striking, however, isthat Kitchen Corner withholds the very signifiers conventionally associated with a kitchen(no sink, no stove). In this disjunction between title and referent, the photograph underscoresthe complexity of representation and the capacity of objects to exceed their functionalidentity.

The works in this exhibition similarly dwell in thresholds of recognition. They positionobjects, sculptures, and bodies in states of indeterminacy: what reads as structure functions assupport; what appears fragmentary gestures toward wholeness; what suggests immediacyproves resistant, even opaque. Produced over the course of eighteen months, these workswere not initially conceived as a unified installation. Their subsequent convergence, however,revealed affinities of form and sensibility, generating conditions for thought and affect thatexceed the sum of individual pieces.

The works composing this exhibition invite tension into the domain of the built environment.Each references architecture obliquely: through the evocation of house foundations, theabstracted language of the maquette, or vestiges of timber-frame construction. Despite theirvaried scales and spatial logics, they converge around a shared problematic: the negotiationbetween the self and the possible. In their oscillation between recognition and estrangement,they foreground the contingencies of agency and the fragility of ideals. Failure, unfulfillment,and speculation emerge not as deficiencies but as constitutive modes of experience, openingonto a broader meditation on how subjectivity is continually shaped, unsettled, and redefinedthrough material encounter.

1 Richon, Olivier. Walker Evans: Kitchen Corner. MIT Press, 2019.

Crit Club
2026-01-23 08:00 - 17:00
Date & Time: January 23, 2025, 3:30–5:00 PMLocation: Vernon Public Art GalleryAge Group: TeensAdmission: Free + Pizza included!About the ProgramCrit Club is a free, hands-on workshop for high school students. Each month, a different local artist leads a session where teens can try new materials, explore techniques, and share their work in a relaxed, no-judgment space.

All supplies are provided, and there’s pizza to enjoy during a mid-session break. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your skills, Crit Club is a fun space to create, connect, and be inspired!

RSVPs are encouraged so we know how much pizza to order — but walk-ins are welcome!

RSVP for January’s Crit Club

Learn More about Crit CLub

Mini Artists
2026-01-29 10:00 - 11:30
Date & Time: January 29, 2025, 10:00–11:30 AMLocation: Vernon Public Art GalleryAge Group: Children under 5 (with parent or guardian)Admission: By donation

Join us for Mini Artists, a hands-on art program for little ones and their caregivers! Each session invites children to explore a variety of art materials and creative processes that foster creativity, sensory awareness, and early learning. Using safe, non-toxic materials, kids get to play, imagine, and create while developing fine and gross motor skills.

Parents or guardians must accompany children for the duration of the session.Register online to ensure space and materials:

Register for January’s Mini Artist

Learn More about mini artists

Crit Club
2026-02-27 15:30 - 17:00
Date & Time: February 27, 2025, 3:30–5:00 PMLocation: Vernon Public Art GalleryAge Group: TeensAdmission: Free + Pizza included!About the ProgramCrit Club is a free, hands-on workshop for high school students. Each month, a different local artist leads a session where teens can try new materials, explore techniques, and share their work in a relaxed, no-judgment space.

All supplies are provided, and there’s pizza to enjoy during a mid-session break. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your skills, Crit Club is a fun space to create, connect, and be inspired!

RSVPs are encouraged so we know how much pizza to order — but walk-ins are welcome!

RSVP for February’s Crit Club

Learn more about Crit Club
