Discovering the Unexpected Art Scene of Saint John, New Brunswick

Looking out of my hotel window, I can see Saint John’s harbour glittering in the afternoon sun. Locals jog along the red-paved footpath below, and families make their way to the food stalls clustered on Market Slip. A hulking white cruise ship moors beyond them, across the water from a cargo ship from which bright containers are being unloaded by towering dockside cranes. To the west, plumes of steam rise from the city’s paper mills, and to the east Uptown’s red-brick skyline is punctuated by spindly church spires.

In the middle of this everyday scene, a figure stands on a paint-spattered paddleboard bobbing in the water, one tattooed arm raised as far as it can go to add a wash of pale pink onto a vast mural of a woman in profile. When I arrived yesterday, only the tree growing from the top of her head was visible above the water; now I can see that her neck and shoulders are a coral-filled ocean.

The artist is Sean Yoro, better known as Hula, and he’s in Saint John for a residency to paint this arresting piece, using the immense ebb and flow of the Bay of Fundy tides to complete his work. As it rolls into and out of the bay, the water level can change by a foot every 10 minutes, so he has only moments to complete each layer of the 30-by-40-foot mural.

I’m surprised to see public art on this scale in what I’d assumed to be a sleepy, historic city. Aside from its important port and industry, tourism is one of the main sources of income here. Visitors are attracted by Uptown’s picturesque grid of Victorian buildings and the Reversing Falls Rapids, where the bay’s powerful tides reverse the flow of the river. But in terms of art, most places along the Bay of Fundy coast are content to sell tourists crowd-pleasing images of seashells and lighthouses – lovely, but not too challenging.

But heading down to watch Hula work, I see tourists and locals alike enjoying the show, pointing out details and wondering how he manages to keep all his paints balanced on the board. Everyone seems to take it in their stride, a welcome but unsurprising addition to the cultural life of their city. One enterprising kid runs down the steps to where the artist’s twin brother and collaborator, Kapu, is watching. The two talk, Hula turning with a lazy wave and a grin for his new fan before getting back to his time- and tide-constrained work.

Speaking that afternoon with Maria Doering and Fiona Chinkan, artists in residence at the Saint John Arts Centre, I find that Maria is also enthusiastic about his work.

“We were really excited to see that Hula’s in town! We’ve seen so much of his work online, and now it’s like, what, he’s here? Especially for such a small city, there’s so much happening.”

We’re sitting in the Percival room, upstairs in the Centre’s Beaux-Arts building. Both artists wear glasses, and have dark hair, open smiles and ink-stained hands. They’re also both exhausted – it’s the last day of their three-week residency, the walls covered in the starburst-bright, intricate works they’ve created as part of their Shared Energies project.

“It started five years ago, at Maria’s kitchen table,” Fiona tells me. “She started drawing in one corner, I started in the other, and then all of a sudden we were meeting in the middle, drawing together, and we thought, wow, something magical is happening here.”

They meet each year for a residency to work on large-scale pieces. I ask them how Saint John and the Arts Centre compare to the larger cities in which they’ve worked.

“The seriousness and professionalism of the staff here… it’s outstanding. It’s unbeatable, seriously it is,” Maria answers, leaning forward and gesturing around her at the airy, high-ceilinged room. “I mean, the director literally gave me his chair because I was uncomfortable on the other one! They’re just fantastic folks, they’re out there to make this the best experience that we as artists could possibly have.”

Fiona agrees, adding, “I would say also Saint John is so community based, and people are just very engaged with the arts. Like, they’ll come and visit multiple times and get to know our work, whereas in a big city you might see someone once and that’s it.”

That sense of engagement is clear as I traipse around the city that evening, the historic streets hung with rainbows for Pride Week and dotted with pieces of public art. Half of the town seems to be out, strolling tree-shaded paths with brown-paper-wrapped paintings under their arms, or leafing through postcards. Everyone is enjoying the latest of Saint John’s Gallery Hops, stopping off at the town’s many museums and galleries for a drink and chat with the artists and curators.

I make my way over to the Jones Gallery, a 2000-square-foot space with beautiful exposed brickwork displaying high-quality pieces by artists living in Atlantic Canada. It’s packed with people, leaning heads together to look at the art, or speaking happily over glasses of wine.

“Saint Johners have no inhibitions about walking into an art space,” says Sarah Jones, artist and curator, who runs the gallery with her brother Caleb. Both come from Saint John, and noticing that artists like Sarah – Atlantic Canadian, early- to mid-career – were underrepresented, they decided to open a gallery focusing on this niche.

She continues, surveying the crowd happily as she toys with her shirt collar. “It’s truly a mix. I mean, there’s a typical art crowd, right? And they come, but so does everybody else.”

Saint John has produced many artists of note over the years, especially painters, and Sarah sees the effects today. “People are just used to artists wandering around in their paint clothes. It’s kind of a blue collar city, and the way people talk to me, I find they almost view it as like a trade. They appreciate that I’m going to work, you know?”

The city’s blue-collar nature makes it perfect for Sarah’s practice, which complicates Canadian identity by examining industrial and urban landscapes – “we have this mythology of who we are as Canadians, like we all either live in an iceberg or a lighthouse or something” – but it also makes it a practical choice for artists and gallery owners.

“It’s affordable, right? I can afford to have an enormous studio, and we have this amazing gallery space in a beautiful historic building, which we could never in a million years manage elsewhere.” She laughs, eyebrows raising in happy disbelief. “In any other city, we’d have to be the lackey employees for decades before we could put our own name on the door.”

Walking out of the gallery as evening falls, I wander through the Uptown area, just enjoying the atmosphere. The axe throwing bar opposite the gallery is bustling, and so is the tiny wine bar around the corner, patrons lingering outside to enjoy the warm summer air. Within a couple of blocks I pass another two galleries open for the Gallery Hop, conversation and laughter spilling onto the street, and as I continue I see a record store, tool library, bingo hall, a small park with a wrought-iron bandstand…

Uptown is an eclectic mix, just like the rest of Saint John. It’s a beautiful historic city, a bustling tourist town, an industrial hub, a working port, and all of this is reflected in its thriving art scene.