Prologue. Portraits for Future Selves

June 26, 2025 – October 5, 2025
Art Gallery of Peterborough

Artist-Mentor: Spencer J. Harrison

This powerful exhibition marks the culmination of the 2024/25 Youth Art Mentorship Program—now in its fourth year at the Art Gallery of Peterborough. Each year, the program pairs graduating high school artists with professional mentors, offering them the rare opportunity to produce original work for a public gallery show.

This year’s cohort—Lillian Bleecker, Jay Hopkins, Violet Jackson, Anaïs Le Goaix, and AJ Livings—was selected by a jury of arts professionals and spent the past four months working closely with artist-mentor Dr. Spencer J. Harrison, Education Programming Coordinator Andrew Ihamaki, and Curator Fynn Leitch.

The result is Prologue. Portraits for Future Selves, a diverse and evocative body of work spanning painting, drawing, collage, and sculpture. These artists explore fantasy and reality, abstraction and realism, using their art to unpack identity, vulnerability, resistance, and hope. Their works are deeply personal yet speak to something universal—bodies navigating a world in flux, imagining what might come next.

The AGP congratulates these emerging voices and celebrates the community they’ve built through their creativity, empathy, and courage. This is not just an exhibition—it’s an introduction to five future-shaping artists you’ll want to remember.