Guided art tour highlights hidden gems of downtown Halifax

Argyle Fine Art launching two-hour, four-kilometre walking tour

HALIFAXtoday \  Stephen Wentzell

A new tour is coming to Downtown Halifax, combining the love of fine art with exercise.

Art is All Around Us, an art-centric experience, takes guests to landmarks near the Halifax waterfront.

The walking tour is being run by Argyle Fine Art and facilitated by Natasha Grenke, a watercolour artist who received her Fine Arts degree from NSCAD University in 2019.

Grenke, originally from Edmonton, has spent the past four years “enjoying the East Coast lifestyle,” and the “beautiful Nova Scotia scenery.”

Downtown Halifax’s vibrant art scene dates back decades and Art is All Around Us hopes to highlight the hidden gems the city has to offer.

Among the stops is the iconic and soon-to-disappear mural beside Freak Lunchbox. The 2015 mural painted by Jason Botkin depicting an octopus and fish wrestling with blue heron will soon become hidden by a new development next door.

Adriana Afford, owner of Argyle Fine Art, has been with the Barrington Street gallery from the beginning. She noticed a lack of guided art tours around Halifax and hopes to change that as international border restrictions begin to ease and tourists return to the province.

With the pandemic in mind, the tour takes place exclusively outdoors and is limited to groups of 10 to 12 people.

“It’s intended for not only people travelling,” Afford said, “but local people that maybe haven’t really done a walk around the city in a while.”

Argyle Fine Art received a “small grant” from Tourism Nova Scotia to help fund the experience, Afford said.

Starting from the gallery, the tour “then takes people around the city, exploring a lot of the new murals that have been put in place, as well as mentioning some really interesting architectural sort of points throughout the city,” Afford said.

The biggest logistical challenge facing Afford’s excursion is the number of steep hills in the city. While the tour is approximately four kilometres, Afford says her team worked hard to create a route that will highlight as many sights as possible while keeping the trek manageable.

Afford praised the Harbour Hopper as a great way to get introduced to the city, but added their trips “don’t really talk about the creative culture” of Halifax, something the Art is All Around Us Tour hopes to highlight.

The walk wraps up at Rousseau Chocolatier, with a chocolate tasting where guests can see the magic of art in local cuisine.

Initially set to begin Tuesday, organizers are pushing the launch to Saturday, August 14, as the final route takes shape.

The two-hour event takes place on Tuesdays and Saturdays at a cost of $30 per person or $95 for a family pass. Additional information and tickets can be found here.