At the start of summer, Amber Funk set up a Free Little Art Gallery in her front yard on Hanover Street in Steinbach, and it has been getting a lot of traction. 

Free Little Art Galleries (FLAGs) are where people can take artwork from a miniature gallery, or leave behind their own artwork they have made. 

Funk found out about FLAGs through an Instagram post she saw last autumn, and was excited to make one of her own with her husband. They even made miniature people out of clay to look at the art that people leave in there. 

“My husband is an artist. He's been an artist a lot longer than I have. We've had lots of fun making lots of little art to leave in there for people to find, and the neighborhood has really seemed to enjoy it. We've been finding lots of little art in there.” 

They are overjoyed at the large amount of people who have added and taken art. Many kids in their neighborhood love to use the gallery, but even adults and some professional artists have left artwork in there as well. People don’t just leave drawings either, there is clay art, rock paintings, and even origami. 

“It's been fun to see that other people are excited about it too, it's been something that I've thought is so whimsical and exciting for almost a year now, and so I was excited to get it up and actually come see my dream come to life.” 

Funk checks the gallery every morning and says there is almost always something new in there. 

“It's been changing pretty rapidly. I'd say from week to week it's almost always completely new things, which is kind of exciting to find new little treasures. It really does change quite a bit.” 

Funk encourages people to come visit and leave something behind. She says that you don’t need to have specific skills or lots of time invested to call yourself an artist. Being an artist can simply mean that you want to create something and it doesn’t need to be perfect. 

“There's been so many little pieces I've made that I'm kind of disappointed with. I had a different vision in my mind. But I tried, and I made something, and it disappears in a day or two. So someone out there was excited about it. And I think that's been really fun and encouraging for me to remember that things don't need to be perfect. The art, it's just expressing yourself.” 

If you want updates on the new mini-art in Steinbach, check out Amber Funk’s Instagram account for her FLAG here.