HCTAYC hosts youth photography pop-up gallery in Eureka

A youth photography pop-up in Eureka will put Humboldt County’s transition-age youth front and center, showing how local support systems shape the stories young people are able to tell. The exhibit will open Friday, June 26, from 2 to 5 p.m. at Schlueter Gallery, 330 Second St., and will feature photography made by participants in the Humboldt County Transition-Age Youth Collaboration.

The show is more than an art opening. It will highlight youth from across Humboldt County who have lived experience in foster care, mental health programs, juvenile justice and other systems and services, giving visitors a direct look at what those systems look like from the inside. HCTAYC, a youth advocacy and leadership development organization, works with young people ages 16 to 26 and says its mission is to empower them to help transform the foster care, juvenile justice, mental health and homelessness service systems in the county.

The June 26 pop-up is the latest public art event from a program that has used exhibitions to make youth experience visible in a place where policy often stays abstract. In April 2025, HCTAYC hosted its first-ever Art and Artefact Pop-Up Museum at the same Schlueter Gallery address on Second Street, titled “The Humboldt County Youth Experience: Struggle, Connection and Empowerment.” That event, like the new photography pop-up, was built around stories from young people living with the consequences of county systems.

HCTAYC’s approach also ties art to service delivery. A June 2026 newsletter lists the photography pop-up for June 26 and notes that Transition-Age Youth drop-in services will be closed that day because of the gallery event. The closure underscores how closely the county’s transition-age youth network is linked to public-facing programming, including skill-building workshops, support groups and basic needs resources.

The collaboration’s work is part of a broader Humboldt County support structure aimed at young adults who are moving out of foster care and other high-touch systems. By putting their photography on the walls of a downtown Eureka gallery, HCTAYC is turning lived experience into public testimony and forcing a clearer local question: whether vulnerable young adults are being seen, funded and supported well enough to shape the systems that affect them most.