MEACHAM, Sask. – At first glance, Meacham is like the hundreds of other villages and towns scattered across the Prairies.
Nestled along a bend in Highway 2 as it makes its north-south journey through the middle of Saskatchewan, the village has four streets, three avenues, 90 residents and a few businesses.
But something is going on in Meacham that sets it apart from most rural communities. For the past 25 years, an artist colony has thrived here, sometimes quietly and sometimes in the media spotlight.
While the numbers have varied over the years, six visual artists now have homes and studios in Meacham: a painter, a silversmith, a jewelry maker and ceramic, porcelain and fabric artists. As well, the village is home to a recording studio and a theatre company.
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
Charley Farrero, who with wife June Jacobs led the artist migration to Meacham, said the artists have been good for the village.
“We’ve put Meacham on the news and on the map.”
But Farrero, whose ceramic sculptures have been shown across North America, also said life in Meacham has been good for his art.
“The big landscape and the big open prairie that you see just opens your mind and just allows you to reflect.”
Besides, he said, he could never afford to build the size of studio he needs in a big city, and urban bylaws likely wouldn’t allow his new wood-burning kiln.
Jacobs, who creates art out of fabric and operates the Hand Wave Gallery, agreed.
“I’d have to win the lottery to survive in the city.”
Farrero, who immigrated to Canada from France in 1969, spent several years working in a communal pottery studio in Humboldt, Sask., before moving to Meacham with Jacobs in 1979 in search of a cheap place to work and create.
Anita Rocamora was next, moving to Meacham in 1980. Also originally from France and one of the founders of the communal pottery studio in Humboldt, the porcelain artist moved in and out of the village several times before returning for good in 1994. She described her home as quiet, inexpensive and friendly.
While the village isn’t without its business community – there’s a large construction company and a trucking firm as well as a convenience store and post office, hotel, credit union branch, hair salon and veterinary clinic – the artists have had an economic influence on their new home.
Village councillor Brian Harriman estimated the artists and their properties make up more than half of the village’s tax base.
“We have umpteen things now,” he said.
“With the loss of the elevator and the railroad gone, it was good we had something to replace it.”
Sandra Grismer, executive director of the Saskatchewan Crafts Council, said the benefits that an artist cluster brings to a rural community go beyond the economic.
“Craftspeople bring a sense of self to the place,” she said.
“They put so much into their art and they put the same passion into their community.”
She said 50 percent of the council’s members live outside Regina and Saskatoon, but clusters in individual communities are rare.
Tom McFall, executive director of the Alberta Crafts Council, said the same goes for his province. While artist clusters exist in places like Bragg Creek and Canmore, those communities have other things going for them, such as the foothills and skiing. The community most similar to the Meacham experience is Empress, a remote town in eastern Alberta that McFall said has two or three studios and other artists.
Grismer said these clusters often start with one pioneer.
“When one of them does move and finds a place conducive to their art, that positive feedback encourages others to move there as well.”
That’s what happened in Meacham.
Angus Ferguson, who has run the Dancing Sky Theatre in the village for the past 10 years with his wife Louisa, was exposed to Meacham through his mother, an artist who knew Farrero and sold her work at Jacob’s gallery.
When the Fergusons returned to Saskatchewan from Montreal and began looking for a rural community to settle in, Meacham’s artists, with a world view that matched their own, made the community a natural choice.
“Our vision fit in perfectly with what was here,” he said.
Farrero said Meacham’s original residents have for the most part accepted the newcomers, and after 24 years he feels at home there.
Still, he said it’s good to have other artists in the village.
“It’s nice to have other people who understand the creative process and the struggle and the benefits.”
Rocamora agreed that she and her fellow artists have been welcomed to Meacham, but added that’s partly because the artists are easy to accept.
“We’re not doing performance art, painting our bodies naked and proclaiming Shakespeare on the street corner. That might have been a little more of a trial for people.”
And, she said, the artists have more in common with the original residents than might be expected.
“I think people respect the fact that they see you work. They know you’re working and that you’re working hard.”
