Have you ever had your floors refinished? It’s messy right? Probably best to go stay somewhere else for a couple days? We had ours done last fall, and with a free stay at a Tobermory inn gifted to us (shout out to Lisa Dren), we decided to go stay up on the Peninsula for two days to escape the mess.
On our drive up, we stopped in Wiarton for an afternoon visit. I always stop for a coffee at Lost Art Espresso and after chatting with Cassandra and feeling adequately caffeinated, we popped into Deep Water Gallery to see a very cool large-scale installation exhibit by Amanda McCavour titled Floating Garden.
As we walked around downtown after, I also noticed a few new spots. My wife is from Thornbury, so she doesn’t know Wiarton as well as I do, so I pointed out that the Strata Gallery and the Taylor Gallery were both recent additions to the main street. The art scene in Wiarton is growing I thought to myself. I lived on Colpoys Bay for a year and wish that there had have been a central place for artists and creatives to gather, and it seems that now that exists.
“I grew up in Wiarton and there was nothing for artists,” says Ann Hadcock, one of the creatives behind Deep Water Gallery. “The fact that the gallery now exists…kids have a place to go.” She describes how community members like art teacher Kelly McDougall are helping to support this creative push by joining the curatorial committee and starting THE STUDIO Wiarton Arts Collective. McDougall often brings her students down to the gallery for openings, as well.
“There are all these avenues for kids in the community to be creative that didn’t exist before, and I think that’s really important,” says Hadcock.
Ann moved back to Wiarton a few years ago after receiving her MFA at University of Windsor and establishing a successful art career in Kitchener. She, along with patron and chamber member Joe Vanderzand, have made the Deep Water Gallery a pivotal art centre in downtown Wiarton.
Joe is the president of the Chamber Board and owns the building that Deep Water is in. He believes that Deep Water Gallery initiated the movement that Wiarton is witnessing. “Back in 2018, I approached Ann to see if she’d be interested in taking on a position at the Chamber table as a director, and from that, her and I got to talking about what the arts can do for our community.”
They opened the gallery in 2019 after researching what arts communities have done in other Ontario regions like Hamilton and Kitchener. “I come at it from an economic driver aspect,” says Joe. “What has transpired is the interconnectivity we’re starting to see amongst artists. They’re literally coming out of the woodwork to collaborate.”
“It wasn’t easy,” admits Ann. “We had to start from scratch; we had to do a lot of self-funding; we had to get people to believe in the language that Wiarton could be an art community. And that took a lot of work. Joe offered up the space, which in the art world is unheard of..it was just an exceptional thing to do.”
“These are opportunities that artists normally wouldn’t have in the Wiarton area.”
They are a publicly funded space existing through donations, grants, and fundraising…and volunteers. Hadcock remembers receiving an Ontario Arts Council grant to create their first show “Once we were able to get that first grant, we were able to kick the doors open to get more regional and municipal funding. They knew we were serious.”
Like Joe, Hadcock is aware of the impact the arts can have on a community. She saw it happen in the GTA and Kitchener/Waterloo, where she was eventually pushed out of her studio space by tech companies. She moved back to Wiarton with a vision for the area to capitalize from the arts in the same ways bigger cities do.
“A lot of my friends in Hamilton were going through the same thing, Toronto too, so I ended up moving home and had an arts studio set up in Wiarton because it was affordable,” she says. “A lot of artist friends and curators said ‘the arts aren’t up there, things are going to die for you’. I worked with Joe to get this gallery started, and now those same people call me up on the phone and ask me if I can find them a studio space in Wiarton because they want to be here,” she says and laughs. “I think the original idea that art only happened in urban centres…is not true; artists go where it’s affordable.”
And many artists that have been choosing the Bruce Peninsula are now finding Wiarton as a hub for connectivity and collaboration.
“We’re seeing a lot of artists that were working in silos all of a sudden coming into town,” notes Joe. “Now we’ve got commercial galleries giving regional artists representation. There’s a new network of opportunities.”
“We’re making a broad impact in the community, not just the arts,” he adds. “But the arts are the driving force.” He says that the new commercial galleries like the Strata Gallery and Taylor Gallery are selling artists who’ve exhibited at Deep Water, and local coffee shops and restaurants are hanging local art.
“These are just opportunities that artists normally wouldn’t have in the Wiarton area.”
Even though Ann doesn’t have a curatorial background, she uses her own experience as a contemporary artist to curate the exhibits. She’s had work with Supercrawl, Harbourfront Centre, and even her own solo exhibit at Tom Thomson. She made it work for small-scale, but now the curatorial is broken up with a committee of volunteers.
Exhibition artists are coming from Big Bay, Dyer’s Bay, Oliphant, and Wiarton. Once in a while they’ll bring in an artist from outside the region. “I want to make sure I keep the majority of my programming regional because if you don’t have the love of regional artists, you have no love,” says Ann.
While Deep Water is a public gallery, both Strata and Taylor Galleries are commercial, meaning they sell art as their main revenue stream. Strata Gallery, run by Betty Ladner, recently held an exhibit of Chris Malleck’s paintings made of glass titled Ambient Transformations. It was an opening reception I really wanted to attend, but with a newborn I haven’t been able to get out much. Strata is on my list of places to visit this summer.
“We kind of introduce these artists to the community and the community always embraces them with open arms,” says Ann.
“With the other galleries coming on board, we are…putting ART in the heart of WiARTon,” says Joe. “As an art district, which is really what we’ve been trying to achieve, we’re going places.”
And the numbers support Joe’s claim. They plan to beat 2023’s high water mark of 3000 visitors by promoting Wiarton as an art centre. They regularly get up to 100 people coming out for their openings and the next opening reception for their Juried Exhibit will surely see a full house. “Juried shows are really successful” says Ann. With 30 artists, there is a lot of engagement from all the artist’s communities.
The exhibit will run from April 17 to May 24. It will consist of mostly Grey Bruce artists including Indigenous voices, conversations about gender identities, and commentaries on the current political climate.
“It’s community wellness and economic development for Wiarton,” says Ann. She notes that tourists come visit the Deep Water and then go visit coffee shops, restaurants and stores afterwards. That’s exactly what I did. After Deep Water and Lost Art Espresso, I went exploring.
So, I encourage you to do exactly that. Head to Wiarton for a day. Stroll through Bluewater Park, grab a coffee from Lost Art, and tour the galleries along the main street. Go for a hike and have dinner in town. And maybe you’ll leave Wiarton with a new favourite artist and a fresh piece of art under your arm.
“Good things can happen in rural communities and we’re a fine example of that,” says Ann.
Joe agrees and concludes with a statement that should be regarded by all Ontario towns: “The arts are having an impact.”
Written by Jesse Wilkinson
