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Jackson and Munson Studio Gallery opens in the Melville White Church

October 22, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

New to the old Melville White Church is the Jackson and Munson Studio Gallery, located at 15962 Mississauga Road, just south of Belfountain. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, they staged their “soft opening” with their themed show “Country Roads.” Now, they invite the larger community to join them in their first free Plein Air culture event on Oct. 22 and 23.

Artist, E. Connie Munson loves the hills of Dufferin. While she resides in town, “my heart is in [the country],” she declares. “Watching the clouds, enjoying the countryside.”

She discovered the Melville White Church by driving around Caledon, a discovery that answered many problems in her life.

“I’m constantly on the road shuffling pieces in and out of shows and people asking me where they can see my work. So, I needed a studio and it’s nice to be around other creatives,” said Ms. Munson.
She does pastel paintings, acrylic and photography. Ms. Munson started showing in 2018, after a mix of careers that mainly centred on working with young people and their families as a social worker and, eventually, teaching in high schools in Peel, social studies, family relationships, dealing with the many and hard complications that can be part of any young person’s life.

However, she may look on herself as retired from that career, this is a person still eager and keen to be involved and it is the creative world that has captivated her, as an artist herself and an organizer of arts events.

For Ms. Munson, the determined camaraderie of the many arts communities all around, in her range of south and west of Toronto, has deeply impressed her and she has become a member of several organizations.

“The arts groups all around are very active,” she commented.

The Melville White Church had a sign up, offering its lovely space for hire as a short-term platform for an arts business.

“It was the perfect solution for what I needed as a studio,” Ms. Munson enthused. “People were asking to see my other work but I wasn’t interested in having people to my home – so, this was just the right answer.”

She explained, “I had my name on the list for a temporary studio gallery; to have our work on the walls and work there as a studio and have three different artists hanging their work.”

She and Kayla sealed a deal with Sarah Bohan, who manages the Melville White Church: “We got the date to get our event for Culture Days set up – it’s free for all the artists.”

Accepting the limitations of her tenancy, she said, “It will be a venue for occasions again, for weddings and concerts but we’re there for the short time. Kayla Jackson and I are doing this together; there’s a couple of generations between us but she’s very talented and she also has the mind set for improving and building websites.”

During her involvement with Headwaters Arts as media manager and a member of the organization (from which she has taken a leave of absence for medical reasons), she met Kayla Jackson, a talented young artist, with whom she formed a partnership. Together, they established the Jackson and Munson Studio Gallery in the Melville White Church.

There, they are pleased to invite artists to hire space for full time exhibit; to join them in their staged and themed gallery exhibitions. The invitation is extended to artists of every medium, artisans bringing their original works. There are a number of options for exhibiting and selling art at the Jackson and Munson Studio Gallery.

“We’ve offered space on our walls for other offices, consignees and different levels; we only take handling fees or nothing if they are there for the sale of their work. We send them information about our themes for events.

“Our current show for them in the next two weeks,” Ms. Munson told the Citizen, “We have space for artists, for boutique artists and we have a visiting day for an artist. If the artist is at the studio, we take nothing. Artists having space pay for space: use it as you want. I’ve joined a lot of organizations to see how other artists make things happen in their own area.”

Well-known artists are already coming to the Melville White Church. Ari Momeni of Picsalive has come to the gallery with some of his own work; Helen Duplassie; Michael Brennan who frequently paints with his painting partner, Peter Cheung – they sit before the same site and, then, people see the results of the very different takes these two artists have. Sarah Bohan brings her fabulous bags made from the re-purposed textiles of feed bags, upholstery and drapery fabrics. Encaustic artist, Karen Brown, who has her studio at the Alton Mill Arts Centre: these and many other artists will be at the Jackson and Munson Studio Gallery over tomorrow, Oct. 22.

Their Destinations show begins Nov. 6 until mid-November and is to be followed by their Holiday Market starting on Saturday, Nov. 20.

Looking to the future of “One of the things to gather as a community, we thought of holding small workshops about writing; now starting to book readings, drawing classes and see what we can do to nab more people to see what we can do to start something good for the arts community here.”

For more information, email: jmstudiogallery@gmail.com

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