GALION – Artistic types have a new space to create in Galion thanks to an alumnus who returned to her hometown.
Meg Frazier, a 2000 graduate from Galion High School, opened her new gallery Contemporary Artspace earlier this year. The 2,400 square foot space, housed in the Lincoln Professional Building, is a windowless vault filled to the brim with creative opportunity.
Opening a creative space in her hometown was always a goal of Frazier’s, even as she left Galion after graduation and pursued a BA in education at Defiance College. From there, she spent eight years working with Chicago charter schools teaching art education and professional development.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I got to college, but I got into education and fell in love with that,” Frazier recalled. “The art thing was always just on the side; my high school art teacher was a huge influence and I was in the art room all through high school. It was just always second behind the education.”
When the education profession went through a slump, Frazier started offering private art lessons with students in her own personal studio space. From there, her interest in art matured into the opening of her first gallery.
“I became really engulfed in the arts because I would go to other artists’ studios,” she said. “Five years ago is when I started to get curious, seeing people as living, working artists.”
Frazier’s first space, Both Sides Gallery in the Chicago Arts District, hosted community events around local artists and taught creative classes to Chicago residents. After two years, she moved to her next venture in the West Loop of Chicago, Frazier Studios, which worked even more in-depth with local artist development and representation as well as larger scale creative community events.
Now, almost a decade later, Frazier is back in Galion with Contemporary Artspace hoping to share what she has learned from showcasing her work in major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, but with the warmth and intimacy of a hometown community.
For Frazier, the decision to return to her home has always been in the back of her mind, particularly with the intent of nurturing the creative spirit in school-age children.
“For me, growing up there were opportunities to fall through the cracks if it wasn’t for athletics and arts,” she said. “There really isn’t a space, especially in Crawford County, that is hosting what we’re doing here. It’s just something I wish would’ve been here when I was growing up, and something that needs to exist in order for students and adults to find something positive to get into if their thing isn’t what’s already being offered.”
Frazier offers workshops for students in grades K-6 that walk through seven stations of creativity. The first station, called “freehand,” explores the free-spirited and childlike playfulness of art. The second station creates structure within that chaos, teaching students to balance their time and energy as well as properly store their art supplies.
“Then we teach them about creating their own space or carving their own little space in their world where they feel safe to go alone and explore what they’re feeling and make something out of that creatively,” Frazier said.
The fourth station is collaboration, where students learn how to work with others in a group setting. They also have show-and-tell where students learn how to explain what they made, how they made it, and answer questions about their work.
“Then we teach them how to hang it on the wall, how to pick their best pieces for show, and the entrepreneurial side of selling it,” Frazier said. “With our economy changing and a lot of the new generation being more entrepreneurial, this gives the opportunity for a child to have an idea of art before they even get to the stage of being 18 and wondering what they’re doing with their life.”
Even if her students don’t go on to become professional artists, the skills they learn at Contemporary Artspace are invaluable.
“The creative part is the divergent thinking they learn in here, the way they learn to work together and also think on their own,” Frazier said. “They might not become an artist , but those are all skills they can transfer into whatever they decide to be.
“My hope is everybody finds some type of creative outlet no matter what age they are, and this is my system of teaching it in a creative way so they can at least be empathetic and understand artists, and learn to support arts and culture in their communities.”
So far, the Galion community has responded positively to such creative education. Frazier hopes her message continues to grow, as Contemporary Artspace is here for the long haul.
“We’ll be here as long as I’m around,” she said. “My hope is to keep growing wherever the community takes it. Their voice will tell us what we need to do with the space and what they want, and we’ll adjust.”
