Made in Haliburton

Don and Marie Gage

MadeInHaliburton.ca is a unique, regional Canadian online art gallery utilized for promoting the work of artists who live and or cottage in the Haliburton Highlands, Ontario, Canada.

The Haliburton Highlands is the home of over 300 artists who live and work in their remote studios speckled across the region. Art is a major industry in this region of lakes, rocks and hills and as such the community promotes itself as “A Natural Work of Art”. Over 40 years ago a group of creative citizens of the region envisioned the development of a community of the arts and this group has inspired the creation of a number of artistic enterprises such as the Haliburton School of the Arts, which is a program of Fleming College. The school became so large that it outgrew its accommodation and a brand new building, and regional campus of Fleming College, came to fruition.

The Haliburton Studio Tour just celebrated its 25th year and has become a very successful vehicle for promoting the work of full-time artists living In the region.  There is also a one-of-a-kind (at least in Canada) Sculpture Forest where you can commune with nature and encounter a variety of sculptures around each turn in the trail.

The Haliburton Highlands is also a recreational community that attracts vacationers from the Greater Toronto Region. While there are many activities that attract people year round the predominant season for visits is the summer. This results in the economy fluctuating significantly throughout the year, with most sales happening in the summer and at the time of the fall studio tour.

Don & Marie Gage, art appreciators living in the community, recognized that the next natural step in development of resources for the artistic community was the creation of a website to take the artistic creations to an international market on a 365 day a year basis.

The Arts Council~Haliburton Highlands was able to secure a grant from the Cultural Strategic Initiative Fund (CSIF) of the Ontario Government to offset the capital cost of creating the website and some initial marketing costs. A partnership was formed between The Arts Council~Haliburton Highlands and the Gages.

This partnership spawned the juried website www.MadeInHaliburton.ca  in the spring of 2012. At the time of launch of the website there were 30 artists who had signed on to sell their creative products. This number has grown to 52 at the time of writing of this document and numbers continue to expand.

Made In Haliburton.ca supports artists working in three categories: visual arts, performing arts, and literary arts. Hence, there is a broad selection of 100% Canadian Art available through this online art gallery.

Anyone looking for a unique, Canadian-made gift or personal artistic acquisition can browse the website by the categories of Art for the Wall, Art for the Table, Art for the Floor, Art for the Body and Art for the Senses or simply utilize the search function on any page to help them locate an item of interest.

Article by Marie Gage

To visit the Made in Haliburton website, please click here.