Around 800 people made the short trek to the farm of Abraham and Heather van der Breggen on Saturday afternoon to take in the "Art Farm" family event.
Several local and area artists took part in the event, including painters, sculptors, craftspeople and potters, with live music provided throughout the afternoon, and food booths provided by the Humane Society and Weyburn Group Homes.
"It was a pretty fabulously-attended event. Everybody was thrilled and it went well, even though it was windy. We ended up using about 15 acres (of pasture) for parking," said hostess and organizer Heather van der Breggen, adding they had their horses in a corral to help enable parking in their pastureland, and many children took the opportunity to visit the horses.
The feedback from the artists was very positive as well, she said.
"Some are just starting their own business, and they all said they got lots of exposure," she said, adding she had a helper to go around and ask all of them individually how the show was for them.
"You can have an event where you have a ton of people and they all have fun, but was it successful from the artists' point of view? Overwhelmingly everybody was just thrilled, and are in for next year and doing it bigger and better," said van der Breggen, adding they will definitely be doing this again next year, and hope to add in more artists.
Even for this show they had to cap the number they were taking in because they weren't sure at first how well the event would go over, being held out at the farm rather in the city. There were artists calling from as far away as Saskatoon wanting to be a part of it, but organizers wanted to make sure they had room for the artists who had signed up; next year, it should be a bigger and better show.
"I'm so interested in exposing people who wouldn't normally go to a gallery to see art, and give them the opportunity to purchase works of art. There was also networking between artists, as there were artists here that had never met each other before," she said.
One example was meeting with Jaren Bell, who does art work in metal, and as they liked each other's art work, they decided to make a trade.
Some of the artists were young, such as Tylan Charlton, who sold a few pieces of her art, and Tensie Iida, who does Japanese animation and sold some examples of his work.
"It was good to expose these kids to the art world and let them know, you can make a business out of it," said van der Breggen.
She noted the idea first came to her as she and her husband enjoyed their cabin out at White Bear Lake, and took in a similar sort of art show at the Red Barn, and Heather said to her husband they could consider doing a show at their farm, as it's in a good location close to the city with lots of open space.
