Vending Through the Details of Meadowlark Mercantile

— Serenity Clegg-Laporte, Reporter

It was inspired by refurbished cigarette vending machines by a business called “Art-A-Mat” in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Creating her own company with the help of her husband, Nicole Gagner and Scott Grandi-Hill created another Art Vending program called “Meadowlark Mercantile.”

The vending machines used for Meadowlark are a little different, using the regular soda and snack vending machines.

“I do think everybody now still has a connection to snack and soda vending machines; we’ve all used them at some point. And so I kind of use that as a jumping off point,” Gagner said. “Now [we] turn them into basically little galleries where artists can put small miniature art in but then they can pop up anywhere in the community.”

These machines are mobile and can move from place to place; the locations are shown on the website. This is one of the most exciting things for the founder as she gets to meet new people when they apply for the program in some way.

“A lot of the first artists that participated with us, let’s say about half of them, I already knew their work,” Gagner said. “But now usually [the applying artists are] brand new to me, which is really fun for me to discover new artists. Their creativity is really fun for me.”

One of the first contributors to the business is Shasta Alexander, a print maker who has her own business— Shasta Marie Designs. Her friend Judy Larson, who had a network of people across the Dakotas, had connected her to Nicole.

“We just connected from there, and then I submitted some art,” Alexander said. “I admittedly haven’t submitted as much as I would like to—but it was fun. And I think it was such a creative way to make art accessible to everyone.”

Nowadays, there are around 30 local artists who submit art to the program. With those, three of them are contributors to Art CSA Share boxes (aka Community Supported Art boxes where customers, upon paying, get a box with some of the artists’ work as well as treats sent to their address).

“I think CSA art programs are a great way to support artists and help them expand their audience reach, but I have not submitted to any before or bought from other artists,” Alexander said. “Sadly in the area where I live, these programs are slow to be adopted and implemented, so I tend to not have as many opportunities like this in my hometown.”

Even though the program is available in this town, there are quite a few students and adults who do not know much about it. One of these people is Veronica Vega, a sophmore, who had only seen the vending machine at the Mandan Public Library.

“I haven’t used [the vending machine], no. I haven’t seen anything that I really liked yet, and we don’t go there often,” Vega said. “But there was really cool stuff in there for sure.”

Meadowlark Mercantile also does art-related events. Coming up, for example, is a Market for those 21+ at Dialectic Brewing in Mandan.

“So that is not just artists from the vending machine; [it’s] open to any artists that want to participate that are over 21,” Gagner said. “The markets are really fun, because you see all of these different creative people doing their thing.”

If curious, people can find more information at the Meadowlark Mercantile website, where they can contact the owners through email, Facebook, and Instagram.

“I love meeting people that are interested and referring them back to finding more work from our artists,” Gagner said. “That’s the fun of it.”