Freshly minted art
Visually impaired Kitchener artist wins opportunity to design coins honouring the CNIB
KITCHENER — Maybe this is the summer brown-eyed Meghan Sims, nearsighted and colour-blind from birth, finally plays a round of golf with her dad.
“I never have,” said the 37-year-old visual artist from Waterloo.
“I’ve carried his bag. I’m really good at that.”
Her father Brad has a fine touch around the greens. He’s a golf pro at Rebel Creek in Petersburg and coaches the University of Waterloo’s links team. Together, they finetune her fairways form.
“He’s been working on my swing for years,” Sims said on Tuesday, after working as a personal trainer in the morning before secluding herself in her downtown Kitchener studio in the afternoon.
“I just have to be more consistent with it.” Sims, with red-tinted glasses protecting her light-sensitive eyes, is inspired to hit each green, lining up long putts with her father’s eagle vision. They’ve talked about playing 18 holes together for the first time.
Greens call her. Green speaks to her.
It is the colour of the emerald iris on a commemorative silver coin and bronze medallion set she designed for the Royal Canadian Mint. The set honours 100 years of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
Both discs include the number “100” engraved in braille.
“Green is actually my favourite shade of grey,” explained Sims, whose rare visual condition is called achromatopsia.
“Green is said to be the most calming and restful colour to the eye because of how it reflects light. It also represents growth and prosperity and hope.”
That’s why she chose green to oversee seven jack pines, growing defiantly on harsh, rocky shores.
“I wanted that to represent the deaf-blind community in the face of adversity,” said Sims, noting that they also represent the seven founding members of the CNIB. “We stand strong and proud.”
Sims can be proud too. Her Canadian coin set is the first one designed by a visually impaired artist. She started with ink and a crow’s feather quill while listening to some tunes by The Be Good Tanyas and Taken By Trees to set the creative mood. She had a month to submit her sketches after being asked by the Mint to take a run at the concept.
Three artists submitted. She was chosen. Naturally, it’s a paying gig.
Now, when she holds the coins close, she sees her grandmother Marie’s face. Marie, who used to collect such coins and gift them to her grandkids for Christmas, is gone. But the coins carry her sparkle.
“It’s funny, giving coins as gifts was so characteristic of her,” Sims said. “I suppose I took it for granted. I could have never imagined that my grandmother gifting coins all those years ago would have such sentimental significance to me today.”
Grandma’s coins are stacked and wrapped in her creative soul.
So are all the kinesiology and health papers her dad, once head of high school phys-ed at Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute and Southwood Secondary School in Cambridge, had her help mark when she was in Grade 7 or 8.
She gets her active and athletic streak from her father.
“It’s so nice to have that balance to art,” she said. “Having the physical and being out in the community and socializing, rather than being secluded in my studio all of the time. That’s a nice balance.”
Her unique vision — she paints with colours but doesn’t know colours — drives her art and life too. Imagine if the world always looked like a black-and-white episode of “The Honeymooners” or a midnight showing of “Casablanca.” That’s her niftyshades-of-grey reality.
“I can watch a black-and-white movie like Casablanca and see a car — or a jacket or somebody’s hat — and be able to say that’s probably a red car,” she said. “To me, that looks red. That would be the certain amount of light that would be red.”
But her limited vision is a source of constant frustration.
“There’s been many times in my life, sometimes daily, that I wish that I didn’t have the struggle that I have. It’d be easier. I could do more.”
And if gene therapy can one day set her vision to normal, would she make that leap into a 20-20, Technicolor world? The possibility scares her.
“I’ve lived my whole life with this. This is all I know,” she said. “So there’s a sense of fear there. What will that mean? All these things that I’ve wanted to do. Am I going to be any good at them? Will I, all of a sudden, have no voice artistically?”
But being able to drive a car and play a round of golf with her dad, where the greens truly look green, would be too much to turn down, right?
“I would have to say yes,” she said.
“The idea of being able to paint in full colour — with the knowledge of colour behind it — and drive and play team sports and stuff like that. Life is short. Why not experience what you can.”