This summer I was fortunate enough to get to spend an amazing afternoon at the Met Gallery, which was downtown London's newest artisan market.

The location, just a few stores down from the city's busiest intersection is on Dundas and Richmond Streets, was convenient to get to from anywhere in the city. Besides that, it was close to coffee shops, restaurants, the Covent Garden Market and the plethora of unique retails stores downtown has to offer.

The atmosphere was brilliant. Inside the moderately sized open-concept space were more than a dozen unique vendors, each offering something vastly different from the rest. There was a toy and gadget merchant whose products were aimed at those of the nerdier persuasion, a couple different handmade and antique jewelry creators, an absolutely one-of-a-kind clothing vendor and numerous artist vendors among many other unique stalls and booths.

The art was simply stunning. The friend that I went to The Met with bought a beautiful necklace (that I am not-so-secretly very jealous of), and I was enthralled by the geekery and handmade clothing and we both stared longingly at more than one painted canvas.

The truly sad thing for me as I sit and write this is that I am forced to use the past tense when talking about The Met. The London art community suffered a great loss on December 18 when the doors of The Met closed for the last time.

As a girl who was born and raised in London, I have a fierce pride in this city, and as a lover of the art community this feels like a double whammy to me. The Met was something incredible, something that London really hadn't seen before and certainly something that the art community was craving.

Katie Wilhelm, who cofounded The Met, spoke with me in the summer when things were looking brighter for the gallery. She told me about the gallery's opening in May 2011 and how, after three successful months of running the gallery every weekend, they had celebrated with a fashion show.

"The Met has given artists and artisans the opportunity to expose their product and their businesses to a saturated demographic in a comfortable setting with like-minded individuals," explained Wilhelm back in August. She also told me how "this opportunity has not existed in London prior to this market opening, and we really feel like this is step one in making a large and positive change for London's art community."

The lack of foot traffic had been cited as the official cause of the gallery's closure, but it seems to me that there is something more pragmatic behind it. London is an old city, a conservative city with residents who tend to err on the side of academics and politics. Although the youth in London are becoming more and more liberal all the time, it seems that every step is a struggle.

London has a flourishing art community, and yet the perfect place for them to show that talent off has been closed. It is a truly sad thing that so much local talent has lost their place to shine, although the optimist in me believes that talent like that can't stay hidden forever.

The passion that I have seen in the local artistic community gives me hope that these immensely talented young people will soon find another way to let their artistry be seen. I hope they find a way soon though, as I am sure that I am not the only one in town who sorely misses The Met.