Madison Arts Incubator: Building a Home for Madison’s Arts Community
Erin Zwaska

The frame is there—boarded up and shut off from the outside world, but it’s there. The bricks are piled dutifully, arranged in neat walls, waiting patiently for something worth enclosing, worth protecting.

The shuttered windows of the Garver Feed Mill let in no light, and the rooms inside are dark. But soon they could produce their own light, radiant with creative activity. Soon they could nurture local artists and foster the exchange of aesthetic ideas—a welcome change for a building that has lay silent for more than 10 years. The Garver Feed Mill is in need of a community, and community is what the Madison Arts Incubator is all about.

“For 25 years, we’ve been wanting to see an arts incubator come to Madison,” said Anne Katz of Arts Wisconsin. Fine arts incubators have cropped up in several U.S. cities, including Beloit, Wisconsin, offering artists low-rent studio and gallery space, as well as art-related business guidance. In the last few years, interest in an arts incubator in Madison has solidified, and it now seems increasingly likely that the incubator idea will hatch.

Awaiting a Renaissance
While the building currently lies dormant, many hope the Garver Feed Mill will soon become home to a Madison arts incubator. The Common Wealth Development, which owns and operates two small-business incubators in Madison, as well as a few dozen low-to-moderate rent apartments, is spearheading the project.

Sarah Hole, the Common Wealth Development’s Madison Arts Incubator project manager, believes the Garver Feed Mill is an ideal spot for an arts incubator. “Madison is unlike most other urban areas in that there are very few old factory buildings like the Garver building available,” explained Hole. “Also, the Garver site provides a lot of potential for the incubator to coordinate with the nearby Olbrich Gardens. The incubator’s close proximity to the gardens could help transform the entire area into a Madison destination spot.”

In addition to an appealing location, the Garver Feed Mill also boasts a rich history, making it the ideal spot for an arts incubator. Built just a few decades into the Industrial Revolution, it was owned and operated by the United States Sugar Beet Company from 1906 to 1924. When the sugar beet business took a dive in the 1920s, the building was sold in 1929 to James Russell Garver. After spending untold money renovating the building into a granary and feed mill, he ran the mill himself until his death in 1973. Ultimately, the building was sold to Olbrich Botanical Gardens in 1997, which quickly deeded the property to the city. Since 1997, it has sat vacant, waiting for an idea, a plan to come to fruition.

And if it does, history may repeat itself. More than 70 years ago, James Russell Garver used the building to feed livestock. Now, the Common Wealth hopes to convert the old mill into one that feeds artistic appetite.

Providing Structure
Right now, the Garver Feed Mills’s connection to the arts is limited to the graffiti that decorates its exterior, but the buzz about the possibility of an arts incubator has Madison artists thrilled. Creating a low-cost home base for start-up artists would provide the much needed foundation to spur growth in the arts community.

And encouraging growth in the arts is essential—it keeps the community vital, says Chele Isaac, a student in her last year of the masters of fine arts program at UW-Madison. According to Isaac, Madison’s arts community gets a little stale because new artists generally can’t make it here.

The city lacks a support structure that could help fledgling artists get off the ground. “After you leave the university,” explains Isham, “it’s really hard to find places to hang your work.” Isaac, too, can attest to the city’s limitations. “There is a Common Wealth gallery and campus galleries, but that’s about it.”

And while Madison artist Lee Weiss has garnered enough local interest to support herself through the selling of her art, she is well aware of the competitiveness in the art field. While Weiss displays her large-scale, nature-themed watercolor paintings in the Fanny Garver Gallery, she understands that Madison is home to only a limited number of art buyers, making it difficult for most artists to find places to display their work.

“We work so hard to hold on to people getting PhDs and professionals in other fields, but in art, our people with master’s degrees leave town, and nobody seems to notice,” Isaac said. Perhaps the inclusion of an arts incubator will warm Madison-grown artists to the idea of staying in the city.

While Madison is a small city in terms of its physical size, its intellectual power differentiates it from other comparably-sized cities, Isaac explains. Madison residents are highly educated, interested in the arts and interested in culture, which makes Madison a perfect location for an incubator.

Raising Madison’s Fledgling Artists
Since the incubator would be a public facility, artists at the Madison Arts Incubator would enjoy an audience of residents coming to watch them work—satisfying starving artists’ hunger for greater interaction with the public, increased exposure to their work and amplified sales.

The incubator would likely have two types of studios: type I, which will be geared toward painters and creators of two-dimensional art; and type II, which will be designed to accommodate three-dimensional artists in disciplines like glass blowing, ceramics and sculpture.

In addition to medium-sensitive workspace, the Madison Arts Incubator would also provide its resident artists with an arts-focused environment. Hole explained that the incubator would provide business assistance tailored to the needs of artists, including accountants, art tax and marketing experts. Resident artists would be able to display their work at building shows in the incubator gallery, while also being taught how to get their work displayed in local galleries.

Creating Community
In the fields surrounding the Garver Feed Mill, a community of wildflowers cross-pollinate to paint the site a diverse mix of yellow, purple and green. Similarly, the fertile landscape within the incubator’s walls would offer ample opportunity for cross-pollination between marketing experts, local businesses, community members and artists, allowing them to share knowledge and ideas for mutual enrichment.

For example, the incubator would include a gift shop, and resident artists could choose to form a cooperative, running the shop themselves as a means of supplemental income. A workshop room would also be provided in which artists could teach a wide variety of art classes to the public. These classes would be another point of contact between the artists and the surrounding neighborhood.

Under the influence of the arts incubator, the Garver Feed Mill would literally bring the neighboring community to life. Madison residents could stroll through the flower-lined paths of the Olbrich Gardens to the incubator, where they could find a seat under the shade of Madison flora and have a drink at the incubator’s indoor-outdoor café. A chef’s garden would supply garnishes, seasonings and produce as a testament to the symbiotic relationship between the incubator and the community around it.

The proposed arts incubator would also connect with lesser-known segments of Madison’s arts community. Hole plans to establish a relationship with ArtWorking, a program that, according to its founder, provides an opportunity for adults with cognitive disabilities to pursue a career in visual arts. Lance Owens, founder and coordinator of ArtWorking, explains that the program provides mentoring from experienced art professionals, while also offering access to business resources.

“I had access to an art education, but if you have a cognitive disability, career paths are very limited,” explained Owens. “There is not a lot of vocational training available for individuals with cognitive disabilities besides in the food services industry, and the ArtWorking program parallels an undergrad or graduate degree in art, taking into account necessary adaptations.”

Owen hopes that ArtWorking’s relationship with the Madison Arts Incubator will be mutually beneficial. ArtWorking is interested in occupying some space in the incubator, using the building and the incubator’s other services for the people they support. One idea is to open a silk screen facility within the incubator, allowing other artists in the incubator to use the facility in exchange for their mentorship of ArtWorking artists.

Coming To Life
While the Garver Feed Mill currently lies lifeless, eventually, Hole explained, the Madison Arts Incubator would be as self-sustaining as the wildflowers outside its walls. Initially, though, the Common Wealth Development would require a mixture of funding for the project, including historic tax credits, new market tax credits, national, state and local grants and Wisconsin Focus on Energy grants. The group’s leaders also anticipate deferring the development fee and planning a private fundraising campaign.

Located just an hour south of Madison, the Beloit Fine Arts Incubator is much smaller than the proposed Madison incubator, but nevertheless demonstrates that an arts incubator business model can be successful in Wisconsin. In addition to housing five artists, the Beloit Fine Arts Incubator offers community classes in everything from portraiture to photography and hosts First Fridays, which feature a show opening every first Friday of the month.

Dean Folt, graphic artist and president of the board of directors of the Beloit Fine Arts Incubator, believes that the arts incubator has been a powerful tool in marketing the Beloit community as an arts community.

An arts incubator in Madison would likely have a similar effect. “I think an art incubator will create a fiscal focal point for Madison’s working artists,” said Hole. “And it will help Madison retain local artistic talent.”

For now, the arts incubator is in the early stages of development. But with proper guidance from its leaders and support from the community, the incubator could become a reality, adding an exciting blend of art and business to a now tired, but formidable structure. And while the Madison arts community has a strong foundation, support is needed to help pull all the pieces together—to turn the Madison Arts Incubator into the successful venture everyone hopes it will become.

To learn how you can help, call Sarah Hole at (608) 256-3527 or visit http://www.cwd.org/.