Virtual Pop Up Was A Great Success!
/
The Virtual Pop Up Sale and unveiling of the ArtWorking Online Shop was a great success!
THANK YOU to everyone who supported us and found beautiful new artwork and gifts!
Virtual Pop Up Shop Is Coming Soon!
/
Join us in the unveiling of ArtWorking’s online shop this weekend!
An online shop has been years in the making, and we couldn’t be happier to finally unveil it. We’re pleased to be able to offer original art, handmade gifts, and art inspired products by every artist ArtWorking represents.
Dozens of items will drop this weekend, November 14 + 15, and we’ll continue to add to the shop as we continue to make and create throughout the season.
• Shipping available! Packages ship out every Friday.
• Curbside Pickup is available at the studio. Every Friday from 10-2pm.
• An additional Curbside Pickup day has been added on Nov 21, 10-2pm, for Pop Up orders.
Support local art and artists this season by finding your holidays gifts at the ArtWorking online shop!
ArtWorking is Proud Grant Recipient of the Cultural Organization Grant Program!
/
Governor Tony Evers announced that $15 million in COVID-19 Cultural Organization Grants has been awarded to 385 cultural organizations across Wisconsin. ArtWorking is pleased to announce that we are a recipient!
“Just like small businesses, cultural organizations have taken a major financial hit,” said DOA Secretary Joel Brennan. “We’re all in this together. We hope that these funds will make it possible for us to be able to enjoy the museums, theaters, and music from these organizations once it is safe to do so again.”
Administered by the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA), the COVID-19 Cultural Organizations Grant program provides grants to nonprofit organizations whose primary missions are to produce, present, or exhibit cultural disciplines such as music, dance, theater, literature, and the visual arts, or items of environmental or scientific interest. Grant awards can be used to cover pandemic-related impacts such as lost revenue, increased workers compensation costs, cleaning and sanitization, and purchases of services or equipment to facilitate telework by employees.
Thank you Governor Evers and DOA Secretary Joel Brennan for this award!
More information regarding the COVID-19 Cultural Organization Grant Program is available HERE. A full list of grant winners is available HERE.
Celebrating 8 Weeks Back at the Studio!
/We’ve been back at the studio for 8 weeks now, with limited capacity and safety measures well in place.
Thankful to find safe ways to continue our work together. We remain closed to the public, but open to resident artists. Cheers to finding creative ways forward!
Pictured Above: Chloe Hougan, Romano Johnson, Briana Richardson and Cara Swedeen.
ArtWorking Statement in Support of Black Lives Matter
/Dear supporters, stakeholders, and colleagues,
We would like to take a moment to declare our solidarity and support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony Robinson, and countless other black lives that have been lost as a result of violence against the black community. We appreciate and support the efforts of Urban Triage, Freedom Inc, Free the 350 Bail Fund, and the other individuals and organizations doing the important work of addressing the legacy of systemized racism and oppression within our society.
The disability rights movement is a direct beneficiary of the ongoing work that has been done by the black and African American communities around civil rights, equity and social justice. ArtWorking values this important work, and acknowledges the impossibility of realizing full inclusion and equity for people with disabilities, without simultaneously addressing and correcting the disparities and injustices that persist for people of color. These disparities are especially grave within our local communities and there is much work to be done.
At this point the ArtWorking team would like to state our commitment to doing the work to address systemic and structural racism is whatever forms it takes. We are far from perfect and have a great deal to learn. We are committed to learning about antiracism and social justice work, to listening to and learning from black voices and leaders, and to taking cues from the black community about what actions we can take that are necessary and useful to continue working toward equality.
We strongly believe that we cannot in good faith advocate for the rights and freedoms of people with disabilities without addressing the racial inequalities that exist in our community. We simply cannot fulfill our mission in isolation from these issues.
Sincerely,
Lance Owens
Director of ArtWorking
Conduit: ArtWorking reckons with the pandemic
/ArtWorking is proud to have been a voice on Conduit, a livestream collaboration between Tone Madison, Communication, and UnderBelly.
Thanks for the conversation!
Photo: ArtWorking artists Romano Johnson, left, and Brianna Richardson. Photo by Lance Owens.
Below is an except from Scott Gordon’s article, published on Tone Madison, 13 April 2020.
Access the full article and audio here.
Conduit: ArtWorking reckons with the pandemic
ART, BUSINESS, CONDUIT, PODCAST, INTERVIEW, LISTEN
A conversation about the Madison non-profit's efforts to support artists with disabilities.
Madison non-profit ArtWorking plays a unique role in Madison's arts landscape, not only showcasing artists with disabilities but also helping those artists sell their work and build up small businesses. ArtWorking's 6,000-square-foot facility on South Stoughton Road encompasses studios with equipment for printmaking, ceramics, and woodworking, plus a retail storefront. All of that has been closed down since March 11, creating new challenges for the organization and the dozens of artists it supports.
ArtWorking Program Director Lance Owens and Assistant Director Laura Falkenberg joined us on the April 9 edition of Conduit, a livestream collaboration between Tone Madison, Communication, and UnderBelly. They talked about the organization's underlying philosophy and how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted their efforts. All of ArtWorking's staff has been temporarily laid off or furloughed to help preserve the funds the organization brings in from private sources and Medicaid. They're still working on supporting the artists when and how they can, and hope to have an online store set up soon.
The decision to close ArtWorking's physical space was particularly urgent because the organization supports so many people with underlying health conditions and compromised immune systems. By the same token, the kind of work ArtWorking does is at times impossible to do remotely. "Some people also have barriers to technology that are harder to overcome at this time," Falkenberg says. "They might not have a laptop or a phone or the ability to do this, or they may also be non-verbal... so much of what we do, we do subtly in a physical space together, and so that's really compromised by trying to ad hoc it in this way, though it's great to hear from people and great to see them when we can."
The emotional impact was obvious during our conversation. "I miss these people," Owens says.
Commissions and opportunities for ArtWorking's artists to sell their work have largely dried up over the past month, and some can't do their work without access to specific equipment and materials. But this also points to a strength of ArtWorking's philosophy—letting artists find their own way of doing things, and encouraging them to communicate about what they want and disagree with staff suggestions if it feels right.
"We do a lot of talking to each other and a lot of research on how to uphold the artist's vision first and foremost, before my vision or anyone's vision or the trend of the time," Falkenberg says.
AW COVID-19 UPDATE: March 20, 2020
/
Hello all, we would like to give an update on what has been happening with us over the last few weeks. It’s hard to think that it’s coming up on a week since we closed the studio. When things started to really hit with the COVID-19, we knew that we needed to act as fast as possible. Many of the artists we support have underlying health issues that can put them at greater risk of dangerous complications if they get sick. We also realized that we needed to help protect our staff and the community by following the most conservative protocols possible. On Wednesday, March 11th, we decided to close the studio to all outsiders, and by the weekend, we had closed the studio altogether. As a staff team, we are currently self-isolating to try to help control the spread of the infection and to help flatten the curve. That said, it’s having a pretty huge impact on us. Like everyone else, when our doors close, our income stops just as suddenly. As a result, our limited reserves for paying staff salaries and health insurance are dwindling rapidly, and most importantly our ability to work with the artists is completely compromised.
But just because we are closed, doesn’t mean we haven’t been working overtime. As a team, we have been burning the midnight oil to reformulate how we operate. We know that this thing isn’t going to go away overnight, so we have to act quickly to adapt to the new reality. To that end, we are developing new strategies around how we safely deliver services to the artists we support. We are also developing new ways to interact with the public when we can’t be face to face. In the coming weeks and months, we will stock the online store and open it to the public. You can also expect to see and hear a lot more from us online, as we develop ways to work with the artists and share community resources digitally. Lastly, we expect that we’ll have more opportunities for volunteers to participate, interact, and contribute remotely.
I won’t pretend that we aren’t scared. As a community, we all have a lot at stake right now, and we all have everything to lose. We need each other now more than ever. The AW artists need their community, and the community needs them in return. We are looking forward to getting to know all of you a lot better, as we work our way through this.
Adversity brings change.
Change brings growth.
Growth brings wholeness.
Wholeness brings joy.
-Lance-
The Cap Times: "With a 3D printer, he’s building their artistic potential and quality of life"→
/
Jeanne Grosse with the custom built catapult John Lash made for her.
Great article in The Cap Times about the adaptive technologies that John Lash is building. Resident Artist Jeanne Grosse is featured, as she has commissioned John for two adaptive devices to aid in her art making.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Let’s say you use a wheelchair and have limited use of only one hand and you want to be a professional painter. That was the dream of Jeanne Grosse. She'd been using a rudimentary catapult to fling paint and was receiving career development help through Madison nonprofit ArtWorking, which assists artists and entrepreneurs with disabilities.
“In her mind, in her creative persona, she [had] the ability and potential,” said ArtWorking Program Director Lance Owens. “She knows color super, super well” and “has a really, really clarified and distilled vision of what she wants to do and be." But without a better tool, her artistic potential was limited, he said.
Enter John Lash.
Someone at ArtWorking knew Lash, who at the time was building kinetic metal sculptures, and they asked if he could design something more sophisticated. Lash agreed, and Grosse hired him with help from the Wisconsin Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, which allots funds to help people with disabilities enter the workforce or start businesses.
Owens was immediately surprised by Lash’s approach. It began with interviews in which Grosse, who has limited speaking ability, used her letter board to answer Lash’s questions: “What do you want it to do? What can your current catapult not do that you would wish this thing could do? What do you like about the current catapult?” He also asked her support staff for input.
“It was a really exhaustive process, but it was really super person-centered,” Owens said. “He innately understood ... how the object isn't as important as understanding the mind of the person using it.”
Lash returned to Grosse with a metal catapult that let her choose how many cups of paint to attach as well as the force and angle with which to fling the paint.
But he wasn’t done. He asked Grosse to test the catapult and give him feedback so he could make adjustments. Then he left it with her for months, checking back and tweaking it again and again. “He did such incredible diligence with it,” Owens recalled.
With the new device, Grosse became one of ArtWorking’s most lucrative artists. Her vibrant painted clocks and spattered canvases sell “like hotcakes,” sometimes faster than she can replenish the supply, Owens said.
Thank you, Cap Times!
Happy New Year!
/
Coming into the New Year with a smile on our faces, new paintings underway, and new events and exhibitions to look forward to. Check out our upcoming events to plan a time to come say hi. We’d love to see you!
Thank you. We couldn't have done it without you.
/This year's Holiday Pop-Up Shop was a resounding success, our best yet! And we simply could not have done it without you. From the numerous volunteers to the artists’ families to the community that purchased artwork, we thank you. Your support for the Artworking community continues to amaze and inspire us. We are grateful.
Did you miss the Pop-Up? Stop by the Artworking Shop for Small Business Saturday on Nov. 30 from 11am-3pm.
ArtWorking will hold extended shopping hours throughout the month of December. (open regularly M-F from 9am-4pm) Throughout the month of December Friday hours will run from 9am-8pm, with additional Saturday hours from 11am-3pm.
