Hello, all! I am so excited to be writing the inaugural post for The Collective Blog! The goal of Collective Arts is to build a diverse community of artists, creatives, and makers. This blog is meant to keep encouraging the voices of our community to share their stories, experiences, and creative practices. We hope to be able to keep connecting and growing our community through story sharing. As the weeks move forward we will be sharing our experiences and calling on other artists to do the same.
Along with Katie Bril, I am one of the founders of Collective Arts, Maddy Carlson. Katie and I met in Milwaukee, WI. We went to the same college together, but overlapped while working and became fast friends. While at one of Milwaukee’s many summer festivals, we ended up talking about feeling stuck in different ways and thinking about the dreams we have for ourselves. I told Katie about how when I was kid I wanted to teach art during the school year and have an art studio in my garage to teach in during the summer (not sure if that is the most practical but y'know..!). From there we exploded with conversation. Her dreams were so inline with mine and of course our ideas had developed as adults but the core was there: a space to create, learn, and connect through art. Katie started writing down what our art space would look like, what our business would be, what kind of scissors we'd buy, and of course the need for a studio cat! Right there in her sketchbook was our dream.
We are creating and building Collective Arts to be a space for all, an art center that focuses on the community, lifting each other up, and learning through one another. So, as we grow that will always be our mission and through projects like the Collective Blog we want to encourage you to share your stories with us. We want to learn about each of you and show how diverse and wonderful our creative community is. I hope that by hearing from many different artists on the blog we can encourage more exploration of what is and how to make art, as well as grow with each other.
I cannot wait to hear your stories!
Maddy
