LOCAL MAKERS AND CREATORS - The Business Of Creativity.
KINGSTON – Kingston’s upper Broadway has become more pedestrian-friendly recently, with street and curb improvements and a new Linear Park. What has followed is more visibility to restaurants of many tastes, as well as the growing community of artists and craftspeople, referred as Makers and Creators.
The Maker and Creator community, generally speaking, are ambitious and independent people who bring a personal touch to their work. They also help strengthen their community made up of others like themselves. Makers and Creators are “anyone engaged in creating product, whether physical or digital, which has lasting value,” said Tim Weidemann, director of Economic Development for Ulster County. “In all corners of our county, they are making virtual, digital and physical products. It’s something that can grow high quality jobs in the future.”
Independent cabinetmakers have shops in Kingston and elsewhere in the county, and they have a market in New York City, along with the local family farmers who sell their produce there. The Big Apple market and proximity to Ulster is appealing to many mediums including film, digital arts, photography or music. And Ulster County offers the quiet sanctity sought by writers and painters. And the tourists come to see the work of the artists and craftspeople, benefiting the local economy from New York City visitors and elsewhere.
Maker and Creator work is their own, and it can be enhanced and inspired by others like them. And it’s the imagination and a sense of entrepreneurship that can bring a living and success to the Maker and Creator. “There are low barriers to entry,” said Weidemann.“We know it can sustain a livelihood and family. If they can put in the sweat equity, they can grow their own personal wealth.”
About a block off Broadway on Downs Street is Lite Brite Neon, owned and founded in 1999 by Matt Dilling. Dilling, a Ohio native, stumbled into neon lighting and design after working as a Maker of art from trash. Now his company employs about a dozen people in its two studios in Brooklyn and Kingston. “It’s a much better place energetically and more holistically, the ecology of the economics here as compared to New York City,” said Dilling, when asked about the balance of business and relationships in Kingston with other Makers.
Farmers grow their crops here, and regional distillers use some of those to make their spirits. And the same can be said about locally sourced wood products to help cabinetmakers. “Part of what makes that work is the full value chain,” said Wiedemann.
And that extends to human working relationships that rely on different individual talents to compose a piece, whether it’s filmmaking, music or even bookmaking. “People gravitate toward people who are like them,” said Weidemann.
When you arrive at 34 O’Neil Street, a few blocks off Broadway in Kingston, looking for Jen Edwards’ Unfettered Arts Gallery, you are greeted with a selection of used cars in a front parking lot. Yet there is no sign alerting a visitor this is their destination. But if you poke your head inside seeking that destination, you may find Edwards and other artists inside a 1,200-sq. ft. partitioned garage, which serves as a full workshop for ceramics that includes kilns for pottery, jewelry, a test kiln for other projects, a 3-D printer, tools for woodworking and stained glass, tables and cabinets of paint. Artists can join Unfettered Arts or pay for studio time as Edwards heads toward COOP status and as a non-profit organization to help artists and contribute to the community.
“Right now we are doing it by membership and studio time,” said Edwards, a Kingston resident, who grew up in Orange County’s Tuxedo Park. “The whole thing is to have people come here, use the space, get access to the tools they need to make stuff, learn how to do stuff they are interested in and be able to learn and market the stuff if they want to do that. It’s not a requirement. Mentoring is also an option.”
Edwards, and five other studio artists, who sell their work, opened the gallery over the Memorial Day weekend and invited more artists to join them in a vendor fair, which opened their doors to the community. “We just introduced people to the space, and we have slowly been getting involved with many different things since then,” she said. “I got the idea because I love art. That does amazing things for the person who does it, the people surrounding that person and the community that’s in connection with that. I felt it, and it just spreads outward.” That means the local community. Currently, Edwards is working on an idea to have a Halloween fashion program for My Kingston Kids, a local non-profit for neighborhood children. “Come in, build your costume here,” said Edwards. “That’s my donation just because it’s going to be fun. It’s just a number of different things to engage people surrounding that idea.”
Ulster Strong Article written by Bond Brungard