It’s an old story. Hungry artists move into an obscure neighborhood because the rents are cheap. Ten years later, victims of their own success, they can no longer afford to stay.
That’s what happened in Manhattan in the 1980s: Artists discovered SoHo, then the rich folks invaded, and the artists decamped for Brooklyn.
Here in Atlanta, Rip Potter made a similar migration. He owned a building in Buckhead, but he was paying way too much for a couple of thousand square feet. Potter had lived in Manhattan in the early 1980s, where he designed and built night club interiors, and he had observed the SoHo phenomenon up close. He figured he could find something in the area roughly equivalent to Brooklyn.
“I followed the railroad tracks,” Potter recalled. Heading out of Buckhead, he was looking for cheap space. “We lived in Marietta; we saw potential in Marietta,” Potter said. “There were nice little houses, old roads. It seemed like a natural growth place.”
Then in 1986 his wife and fellow artist, Jefflyne Potter, came across a property with solid brick warehouses behind a bowling alley. Altogether the buildings comprised 43,000 square feet. He told her she was nuts.
Banks didn’t exactly rush to support the idea, either. Potter couldn’t get a loan because he had no experience with commercial real estate. So he brought in a partner, commercial real estate entrepreneur Larry Lioy, and the banks decided to back the project.
More than two decades later, the Artisan Resource Center is thriving, home to a tribe of creative types, from filmmakers to fabric designers. This weekend the studios will be open to the public, and to take it all in, you’ll need all three days.
In fact, it didn’t take long to fill the space. “I was shaking in my boots for the first six months,” Potter said. But they threw a big opening party — one of the attractions was Lioy’s friend Chuck Mangione — and six months later the space was 70 percent occupied.
The first tenant was sculptor Yossi Barel. “I brought him over and said, ‘Here’s 43,000 square feet — take your pick.’ ” The original eight tenants divided all that space. Now it’s shared by 27, with a range of sizes, from small painters’ digs to enormous multistory enterprises.
It’s easy to miss the long, low brick buildings, hidden behind a bowling alley and a car wash on the commercial strip of Cobb Parkway. And despite the center’s success, its little niche in Marietta hasn’t exactly become fashionable. “I wasn’t going in the direction of what most people consider an arts center to be,” Potter said. “We’re the dirty, smelly, noisy place.”
But in a good way. Consider Andre Freitas, one of the center’s oldest tenants. Freitas makes everything from dinosaurs for museum exhibits (including the dinosaurs at the Fernbank) to wrestling costumes; his studio is festooned with body parts of otherworldly creatures, portrait sculpture and prehistoric animals. He specializes in special effects costuming for movies and rock bands.
Another long-term tenant is Stacy Michell, who sells her hand-dyed textiles all over the world and whose large space at the center is a maze of baths, troughs and complex plumbing. On a recent morning, she walked her dog outside her studio and described her exhausting schedule — she’d just returned from Japan and was hurrying to finish renovations to her space.
Potter is pleased and bemused that the center has recently attracted a contingent of performing arts groups. One is Sensitive Charles, a children’s video production company that makes offbeat short films to be used by churches. Charisma Studios teaches acting for kids and adults. Blank Stage Productions is a full-service video production company. And Masud Olufani combines paintings and sculptures with classic Southern storytelling.
There’s also the Big City Burlesque and Vaudeville Troupe, which produces 1940s-era burlesque shows. There will be two performances Saturday night — one family-friendly show suitable for kids at 8 p.m. and an adult show at 10 p.m. Admission is $7 for the kids show and $15 for the adult show.
Among these newcomers, however, are more traditional crafts studios. Potter’s own woodworking shop produces everything from architectural models to futuristic solar light fixtures. There’s a stained glass studio, a weaver, a metalwork shop, photographers, portrait painters, a maker of glass beads. Stan King makes palatial birdhouses with stories of their own (like the abode designed for avian polygamists, complete with mirror on the ceiling).
The point, Potter said, is that these creative ventures actually make a living. “We’re all about the business of art — can you make a living doing what you love?” he explained. “We’ve had some fantastic jobs come in and out of this building.”
Often the tenants subcontract to each other, and it’s not uncommon for many of them to be involved in a job together.
Marietta may not have turned into the Brooklyn of North Georgia, and Atlanta’s hipsters are not exactly crowding Cobb Parkway, opening wine bars and cute little restaurants.
Asked if he gets enough respect, Potter shrugged. “I gambled,” he said. “Some people didn’t go for it. I’ve had times when I wondered. But when you’re 100 percent leased, how can you [complain]?
“There’s a lot of art out there that doesn’t put food on the table.”
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
