Lee AdcockIn this town, word of mouth travels fast. Granted, folks in the know already had their eyes on the former industrial warehouse at 825 Warner Street, and its ill-fated former incarnation as underground hub Kaleidoscape. But when Willow Goldstein posted two ads on Craigslist about studio and storage space in the newly christened the Bakery back in August, she wasn’t prepared for the chain lightning of responses that followed. “I met with a million billion people,” she tells me, as we talk in her pastel-painted office. “At the end of the day, most of those people that I met with aren’t even the people that ended up coming in. Other people came in—they’d heard about it from two of their friends and then showed up here. Missions and values just aligned.”
Indeed, since the formal opening of the Bakery in October, Atlanta’s newest DIY venue seems blessed with happy coincidences. That’s not to discount the vision and efforts of Goldstein, the industrious director that cut her teeth in several artist collectives in New York and Atlanta before finally settling into her own headquarters. But if you’d asked her a year ago if she’d want to plant roots in a warehouse, she would’ve sworn “Never!” under her breath. Now, as the Bakery gears up for the massive Bread II extravaganza this weekend, there’s no doubt that Goldstein has committed to her new life of overseeing the growth and maintenance of a multi-purpose arts collective. After hosting weekly yoga, rotating galleries, and the blockbuster Power to the Polls rally, she and her diligent crew are more than ready to handle this Saturday’s stacked gig.
A Warehouse? Never!
Part of the Bakery’s charm rests in a curious oxymoron—while the community embraces myriad voices and disciplines of art, the warehouse and its clan seems tucked away from the rest of Atlanta. Located just above Murphy’s Park in Oakland City, the entire property is surrounded by a chain link fence and fronted by an imposing iron gate. Within, the volunteers that comprise the Bakery’s staff create the services they wish to see; Goldstein showed me a woodworking studio and a dark room in progress, and also mentioned plans for a screenprinting press. “Everything that’s happening here is so much determined by the people involved,” she tells me.
That might seem radical to any other organizer, but Goldstein, a native of Atlanta, has been plotting and planning arts programming for most of her life. The habit began with her mother, an alumnus of the Atlanta College of Art. “We would plan hostels, and restaurants, and Airbnbs, and menus,” Goldstein says. “And that evolved, as I got older, to going on residencies together, studio practice, and art exhibitions. [We were] planning literally anything, like art museums in our minds.” Her father, meanwhile, tried to maintain a farm commune in north Georgia, with varying success—that, too, would stick with Goldstein.
After studying in Boston and then moving to New York, Goldstein soon threw herself into a local non-profit arts organization, and before long, after creating several new programs, murals, and community events, she became frustrated that the group lacked a central headquarters. “[I tried] to get us a physical home,” she says, “something like an office within a space like [the Bakery] where we could keep all our stuff and stop meeting in people’s apartments.”
The idea for an arts commune percolated after Goldstein moved back to Atlanta. The young planner, bored with waiting tables, needed another project to oversee. Her sister, a successful producer and photographer in Los Angeles, suggested buying a warehouse. “And I told her she was insane,” says Goldstein. Instead, in February of last year she joined the board at downtown experimental hub Eyedrum, and “basically started doing everything,” from booking music acts to overseeing admin duties. “That was a crash course on how to run an arts facility, kind of on accident,” she says.
Around this time, Goldstein first caught wind of the space on Kaleidoscape, as she scouted for what Atlanta had to offer. A multi-talented artist that resided there, Chick Wallace mastermind Melanie Paulos, came to Eyedrum one evening to install a mural for a fashion show. Since then, they’ve switched places—Paulos now has the same studio at Mammal Gallery that Goldstein once owned. “I really wanted [the warehouse] to be something like [the Bakery] when I moved here, and I kept trying to see if that would happen,” Paulos tells me. “But with how it was being run, and the people in charge here, it wasn’t going to happen.”
After Goldstein’s grandmother passed away in February, the wandering artist finally decided to take up her sister’s advice and buy herself a warehouse. By this time, Kaleidoscape was in a dark place: the owners were raking in diminishing returns on their massive rave parties, which attracted increasingly shadier crowds. When the venue finally folded early last year, Goldstein moved in to claim the property. Her vision was to offer the same diverse palette of programs that she’d helped nurture in New York and Brooklyn. “I left [Georgia] because it was racist and it sucked,” she says. “So [I thought], OK, great, what can I do about that? What can I do, firstly for myself, and then what can I do for the city and possibly the state?”
The Bakery was her medium to answer that question.
Gifts for the Bakery
In Goldstein’s office, a white board behind her desk keeps track of the many chores on the staff’s agenda. Under that, a jar filled haphazardly with bills rests on a low table. When I ask her about the challenges and upfront costs of kickstarting a venue, she leans back in consternation. “How have we done it? What did we do?” she says, then looks back at the jar. “I sit here with money from events that I need to [organize]. I need a bookkeeper! If anyone knows a bookkeeper, I would really like one.”
At any rate, Goldstein remembers exactly how the Bakery lifted up from Kaleidoscape’s ashes. The two ads that she posted on Craigslist attracted myriad responses, from podcasters to movie producers interested in the space—and also friendly insight from former residents like Paulos. (The two would continue to exchange emails when they discovered that they both shared a background as circus performers—Paulos once worked the hula hoop for travelling troupe Cirque Noveau, and Goldstein grew up training in trapeze.) By the time the venue opened on October 8, Goldstein could easily assemble a packed bill for its first night. Her work at Eyedrum had introduced her to several folks with deep roots in the scene, like professional percussionist (and LONER drummer) Chris Gravely and Eyedrum booker Daniel Everlean, who helped line up the bill. Plus, even with the shadow over Kaleidoscape, the artists that Goldstein and her crew tapped didn’t hesitate to jump in. “There is a lot of competition in the Atlanta art scene, but people will generally say yes,” Goldstein says. “And if anyone says no, it’s not like ‘no, fuck you,’ it’s more like, ‘no, I can’t do this right now, I’m booked or busy.'”
As rave reviews for the Bakery continue to circulate among local bands, Goldstein has had no problem soliciting the space. Indeed, she’s taken on more hands from Plasma Mag to help with the booking, after Everlean had to drop out. “I was given a venue, [and I had] no interest or skill or time to run a venue,” Goldstein says. “I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’ We’re now being hit up by touring bands, and slightly bigger bands, and I can’t do this unless I can find someone to help me.” So far, the partnership seems fortuitous: earlier this week, Plasma Mag hosted their first show at the Bakery with Philly group the Guests, backed by locals Yams Club and Post Hunk.
The greater challenge, of course, has been stretching out the money from that jar in the office to keep the warehouse afloat. “We’re not sustainable yet,” Goldstein tells me bluntly. “I literally watch how many towels people use, and [ask people], ‘how long are you going to let that water run for?’ And I run around the whole building turning off lights, turning on lights.” Only recently, Goldstein bit the bullet and invested in some essential gear for the Bakery’s stages; until then, she’s had to rely almost entirely on other people’s equipment. “We’re gearing up for so much programming, that we can’t keep doing what we’re doing by just asking Daniel to bring his microphones over every time we have a show,” she says. “That just gets ridiculous.”
Fortunately, Goldstein has found a benevolent spirit in the old warehouse. “Things appear here, and we don’t know where they came from,” Goldstein confesses. “We’ve decided that the Bakery just gifts us items.” Cables, speakers, and Bluetooth speakers have all materialized into their possession, from no known source. She does know, however, the particular noise musician and rent-for-hire sound technician who left behind an entire PA system after providing the gear for a hip-hop festival several months back—she just won’t tell me who. “If he asks back for his system back, I don’t know what we’ll do,” says Goldstein.
An unlikely coincidence also granted the Bakery their biggest and most ambitious event to date, barely two months after their opening. Goldstein’s mom was out on the porch when the organizers of last year’s women’s march—now the Georgia Alliance for Social Justice—were cruising through the neighborhood in search of a venue for Power to the Polls, a rally to inspire and instruct women one year after the election. After browsing Murphy’s Park, the co-founders swung up to the warehouse. “So they talked to her for a minute, [and] she was like, ‘My daughter’s not here right now, but I’ll go get her. And if you want to go check out that space and come back, she’ll give you a tour,'” Goldstein recalls. “So I’m pretty sure my mom then called me and was like, ‘Wake up right now and get over here.'”
Power to the Polls would push Goldstein to the test. With a projected attendance of 1000 (that would double on the day of the event), guest speeches from local politicians, and a performance from Nashville’s Chasing Lovely, the Bakery crew had their work cut out for them. “After New Year’s, I didn’t sleep—we worked around the clock,” says Goldstein. About 40 to 50 volunteers popped in to help prep for the rally; on January 20th, 20 members from the Bakery’s core staff stayed on to monitor the crowds. Goldstein was worried that such a taxing weekend would drive off those willing helpers. After all, the space would also host two late night gigs and a yoga class on the same weekend. Yet, come Monday morning, the entire staff checked into the Bakery. “I was beside myself,” says Goldstein.
“Bread everything”
At one point during our interview, a large carrier truck pulls into the lot just outside of the office window. Goldstein had been expecting its arrival, so she excuses herself from the room. Instead of idling, I turn to the organizers of BREAD II—the taciturn head of promotion collective SUNDAY Casey Doran, and Paulos—and probe them about the origins of their upcoming show.
The whole conceit—literally, an art exhibition showcasing bread as both subject and medium—originated from an offhand chat between Doran and Paulos at the Little Five Points watering hole Java Lords. “It’s just taking something that’s mundane and just pushing it, really running with it,” Paulos explains. “[And] Casey, in general, is really good at banter with people, [where] he’ll just keep building more and more ridiculous scenarios, like how we can make this bread thing over-the-top. We want[ed] bread people, bread crosses, bread everything.” Although BREAD I premiered at Mammal Gallery last May, Paulos knew that their crusty show was destined to ultimately land in her old haunt. “How great would it be to have BREAD at the Bakery?” she remembers thinking.
The first iteration at Mammal only featured still photography, so Doran and Paulos plan to pull out all the stops with BREAD II’s gallery. From 5 to 9 p.m., guests can stroll through film and photography installations from Doran and Paulos, plus other local artists such as Uniq, Pete Though, Shea Valdez, and Taylor Alxndr. Afterwards, a stacked gig will ensue, which features both Awful artists like Lord Narf, Ethereal, and Archibald Slim, as well as smaller local darlings like King Luka, Gin Bottl, and Trashcan. That juxtaposition might surprise the common gig-goer, but Doran shrugged off the feat. “Me and my roommate that started SUNDAY, we hang out with most of the Awful people,” he says. “So they’re always down to do anything. And all it really takes is reaching out… people are so afraid to talk to artists, for some reason. But they’re the nicest people.”
In addition to promising a sick night out, Paulos also promises to direct attention to local non-profits. She’s invited Mad Housers, an organization devoted to building shelters for homeless folk, to pass out information at the show and build a small model of their handiwork. This isn’t their first partnership, by a long shot—Paulos first tapped Mad Housers for an earlier exhibition, Portals, which revolved around decorated doors from various artists that attendees could interact with. “Since then, whenever we do events, I at least want them there,” Paulos says, “because so many people don’t know about them. And after having a studio on Broad Street, I’ve really gotten to know all the homeless people out there. I think it’s absurd that there’s so many homeless folk in Atlanta, and how much space there is. And I think it’s really cool that [Mad Housers] build tiny homes for people.”
Public and private
After the formal interview, Goldstein guides me through the inner chambers of the Bakery. Everything’s still in flux: the proposed woodworking studio is currently a cubicle of plywood; a whitewashed hallway waits patiently to be coated in murals; indeterminate furniture and artifacts are still piled in the spare rooms and larger stages, shunted there to make room for Power to the Polls. (“Once you acquire a warehouse, everyone wants to store their stuff in it,” Goldstein tells me warily.) At the same time, though, other areas look impressively fleshed out, like the professional conference room and the spacious gallery room, which at that time housed works from their upcoming “BYOA” (Bring Your Own Art) feminist exhibition. Goldstein says she’s still hashing out which of these areas will be public and private during events. Like many affairs at the Bakery, the matter will depend entirely on how many staff members are up to the task of warding off interlopers.
Outside on the patio, a young woman has camped at one of the cast iron tables with her laptop. Goldstein introduces me to Onyx Simpson—industrious screenwriter, Bakery’s executive assistant, and a fellow Atlanta native. She encourages me to come back and work in the Library of the Commons, a public room in the warehouse established by Mark Gilbert, a staff member and also a builder from Mad Housers. The invitation reflects Goldstein’s broader goal in establishing the Bakery in the first place: to unite artists and their supporters across all disciplines, to promote productive dialogue between individuals, and to encourage creation in myriad forms—including, but not limited to, films and photo of bread.
BREAD II goes down tonight at the Bakery. Doors open at 5 p.m. Music starts at 9 p.m. Admission is $5.
More Info
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