New Moon Rising: Rentable artist studios to open in former Junior League building

With 10 spaces already under lease by Springfield artists – and an 11th agreement in the works – the New Moon Studio Space is set to open Sept. 1 in the former headquarters of a local nonprofit.

The husband-and-wife team of Kate Baird and Mike Stevens, under the corporate name New Moon Studio Space LLC, purchased the former headquarters of the Junior League of Springfield, Missouri Inc. for $400,000, Baird said. The building is located at 2574 E. Bennett St.

Starting in September, artists will be at work in the building, painting, writing, printmaking, photographing, sewing – creating, basically, within their own private domains.

Baird is a practicing artist and the former museum educator for the Springfield Art Museum, while Stevens is the executive director of the Moxie Cinema, downtown’s nonprofit art house theater.

Baird said the idea to create studio spaces started small. She said coming out of the pandemic, she was working at the Art Museum but realized she wanted to do something different.

“I wanted to go back to having a more regular art practice,” she said. “I knew I was going to be renting and paying money every month for a space, and we thought, might we not investigate making an investment in a building? And then other people could also have space.”

Paying for studio space with the help of a tenant or two was the germ of the idea that escalated steeply with the couple’s near purchase of the 28,000-square-foot former Doling Elementary School, reported on by Springfield Business Journal in March 2022. The pair had a purchase agreement with Springfield Public Schools to buy the building at a bargain price of $125,000, but they ultimately gave up the plan for that large-scale enterprise because Baird described the estimated cost of renovations as several times higher than the purchase price.

The new building, Baird said, is a horse of a different color. The former Junior League building – once Oak Grove school – is a compact, two-story building at 10,000 square feet. Ultimately, Baird anticipates 20-30 studio spaces to be available inside.

The smaller building has led to smaller plans than Baird and Stevens had for the Doling building. Areas for performing artists are no longer part of the scheme, and there is also no exhibit space. There will also be no classes for the time being. The building will open solely as a collection of visual art studios.

Baird was preparing for an Aug. 19 open house when she spoke to SBJ.

Studio spaces are available for monthly rentals at prices commensurate with their sizes. Former classrooms, measuring roughly 700 square feet, are going for about $795 per month and are equipped with locked keypads. In one of the large classrooms, four artists have signed on to share space and will also share the $795 expense. Another large classroom is being eyed as a possible work area for writers to rent at a rate yet to be determined.

A large room downstairs, once a common area for the school, is being divided into about 10 walled stalls measuring roughly 100 square feet. Baird said water is entering the building through its downstairs replacement windows, and that problem will have to be resolved before those spaces can be rented at about $125-$135 apiece per month. Unlike the Doling building, however, the new purchase is mostly move-in ready, she said.

Baird said an immediate priority is to make the building accessible to more artists with the installation of a ramp. That may open up the space to more uses in the future, she said.

Citing privacy considerations, Baird declined to name the artists who are under contract, but noted that she herself will have combined studio and administrative space on the first floor.

Space to create
In a March 2022 SBJ article about plans for the Doling Elementary building, Leslie Forrester, executive director of the Springfield Regional Arts Council Inc., explained that the arts are big business in greater Springfield. The last major study of the local arts scene, released seven years ago, with a follow-up study delayed by the pandemic, was conducted by the nonprofit Americans for the Arts. At the time, there were 1,065 full-time jobs in the arts and the annual economic impact was $26.9 million.

This was true despite the fact that studio space has been an ongoing need in the community for quite some time, according to Forrester, who said not much has changed in a year and a half.

“That hasn’t really shifted, especially the availability of affordable space,” she said in an interview Aug. 16. “The shared concept that they’re building is something that really helps to make studio space a reality for our folks.”

SRAC will this fall report on both a local arts space study and the new Americans for the Arts survey, Forrester said.

Forrester said artists’ studio spaces are as essential as offices for any other profession.

“If I could just do whatever I wanted, every artist would have at least a room to go in, do their work and then step away,” she said. “Renting a room, you can lock up at the end of your creative session. Ideally, like your own office space, you can get messy in it.”

Business incubation
If the arts are indeed big business, former teacher Jenny Green is ready to be part of it.

Green worked 23 years as a teacher, first in an elementary classroom, then in gifted classes and finally as an art teacher in Springfield Public Schools and Marshfield.

“I decided in May that I was going to take early retirement and focus on my art,” she said.

Green is a printmaker, and she has been driving to multiple states to assemble equipment for her studio at New Moon. She said while some communities have shared printmaking spaces, in Springfield, those seem to exist only in universities.

She acquired a huge sink in rural Arkansas, an exposure unit south of Memphis, Tennessee, and a flat file in Bentonville, among other equipment, and she is considering a trip to Florida to buy a press at the bargain price of $1,000. She has also purchased ink and paper, for a total investment of nearly $4,000 so far.

“I’m ready to go,” she said.

Green said she finds it impossible to turn off her teacher training, so at the time of her interview, she was getting her room ready for the open house.

“I’m taking the open house just as seriously as (Baird and Stevens) are,” she said.

Green said she had attended a printmaking residency recently and came back ready to roll.

“It was pretty magical,” she said. “I told my husband, ‘Here’s the deal, honey. We either have to gut our house because I need a printmaking studio – and the only room we have is the living room – or we have to move.’”

That conversation took place about 9 a.m., she recalled, and her husband replied that there was a third choice: renting a space.

“Within 1 minute of me and my husband having this moment, I texted Kate and said, ‘What’s going on with New Moon?’” Green said. “She wrote back right away and invited me right over for a tour.”

Green, whose one-woman art operation is registered as Jenny Green Art LLC, is gearing up for a show at Big Momma’s Coffee and Espresso Bar LLC in November, with monoprints featuring colorful botanical themes. She said she is excited about her big zinnia prints in different combinations of colors, and she’s hoping sales will help her to recoup some of her investment. Even if she doesn’t turn a profit, though, she said she’s satisfied with her choices.

“I had to kind of be brave about it,” she said. “Whatever our job, we have to take a leap of faith. I did not know when I retired that New Moon was going to happen, but it fits in perfectly with my new career.”