Some cool Wisconsin art news. Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam – the people behind The Suburban, one of Chicago’s most highly regarded alternative art galleries – have purchased the Waupaca County Home (an old “poor farm” located in tiny Manawa, Wis.) and will be renovating the main building and surrounding farmland into what sounds like an amazing art-n-literary space. It’ll include 8,000-square feet of exhibition space, a residency program (with 2500 square feet of dormitory space), and probably a printing press/publishing operation. For now, they’re calling it “the Great Poor Farm Experiment” and staging a series of works (performance, installation, sculpture, painting) as they carry out the renovation. Just last weekend, they had a big open house to kick things off. From JSOnline …

• A year from now, the Great Poor Farm Experiment will be transformed into a more formal and finished place … Grabner said. In the meantime, it's more in flux.
• "It's when it feels like it could . . . exciting to be here in the beginning be anything," said Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, a painter and gallery owner from Chicago. "It still has all of the flutter of possibility. By next year it will be a thing."
• About 30 of the artists arrived several days early to help with the renovation.
• "That's artists, right?" said Killam, who with Grabner is funding the rehab. "They understand the generosity factor that's necessary to make things happen."

See? It’s not so hard to have cool art stuff happen in your community! All you need is some forward thinking people, a large network of generous artists with lots of free time, about $150,000 in start-up cash, and a perfect piece of property! Easy!

OK, so that sarcasm stems from a fertile plot of jealousy. This thing sounds really cool, and it’s happening without any kind of city, state, or federal funding (as far as I can tell). But I’m going to stop dreaming about it happening up in these parts because our current art facilities seem fairly underutilized.

Photo by Mary-Louise Schumacher.