By Don Bradley
Down random streets, in the quiet rooms and basements and screened-in porches, beats the lonely heart of an artist.
That’s not much basis for a business model, but it is the belief in humanity of the couple behind the new Art House 808 in downtown Grandview.
Josh and Alice Larson Scott want to bring those untapped artists into the light. All the closeted poets and painters, sculptors and screenwriters, photographers and musicians.
Come, share what you do.
“We want to get people in front of people,” Josh said,
The goal of Art House 808 is to provide a space for artists of all disciplines in the Grandview/ south Kansas City area to meet, learn, feed off each other and take what they do to new levels.
Alice called the new venue, “an artist’s playground.”
So called “art houses” have popped up in recent years around the country. InterUrban/ArtHouse in Overland Park started in 2011.
But there was nothing in the Grandview area the likes of Art House 808, which will operate as a not-for-profit 501c3 and run by a board.
“This has been a three-year dream to get this going,” Alice said. “At our first artist meeting, we thought we might get five people. We got 40.”
Alice has long had an eye on the building at 808 Main Street. It’s been several things over the years…health food store, something with home sales.
Now, it’s going to be classrooms and studios, a place for artists to learn from professionals, to collaborate with others and a place for someone to get up and perform in front of people like themselves.
“We need to break down the walls of what we think an artist looks like…or what we think art even is,” Josh said.
That first meeting drew the usual suspects – the actors, singers, painters, writers and photographers.
It also brought in a woman who does tissue paper pinata art. And a ballet dancer, a seamstress, junk scrapbooker, film maker, graphic designer and a Christian rapper.
A lawyer, Jacob Berger, who plays guitar and writes folk songs, said a buddy told him about the place.
“I’ve been writing a lot of music lately and this place is about sharing all that,” Berger said. “And I love the mission of drawing out the local artists.”
On February 28, singer-songwriter Nick Loux played the first house show to a packed house. The next house show is April 11, featuring singer-songwriter Courtney Hartman, who was nominated for a Grammy as part of the folk quintet Della Mae.
According to Josh Scott’s calculation, which he calculated by looking at the ceiling, “Grandview has about 25,000 population…there’s probably a thousand artists here and we want them to come in and be part of this place.”
His cursory take comes with cred. Josh is the founder of JHS Pedals, a Kansas City-based company known for its guitar effects pedals. The ones John Mayer uses – and a guitar player for the Foo Fighters – and another who played with Tom Petty.
Alice is a writer, director and actress. Last summer, she directed a production of Beauty and the Beast at The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Josh is from Alabama; Alice from Mississippi. They’ve been married 21 years, have three children and moved to Kansas City for JHS.
They want the new place to become an arts community.
“The lone genius in art really doesn’t exist,” Josh said. “And you can’t put your stuff on Facebook because it just turns into a political argument.”
At Art House 808 a day last week, two teens, Emma and Maddy, were designing a set. Off to the side were 50 new guitars, still in boxes, for a youth music program.
“We want the old teaching the young and the young teaching the old,” Alice said.
Josh said music changed his life and he hopes Art House 808 can do the same for others.
“You can’t buy what arts bring,” he said. “You have to build it. That’s what this place is about.”
For more information, go to arthouse808.com.
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