I like to believe that creatives outnumber the critics. That said, the critics are loud, and it’s hard to think of a critic much louder than the internal ones we’ve tailored to ridicule ourselves. We’re never going to silence our critics, but in the right contexts, we can lessen their impact. Madison is fortunate to have areas all around designated to permit creativity to help remind people that creativity isn’t meant to be constrained to one area, and you don’t need permission to be creative.
The Bubbler, with a presence in each of Madison’s public libraries, is a creative space that appears to be for children and young adults upon first glance, but that’s selling it way too short. It’s actually a community arts hub with free studio space open to the public. There’s screen printing, typewriting, building, drawing, and painting.
Carlee Latimer, Bubbler program assistant, says the space is certainly not limited to the visual arts. “Based on our artist-in-residence and what their specialty is, we might amp it up a bit. The person who we’re working with right now is a letter-press printer. We’ve had anybody from a dancer to music producer. And along the way, we’ve learned what can work well in our spaces.”
Since Madison Public Library – Central reopened in 2013, it adopted a residency model in many areas, including having a naturalist-in-residence and a native storyteller-in-residence. In terms of having an artist-in-residence, many of the successes are amplified through the Bubbler, like the artist exhibitions in any of the libraries. The evolution of the program over the past 10 years has also provided the tools needed to push beyond the library and have larger influences throughout Madison.
As an example, there’s an ongoing project to gather self-portraits from Madison residents using only a specific set of stamps. “The project, Our Town Everywhere, was brought to us by an artist in Nashville, Bryce McCloud.” Where Bryce used a mobile cart to find people willing to put their creativity out there, the Bubbler sets up in various places by request.
“We have a core group of artists who are leading the project. Right now, if Luna’s Groceries is doing a block party for their community and they want us to pop up and do it, we’ll show up and do it there. If a librarian on the west side wants to do a program with the seniors who come every Tuesday, we’ll pop up and do it there. … We want to have a pretty vast portrait of what the city looks like and who the people are in this community.”
There’s also a neat side effect to the project. Carlee points out that nobody is an expert at shape stamps, so it’s humbling to sit in a group and try to do your best. “The idea is folks gather and sit around a table or slide into a space at an event and work on this on their own, but they end up talking and connecting with people around them.” Participants are experiencing a microcosm of how ideas are shared and grow along with an appreciation for process over product.
Zooming out, it’s incredible to see just how easily people transition into being creative. Through projects like the stamp portrait and just the space itself existing, the drive to make something is given a chance to override the internal critic. One of the biggest lies too many of us have bought into is that something needs to be done right or perfect if it’s going to be done at all. When celebrated painter Bob Ross talked about “happy little accidents,” he was openly admitting that he’d made a mistake. From that point forward, the piece would not be perfect. Yet he taught others to take those mistakes and incorporate them into the rest of the painting, and that imperfection seamlessly became part of the finished product, often improving the final result.
Carlee says that art and creativity are two very important pillars in the library. “They’re an invitation for anybody and everybody to use the library as a jumping-off point or a landing space for tapping into your own self-expression, your own creativity, your own story.” Every person who puts their creative self in the driver’s seat sees the potential of a library as much more than books on shelves.
The Bubbler isn’t just about being a resource that people tap into when they need it. Carlee and her colleagues are developing partnerships with every enthusiastic creative they meet, calling the group Team Bubbler Forever. “It’s very much this network that’s always growing, but we get to tap into people when new opportunities come up and more and more art stuff keeps happening in our spaces. When new libraries are built and we have public art pieces that’ll be there forever, we get to call on folks who have worked with us in the past to apply.”
For a lot of people, a studio space is either a luxury or a waste of space. I like to think that what the Bubbler is really doing is trying to confront that mindset. Studio space, a space that allows for self-expression, should be seen as a necessity even if it’s just the size of a closet or shares counter space with your kitchen. Carlee says, “There’s something pretty cool in adults taking a chance and trying something.” Don’t let the critics get too comfortable; they’re rarely as right as they think they are.
