The woodworking space at 12 Crows Art Collective in Rossville. / Staff photo by Sabrina BodonReed Caldwell spends all of his free time at 12 Crows Art Collective, a co-op art gallery with rentable studios and a carpentry shop that he owns in Rossville.
Though he and his wife, Kathleen Nolte, live in Chattanooga, they bought the former White Way Cleaners off Spring Street in spring 2018 and have transformed it into 12 Crows to give artists on a budget a place to prosper. Artists have free range of the space, said Caldwell. Last month, the gallery was filled with paintings and sculptures from one of the artists.
Caldwell, 39, is the executive director of Songbirds Foundation, a nonprofit that provides musical resources to students in the Chattanooga area. He said Rossville was the perfect place for 12 Crows because of the town’s growth over the past few years and its need for the arts to be nurtured.
“There are not a lot of art spaces in the area,” Caldwell said, comparing Rossville to Chattanooga.
When he first listed the studio spaces on the market, he wasn’t surprised when they were rented within the month. He was inspired to open the collective after experiencing his own troubles finding a reasonably priced space he could use for his blacksmithing hobby in Chattanooga. While searching, he was greeted with high rents and rooms too small for all of his equipment.
“We want to help in any way we can,” Caldwell said as he walked through the gallery, pointing out tables made in the new carpentry studio by one of the residents.
The woodworking shop finally came together this month after Caldwell had the idea to open a maker space for hobbyists and hosting art lessons for the public. He’s currently renting the space to three woodworkers and is leaving the fourth spot open to let anybody schedule a time to come in and work on their projects.
All four of the 225-square-foot studios are currently rented out. There, residents have crafted their own pottery and oil painting havens. Another resident turned the space’s 1,200-square-foot studio into a 3-D printing lab and paint studio.
Caldwell is already making plans to develop the space even more by building a blacksmithing studio and renovating the existing workshop’s remaining two studios.
“We’ve put a lot of energy into this the last year, in every spare minute,” he said. “Everything that’s functioning, we did that.”
Email Sabrina Bodon at sbodon@timesfreepress.com.