Madison, Wisconsin may be better known for academics and politics, but just under the surface, a growing art scene is becoming more prevalent in Wisconsin’s capital. The Project Lodge is one of the organizations at the forefront of the city’s creative movement.
Since 2008, The Project Lodge has provided an intersection for local musicians and artists through their combined performance space and gallery. “One of the main goals is to be able to foster creativity for the local community,” Tyler Mackie, The Project Lodge’s gallery manager, says. Christopher Buckingham and Kendra Larson originally founded the space two years ago and have since transferred the space’s management to Andrew Berry, Hayley Powers Thornton Kennedy, Bessie Cherry, and Tyler Mackie.
The Project Lodge takes the gallery-by-day and music-venue-by-night approach in order to bring elements of music and visual art together in the same space.
“As far as music goes, our space is a little intimate, so it has a little bit of a different vibe to it than other spaces in town,” Mackie says. “It really does have a community-oriented feel to it, and a lot of musicians feel that right away when they come into the space.”
The space has also developed a strong roster of local musicians including singer Julian Lynch, who performs new material every few months. “He’s really like a genuinely wonderful musician to work with because he is so wonderful and supportive of what we are doing,” Mackie says.
In addition to music and art shows, The Project Lodge also hosts a music series that is dedicated to experimental jazz called Surrounded By Reality. The space also has reached out to Madison’s literature community by incorporating a couple of reading series like Monsters of Poetry, The _________-Shaped Reading Series (which revolves around a new theme each time), and the Wisconsin Story Project, a program that encourages audience members to share personal stories completely off the cuff.
“There really aren’t a lot of places that do all of the things that we do,” Mackie says. “I think that’s especially true for the Surrounded By Reality series.”
The Project Lodge’s current art exhibit The Seed features the screen prints of Madison-based collective Animal Canon. The collective consists of four designers who create posters for local shows.
“They’ve been doing this for a couple of years…they’ve really been working on playing with technique, gradation, and color mixing, and it’s gotten pretty slick,” Mackie says. “They’ve made posters for a few of the bands that frequent the Project Lodge.” This show, however, will be the last that Animal Canon does as a collective because it will be moving out of its studio/home in August.
This fall, The Project Lodge is looking to move into a larger space to accommodate its growing community, and Mackie would like to see additional expansions within The Project Lodge’s gallery. “My hope is to build [our future space] into a place that will be more conducive to 3-D work, because I am a sculptural artist myself,” Mackie says. “I know that there aren’t a lot of venues for artists like that, and I would love to be the home, like the regional home, for 3-D and new-media technology artists.”
Yet even though The Project Lodge may be changing to a new location, the strong ties that it has built within Madison’s creative community will remain. “I think that we have the time to sit, hang out, and just talk with the musicians or the artists when we are just getting everything set up for the evening and when it’s coming down at the end of the night,” Mackie says. “I’ve made some really great friends just by being connected with The Project Lodge, and I’m really happy for that.”