Local artist Sean Starowitz breaks down his upcoming community project the Talk Shop

Sean Starowitz is an artist, but his work is difficult to track on paper or view on a wall. His projects tend to have a distinctly community-based feel. He is the mind behind micro-financing organization Bread KC, which supports the arts in Kansas City; Byproduct: The Laundromat, an investigation into public art that acted as a catalyst for creative discussion and engagement; and Lots of Love, a community art project that repurposes abandoned lots in the Ivanhoe neighborhood. 

Now, Starowitz is spearheading a new idea called the Talk Shop, an “experimental cultural center” and socially engaged art space located at 3936 Main, next to Oddly Correct in midtown. Starowitz and his team are currently in the midst of an Indiegogo campaign to help get the Talk Shop funded and off the ground. 

We called Starowitz to get some deeper details on what he’s planning. 

The Pitch: Tell me about where the idea for this project came from.

Starowitz: There’s always been a rich history of artists running spaces in Kansas City, and I’ve always been interested in these storefront spaces as a format for artistic exploration. Gordon Matta-Clark is one of my biggest inspirations, and he did a project called Food in SoHo, and that’s one of the ideas we used to inform the Talk Shop. Also, in Chicago, there was a format called Mess Hall, and they were open for 10 years and run by 13 artists. It was an open format for a space, and that’s what the Talk Shop is really based off of. 

What will be the hours for Talk/Shop?

Our hours of operation will be Sunday through Thursday, so that we aren’t competing with other things that are going on in the city. For the most part, it’ll be evening hours – 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. We’ll start small, and once a week we’ll have an event to build an audience and make people aware that others can use the space. We want to make this an eclectic KC lab. It gives us the opportunity to think about public programming.

Aside from community discussions and art exhibitions, what special things do you have in mind for Talk Shop?

We want to bring in people – artists and others – from around the country to take part in these conversations and programs. We have two artists already onboard already. One is Christina Kim, who created Dosa Inc., an eco-fashion line, among a ton of other things. She’s based in L.A. and has an international profile, and this will be her first project in the U.S. outside of L.A. She’ll do a community workshop that will be a large-scale installation in the neighborhood.

And we’re also working with Alex Elmestad, who I know from Bread for Work in St. Louis and my work with the Laundromat. Those are some of the national people we’re trying to bring in.

Tell me about your team.

John Helling is a public librarian, Charlie Huette is a journalism and film teacher at Blue Valley, Taylor Pruitt is a graphic designer, Lauren Tweedie is a fashion designer and storefront designer, and Andrew Lyles is another artist. I wanted to create a really diverse team, and for me that’s about bringing a variety of different people together to create something that’s bigger than themselves. To have a documentarian and a journalist is really important because of what we’re trying to explore for ourselves.

This is like… if John Helling had a library, and the Laundromat and Bread KC and a design space were all thrown together, that’s what this would be. We’re acting like a museum and a library in a place that’s not either of those. It’s exhibition. It’s programming. It’s discussions.

You have an Indiegogo goal of $10,000, and the campaign ends in less than two weeks. What happens if you don’t meet it?

The beautiful thing about Indiegogo is that you keep what you get. The $10k is to get us through the year. We have to pay utilities and we want to pay people. We want to bring in national artists and we want to have a new approach to a collaborative space. If we don’t meet our goal, we’ll do small fundraisers along the way. It’s one of those things where we’ll have to make up the funding as we go along. Really, there’s a surge of activity in midtown, and we want to be a part of that. For us, it’s a matter of showing up.

For more information on the Talk Shop, see the website. To contribute to the funding, see the Indiegogo campaign.