Jasmine Whiting
Catrina Sparkman smiling and wearing a white shirt.
Catrina Sparkman
Catrina Sparkman is an artist who wears many hats — writer, teacher, playwright, theater artist, activist, quilter, weaver, spinner, soap maker and book coach, to name a few. For Sparkman, these diverse endeavors have something in common. “They’re all different forms of storytelling,” she says.
Sparkman brings this spirit of artistic diversity and storytelling to her work as artistic director of The Creator’s Cottage, a nonprofit arts center in South Madison she designed as a safe space for writers and artists, especially women of color. “When I say safe spaces, I mean spaces where you don’t feel otherized — spaces where you can just be an artist,” Sparkman says. She hopes that artists and writers of color who visit the Cottage can say to themselves, “Ahh, I’m home, let me let my hair down, let me create.”
The Creator’s Cottage opened in 2020, and Sparkman funded the project herself. “This was a total bootstrap venture,” Sparkman says. “My husband and I paid two mortgages, didn’t take a salary, and used every dime that I made from my own artistic endeavors.” The pandemic hit just days after the Cottage opened, but Sparkman quickly pivoted to support creators virtually.
Today, the Cottage offers a fiber arts studio, a writer’s cafe stocked with hand-blended teas, overnight retreat spaces, “Crafty Chica” craft nights, and master classes with visiting artists. Sparkman has also organized a wide variety of special events, including a poetry showcase by Madison’s first Black poet laureate, Fabu Carter, and an artist talk with Floyd Newsum, a Houston-based painter and activist, whose retrospective at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art closes on Oct. 8. The Cottage was also a host site for the National Anti-Racist Book Festival in 2022.
Storytelling is at the heart of the Cottage’s next big program: the Memory Collectors Story Project: Fighting Alzheimer’s with Art. This monthly event brings together women aged 40 and older to quilt and share stories, with the goal of reducing rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in the community. “This is where art and activism meet,” Sparkman says.
Alzheimer’s disease disproportionately affects the Black community, with some studies estimating the rate to be 100% higher in Black populations than in white populations. Sparkman believes that making art with others in a safe space can help ease the crisis. “Studies have also shown that when people come together in community and do art — in safe, culturally specific community — it lowers your blood pressure, it makes you happy, and it rewires the brain,” she says.
Besides quilting and storytelling, the monthly meetings include exercise and healthy eating components, and every participant receives a blood pressure cuff. Sparkman is working with the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, African Americans Fighting Alzheimer’s in Midlife and Badger Rock Community Gardens, which will provide food for the events.
The project begins Sept. 23 and is capped at 30 participants. (There’s still room to join, and anyone interested can email ironerspress@gmail.com.) After a year, Sparkman will exhibit the group’s story quilts and create a book showcasing everyone’s work. (She also runs Ironer’s Press, an independent book publisher.)
No quilting experience is necessary. In fact, Sparkman is thrilled that many of the Memory Collectors participants are first-time quilters. “They’re so excited about it because their great grandmother used to quilt, or they used to watch quilting on a machine.”
For Sparkman, experimenting with new media is one of the best ways to grow as an artist or writer. For example, the Creator’s Cottage recently hosted sculptor Austen Brantley for a master class on sculpting the human form. “As a writer, I’m like, wow, the same detail that you need to put in this clay is the same detail that you need to build a person on paper,” says Sparkman. “Your mind just naturally makes these connections when you do something outside of what you normally do.”
Tamara Brown
Dollmaking is one of many activities at The Creator's Cottage. Here Fabu Carter, left, Tamika Madden and Akia Isom experiment outside their usual art forms.
This “try something new” philosophy permeates all programming at the Creator’s Cottage. “We always want you to do something outside of your normal art form,” she says. So, if a writer comes to the Cottage for a week-long retreat, she might also end up making a T-shirt, trying out a spinning wheel, or painting a rock.
Exploring and experimenting are especially important for people who make a living from their art, Sparkman says, which is a primary demographic she serves at the Cottage. She notes that Wisconsin ranks last in the nation for funding state arts organizations, spending just 14 cents per capita. (For comparison, Minnesota spends $7.34 per capita.) With the Creator’s Cottage, Sparkman aims to “equip artists so that they can make a living from their art, if that’s what they want to do, so that they can be whole, they can be happy, and they can leave legacies for their communities and their families.”
Artists and writers can select one of four membership tiers to meet their needs, whether they’re seeking support as they begin a writing journey, or they’re looking to gain business management skills. Artists at the professional tier get the opportunity to exhibit their work every summer at Art Fair on the Square and teach classes at the Cottage. “Every artist needs something a little bit different,” Sparkman says. “We want to be like a guild for them. What are your current needs and how can we help you meet them?”
