We Are On Our Own
In 2018, my family moved from Houston, Texas to Lucas, Kansas. Rural communities like Lucas often carry the weight of skepticism of new people and ideas, and that’s not unjustified. Our rural and isolated location can be hard. Big city people with big plans bite off more than they can chew and run for the hills when the rubber meets the road. Then the local people are left holding the bag. Again. On the flip side, we are on our own. We can dream of big things and just do them.
The distance between newcomers and established residents, while difficult to navigate, can be understood. Established residents have a familiar path to success worn in by their ancestors, leading to a hesitancy to deviate. While success is possible by forging a new path, failure often looms for those who take the risk. New residents, lacking access to this established map, are on their own. The struggle to balance respecting established residents and finding your path can be particularly difficult.
Moving to Lucas from Houston was as practical as it was emotional for me. I first met Eric Abraham in 2011, at Flying Pig Studio in Lucas, which planted a seed that I could pursue a career as an artist while raising my children. Lucas was affordable, my commute times weren’t much different from those in Houston, and the internet speeds were faster and more reliable. A dedicated group of volunteers has worked hard to keep the town of less than 400 up-to-date with the world. Here, I found the space and freedom to grow as an artist. I didn’t have to choose between being an artist or a mother.
Being self-taught comes with fewer rules, allowing me to fail repeatedly until I discover what works for me. Being self-taught also meant that I had no idea what I was doing while trying to pursue an art career. I was on my own, which was both scary and difficult to navigate.
The Lucas artist community seemed to be made of people and institutions building beautiful silos for themselves. They were skeptical, probably more so than the locals. Through a series of events that don’t make sense to me even now, I became the cofounder and manager of Switchgrass Artist Co-op, which provides affordable retail space to artists, and arts opportunities to as many people as we could serve. I have no experience in nonprofits, and I am a college dropout. We were on our own, and there was a lot of freedom to go against industry norms.
The majority of locals (both artist locals and local-locals) range from supportive to neutral. Deciding who is a local and who is not can be complicated. The easy answer is families established here for generations are locals, and everyone else is not a local. But it is more complicated than that, too. Sometimes I am considered a local without a second thought. I am one of them. Other times, I am not. Rebels from established families can become outsiders too, for a myriad of reasons, graded from a rubric that everyone has but cannot explain. We have only lived in Lucas for six years, the longest I have ever lived anywhere as an adult.
I wasn’t sure how the town locals felt about the “artsy fartsy” people occupying buildings on Main Street. Then disaster struck, and I found out exactly how the locals felt. The roof of Switchgrass’s rented building blew off, and it began to rain hard inside. Midwesterners are great in a disaster. Locals who had never stepped foot in the cooperative joined those who had made regular visits, and we all fireman-carried everything out of the building. I mean, every single thing. The “we” became bigger. I kept expecting to turn around and everyone would be gone. But they didn’t leave me, or the cooperative.
The City Council had been holding their monthly meeting just two doors to the North of our rented space when the roof flew off. It landed on top of the neighboring Lucas-Sylvan Newspaper office. The paper owner, Rita, a founding artist member of Switchgrass, interrupted the City Council meeting to share the news. The meeting went into recess, and the Mayor, many of the council members, and city employees joined us to help carry the items. The Mayor then used his executive powers to allow us to store everything in the old library building. When the City Council reconvened, we came to an agreement that Switchgrass could stay in the temporary building as long as we paid the utilities and actively figured out what the next step would be for Switchgrass. We used the temporary space for four months. Switchgrass only lost one artist member during that transition, and a lot of the credit goes to the generosity of the City of Lucas.
We were on our own to figure out the next steps. I called an emergency meeting for the art cooperative in my own house because the old library was not big enough to hold us. Switchgrass artists crammed into my living room with all of the chairs I could drag in. And we decided to keep going, even though the cooperative was outgrowing the original rented building, we were only two years old, and there was uncertainty from our landlord about the roof repairs. Just across the street, there was a building that was more than twice as big. It was a huge gamble, but the artist members believed we had enough to buy the building, freeing Switchgrass from landlord issues. We had just enough in savings to leverage grants and loans. When I say just enough, I mean it. It was terrifying. Switchgrass was on its own.
Switchgrass moved into our building in January of 2022. My husband donated a huge amount of labor to convert the building from a small town bar and restaurant into an art gallery. We were on our own to make this building into a viable cooperative. The bigger space meant more opportunities for artist members, but also bigger bills, and we were suddenly in charge of building maintenance.
The hard parts are the times between the milestones. You have to show up every day, even if no one else does. It can be lonely. You are on your own. The highlight reel doesn’t ever show those days when you’re quietly working in your silo, that you’re desperately trying not to make into a silo. It is so exhausting. Silos are cozy, safe, and so much easier to maintain. The winters are tough in tourist places, especially those that are rural. We made it into March 2024 with ten dollars left in our operating account. The public reaction to the loss of the roof of the original building made me feel like I had been accepted, whether or not the established residents understood what Switchgrass was. Lucas showed up.
But we still needed something, a way to more permanently bring back the community element that existed when our new building had been the local bar. A new gathering space. Switchgrass was awarded a grant from our Community Foundation to build a coffee stand in the fall of 2023, with an ambitious schedule to complete the project in six months. If you have ever worked on a renovation project, you know how tough it is, especially when your building is more than one hundred years old and has lived many lives before you moved in. The building had secrets that everyone else seemed to know but kept quiet about until we discovered them. It was a frustrating reminder that we were still outsiders when it came to knowing a place’s past. Plus, our rural location complicates construction; everything must be transported in, and mileage costs quickly add up. Contractors are often unwilling to come out, and with a shortage of able tradespeople, they know they can pick and choose their jobs. You have to plead with them to take on your project, particularly when they know that working on an older building can lead to unexpected issues. We were on our own.
Switchgrass opened the coffee stand right before Christmas 2024. We didn’t feel ready, but didn’t have anything else on the checklist to check. So we opened right before Christmas, hoping to capture the families returning to Lucas over the holidays. It worked. And now, Switchgrass is in the in-between time until tourist season begins. There are days that no one shows up, and the coffee gets dumped. Here, in Lucas in winter, we are desperately trying to keep the silo from forming.
I’ve managed to build a community out of Switchgrass I don’t fully understand. If someone asked me how I did, I have no answers beyond an unreasonable amount of tenacity and delusion. People trust me for my transparency and reliability. Showing up each day has overcome much of the skepticism of many local artists. We have grown to 28 artist members. In 2024, Switchgrass clocked more than 1,300 volunteer hours to run the gallery. I would have never predicted Switchgrass would grow into what it has become. Various visual artists, working in a range of traditional crafts like wheat weaving, fine art, self-taught art, textiles, and experimental assemblage art have a space here. We had 2,500+ pieces of original artwork in our gallery, but the program Switchgrass uses has stopped counting inventory, so who knows the real number?
The building needs a new roof, HVAC system, and attic insulation. Switchgrass has only been able to pay for operating costs with virtually no savings for building maintenance. One month into having the supplemental income from the coffee stand, we’re paying the utilities. A small informal group of fellow artists and artisans have been supporting us, being patient as we experiment with different items and giving honest feedback as we gear up for the 2025 tourist season. As there are no other eating establishments on Main Street, there are also a few established residents who want us to succeed to fill that absence.
It is a constant battle to keep our foundations from eroding: Lucas’, my family’s, and my artistic practices. It takes constant maintenance to manage community relationships, retain financial stability, and protect one’s peace. It is easier to focus on yourself in the stability of your own silo. How do I balance my well-being, my family, Switchgrass, and the larger community? I have put in my 10,000 hours, like Malcolm Gladwell says, but I still don’t feel like an expert. We are on our own, but the “we” is expanding once again. Our audience is growing, and so is our reputation. Something is building.