New York incubator reaches out to local arts community

The Batavia Industrial Center in Batavia, N.Y., is reaching out to the arts community with a new 8,000-square-foot Artisan Center inside its Harvester Avenue facility.

"There have always been artists in the facility; they’ve just been spread around. This [center] ties it all together," BIC President B. Thomas Mancuso says.

The new center features affordable studio and gallery space and a learning center; it will also house a community theater that will seat 144 people when completed. The theater will serve as the center’s anchor and provide a permanent home for the Batavia Players, a local theater troupe operating in the area for more than 75 years. The Artisan Center also will function as a gathering place for adults and children to attend classes, performances, workshops and other arts-related activities and events.

Mancuso says the Artisan Center fills a need for a central location where "personal manufacturers" — woodworkers, painters, sculptors, metal workers, muralists and others who make things — can turn their hobbies into careers and create jobs as their operations grow.

Leading the Artisan Center operation is Patricia Hawley, a former regional arts council program director and community volunteer. Hawley says the center offers clients an opportunity to focus on their work and learn the business skills they need to succeed. Hawley’s long-term vision for the Artisan Center is to add a culinary arts program.

Shortly after opening in November, the center welcomed its first client, Art Ah La Carte, a teaching art center that offers a variety of classes, including watercolor and acrylic painting, drywall art, beading, jewelry and junk art.

The Batavia Industrial Center — which opened in 1959 — is widely recognized as the world’s first business incubator.

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