The Goat Farm

A Westside art colony
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Mere miles from Downtown, the Goat Farm Arts Center, a Westside art colony, is a twelve-acre city within a city. The former nineteenth-century cotton gin factory is now the site of film screenings, theatrical performances, food truck festivals, and gallery shows and has its own coffee shop, organic farm, and resident dance troupe GloATL—and it all runs on the energy of 315 creatives working in close proximity. Here are a few of the dynamos.

Photograph by Alex Martinez

1. Chris Melhouse and business partner Anthony Harper are creating a new model for arts funding, with studio and loft apartment rent supporting on-site projects. “A real estate developer is not supposed to fall in love with a property,” says Harper. “We did.”

2. Not just a sanctuary for artists, the Goat Farm is also home to entrepreneurs like former ballerina Amy Osaba, who works with art director Erica Loesing, Maria Taylor, and Ginny Branch in a 1,400-square-foot floral design studio amid hydrangeas and vintage glassware.

3. Resident farmer Mark Field DiNatale supplies produce to residents and local CSAs at his on-site Fresh Roots Farm and does double duty as manager of the anti-Starbucks Warhorse, where artists and residents can read the latest issue of Monocle and grab a cappuccino.

4. Metal sculptor Corinna Sephora Mensoff works on commissions for venues like the Atlanta Botanical Garden from her “modern archaic” studio that fits in perfectly with the Goat Farm’s mix of urban grit and atmospheric vintage architecture.

Felicia Feaster is one of our editorial contributors.
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