Most people familiar with the local arts scene know Stacey Von Busch. Since moving to the Green Bay area in 2012, she has been an accomplished artist, one of the founders of the local nonprofit Sage and, for the past few years, executive director of the Pulaski Area Chamber of Commerce.
Although her siblings chose conventional careers, she said she has always been somewhat unconventional.
“In my family I am the jack of all trades,” Von Busch said. “I have been wandering throughout my life.”
She spent the first 15 years of her life in Nebraska where she was raised in a family of farmers. Her grandmother influenced an early love of the arts.
“She was always putting some sort of art supply in front of me like paints or a sewing machine,” she said. “I took to the sewing machine.”
She was a creative person at heart. Yet, as her family moved to Iowa and she graduated from high school, Von Busch felt unsettled. She started college in Iowa, transferred to a school in Montana, and finally graduated from Concordia University with a degree in psychology and behavioral science.
With that degree, she chose a traditional career and spent years working in the food and beverage industry in Lincoln, Nebraska. The next move was to Indiana where she worked as a banquet manager, and between 2012 and 2014, had three children. When it became challenging for her and her husband to work at demanding careers and raise their young children, the decision was made for her to become a stay-at-home mom.
“I went from working 60-hour weeks to staying home and I thought I needed to do something that would help me maintain my personal worth and value,” she said.
That led back to creative endeavors. While still in Indiana, there was a farmers market she began to sell at. Utilizing her skills at sewing, she made bibs, burp cloths, quilts, and baby toys. In doing so and looking at the number of people at the market who were doing the same thing, she realized how little she was being paid for her effort.
She said, “I knew my cost percentages from working in the food and beverage industry, and I learned that something that is very labor intensive like a quilt doesn’t fetch the price you need it to for the time it takes.”
Shortly after that experience, her husband was transferred and they relocated to De Pere. Von Busch continued to try to find a balance between work and motherhood. Because she still had the inventory from the Indiana farmers market, she decided to sell locally.
The first event was at a retirement community in Green Bay. Although it wasn’t a big success in terms of sales, Von Busch said it was a turning point in learning about the culture and identity of Green Bay. The other sellers brought her up-to-date on the best shows to attend.
“What got my foot in the door was signing up for the Appleton winter farmers market during the 2014-15 season. I stayed with them through the summer and started making more items from repurposed fabrics; everything from baby bibs to T-shirts. My items had a folk-art feel and appealed to the more wholistic mothers,” she said.
But she still found that she wasn’t being adequately compensated for the amount of time it took to make them.
She added, “There is so much labor involved in being a vendor and when we are trying to set an hourly wage, we aren’t factoring in labor costs, the hours spent selling at a market, and the time it takes to set up and tear down. I knew I had to pivot somehow.”
That pivot came when a Facebook follower asked if she could make a memory bear, a stuffed animal made with the fabrics or clothing of a loved one. She agreed and it was a success. It wasn’t long before other Facebook followers also wanted one and Von Busch began to work entirely on commission.
People would book a space on her calendar up to three months in advance. At the peak, she was filling 75 spots every quarter. It was perfect; she had all the work she could handle and was making a fair price. Then, almost overnight, it changed. After years of success, her Facebook page was hacked and the customers disappeared.
She said she learned a hard lesson, “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”
Although her business never fully recovered, it has picked up again. But she feels the burnout of having to prove herself all over. Addressing burnout among small business owners and artists is one of the things she focuses on as executive director of the Pulaski Area Chamber of Commerce.
“I have set a number of goals for the chamber to advance public policy around the arts and health,” she said. “The knowledge that art impacts the quality of life and to address loneliness; to be a catalyst of sorts to bring organizations together. At the end of the day, we are here for the betterment of the community.”
And, to accomplish that, she has also put her time into other areas. In 2017, she was walking around at the Farmers Market on Broadway and saw a need to start a place where other artists and creative people could connect. She met two others that day who had the same passion, and at a meeting at a local coffee café, SAGE was formed.
Now a nonprofit, SAGE (Share, Accept, Grow, Encourage) has grown and evolved. Its mission is to build a thriving ecosystem for the arts in Brown County. There are regular programs and get-togethers where opportunities are shared and programming is led by local artists. Peer-to-peer mentorship, as it applies to entrepreneurship in the arts, is also available.
Von Busch said, “When I started working in the heart of Pulaski, I realized that we needed an organization that served all of the communities in Brown County. Currently SAGE hosts events in Pulaski and Green Bay.”
Taking part in SAGE is free, but there is a need for grants. Currently, she said, Wisconsin ranks 48th of the 50 states in providing grants for the arts. She devotes time to trying to identify a business model that would allow artists to make a living wage; similar to what Ireland does in offering a monthly stipend so that artists can create art and contribute more to their communities.
She said art helps mental, social, and physical well-being. It activates the brain to think; even when the person interacting with it did not create it. SAGE is a big part of that, and attendance at events allows that interaction. One event, the fourth annual Green Bay Zine Spectacular, set for Aug. 8 at the Brown County Central Library, will provide an outlet for every person to be creative.
Von Busch, who says she understands the value of storytelling, uses zines to tell those stories.
She said, “I talk to strangers and they are comfortable telling me their stories. I can use a single sheet of folded paper and copy it or use a local printer to make a booklet to share those stories. That is a zine.”
This creativity is part of what defines Von Busch. There are memory bears and other artistic endeavors, teaching classes, being an artist in the park at Titletown, volunteering with SAGE, and serving the Pulaski community that keep her life very busy. As she also works on obtaining a master’s degree, she doesn’t set solid goals for the future.
“I will go wherever the wind takes me,” she said. “Regardless of where that is, I know that I want to be an outspoken advocate for the incorporation of arts into our everyday lives.”
Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt is co-owner of DB Commercial Real Estate in Green Bay and past district director for SCORE, Wisconsin.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Stacey Von Busch works to improve arts in the greater Green Bay area
Reporting by Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt, For Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt, For Green Bay Press-Gazette | USA TODAY Network
