Hi friends.

My name is Jess Wagner. I am a local business owner, most know me as "Jess Wagner Art." I'm a local muralist and artist who has painted some public murals, has a traffic box with my art on it, teaches paint nights and workshops at some of our beloved breweries and coffee shops, and has participated in countless local and regional art markets and fairs.

In 2022 myself and a few friends hosted a small art market on small business Saturday. We focused on sustainability and handmade art. The response was insane for this little market and I decided to pursue this further.

In 2023, I organized 3 art markets under my previous business name. We hosted these in the parking lot of a local business(and one off site in the winter). Our anonymous surveys showed that artist's loved our community and had very successful booths. The crowd that came for every market was huge and supportive. I personally had some of my best days of sales ever at these markets.

After the second market I thought about opening a retail space for our collective, and separating it from my tiny art business. Without the funding, I knew this would be difficult, so we reached out to another local business.

It's then that we decided to collaborate with that same business and operate a small pop up. We first started within that business, and with about 20 local and regional artists. We then had the opportunity to move into a larger space, but still be co owned with that business. As you can imagine, retail is a very risky endeavor and so this partnership seemed ideal. We opened officially in mid-November 2023 and had two extremely successful months for a brand new business.

In January, we started using our space to host art classes and markets. These would sell out, showing a need for this space. This was always the plan, to have a community space for artists to teach classes, and for us to sell work.

In January we also got the news that this arrangement was no longer working out. The plan was always to branch out and find a new place, the plan was NOT to have to do this so early on. We never got to become our own entity because we believed in this collaboration. Sagebrush never had a chance to be its own business, because we wanted to help this business and collaborate. Unfortunately, the time for Sagebrush to be on our own has come and we are not ready.

When we announced our closing, the community wanted to help. We were asked how.

I am a small artist, I do not have the funds to secure a location on my own after all of the time, money and work that went into building this space. But I do have the business experience, and drive, to make Sagebrush work.

I think Sagebrush can survive if we can crowd fund funds to help secure a new location and collaborate together.

Sagebrush has helped numerous new artists grow, Sagebrush has helped artists sell their work, Sagebrush was a community gathering place and was just starting to get footing.

I think with the right help, and the right team, Sagebrush can survive.

The funds we raise will be used to move into a new place, and secure rent for at least a year. The funds will also be used to purchase a new POS system as ours is currently integrated with our former business partners. We have thrifted all of displays and decor and believe in sustainability so anything else that would be needed for this new space would also be secondhand. We are a consignment based business, so inventory costs are not an issue.