Madison’s venue and art gallery Arts + Literature Laboratory has a unique program to support Madison artists. Much like Community Supported Agriculture programs, in which shareholders invest in a local farm and receive shares of fruits and vegetables, the CSArt program at the Arts and Literature Lab invites shareholders to invest directly in a group of ten artists, selected by a curatorial board through an open call process. Those artists receive a stipend to create 60 pieces of art, and shareholders who pay into the program receive one piece of locally-produced artwork from each of those artists.

The program is now in its second year, and has a whole new batch of artists. Joining Friday Buzz host Jonathan Zarov in the studio are two of the artists, Leslie Iwai and Derrick Buisch, as well as the coordinator of the program, Simone Doing.

Derrick Buisch is a Professor at UW Madison’s Art Department, where he teaches classes on painting and color theory. His practice focuses on abstract painting informed by ordinary, everyday visual information. The major concentration in this body of work is the development of an idiosyncratic, abstract visual language. Leslie Iwai is a Middleton-based artist whose artwork inhabits the space between architecture, sculpture and performance. She creates work that exists spatially with an emphasis in installation, sculpture, and design.