My Biz: Creating a place where people can create

CEDAR RAPIDS — It’s not often the name of a business, but “liminality” describes its owners’ goals.

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“Liminality is an in-between,” Missa Coffman said. “It’s a transitional space. That in-between is where the magic happens.”

Coffman and Marios Liolios opened Tree of Liminality in mid-June, down the street from the NewBo Market where Coffman was artist in residence for 15 months.

The house where they opened their business, 1301 Third St. SE, was renovated after the 2008 flood. Its first-floor parlor and kitchen now host visual art, and a stairwell became the Staircase Gallery featuring works of featured artists.

The couple’s larger goal is for the house to become a place to encourage new local artists and interest in their work.

“I want to make this a destination for people to come and experience things, even if they just want to sit down and talk about their artwork and bounce off ideas with us,” Liolios said.

“Our art table is always open for people to sit down and muse,” Coffman said. “We’ve got a typewriter that’s always available.”

If you visit, you may find Coffman at one of the vintage typewriters Liolios has accumulated and repaired, composing a poem for a passerby — “poetry busking,” she calls it.

“It’s just something I wanted to try, to write on a topic of your choice,” Coffman said. “People loved it, and we loved doing it. It had initially been a plan to do it for a weekend and try it out. It was just so much fun that we kept going.”

Customers pay what they decide is a fair price for a poem, crafted while they wait.

“My goal is 15 minutes, but you get a better poem if you have 20 (minutes),” Coffman said.

Artist in residence

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Coffman, 46, and Liolios, 49, met at the University of Houston, where they were studying photography. Liolios grew up in Houston, the son of immigrants from Greece. Coffman grew up in the Midwest, including about four years when her family lived in Cedar Rapids.

“I went to Bowman Woods Elementary School, and I can’t remember the name of the middle school,” she said. “We moved to Texas after that.”

A sister tipped Coffman and Liolios, who had earned graduate degrees and were teaching at Central Michigan University, to NewBo Markets’ search for an artist in residence.

“My sister lives here, and she told me about the position. She said ‘I think this would be perfect for you,’ ” she said. “I read the description and I thought, ‘This is all the things I love to do.’ ”

Taking the position in early 2023, Coffman found a community looking for its place.

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“I noticed people were making things at the market,” Coffman said. “They would bring their sketchbooks, they would bring their laptops. They were already doing creative things, and we had projects at the space where people were invited to contribute or to come make things with us.”

That led to production of a ’zine, Market as the Muse. Once a staple of indy record shops and pop-culture fandom, the ‘zine — an independent, small circulation print format — may seem to have declined with the internet.

But Coffman and Liolios see younger readers seeking a physical publication.

“I thought we should just aggregate all of this and do a publication and make it available to everyone, just to celebrate all the creativity happening here,” Coffman said.

Creating a business

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NewBo’s role as a small-business incubator helped them transition to owning their own standalone business.

“We were fortunate enough to have the people at NewBo provide us the resources for people that knew about marketing and the business side of things,” Liolios said.

In addition to original paintings, prints, greeting cards and other art, the new business offers photo printing, matting and mounting, restoration, and retouching, as well as editing, design and publishing services.

The house is also the new home of the Farmhouse Art Collective, the nonprofit artists’ group the couple helped launch while living and teaching in Michigan.

“We’re hoping to build upon that and establish Farmhouse as a bigger organization,” said Liolios.

It’s all still a work in progress.

“We really love working with CSPS and NewBo City Market,” Coffman said. “We want to continue having events with them, but I would like to have us reach out more.

“We’re interested in having it be not only a place for professional artists and educators but just for normal people, people in the community who may not have access to the same resources and the same opportunities.”

Know a business that should be considered for a “My Biz” feature? Let us know by emailing mary.sharp@thegazette.com.