Award raises Steel Yard’s profile, grant potential

Nicolas Bauta co-founded the Steel Yard in Providence with Clay Rockefeller. The redeveloped steel-fabrication facility, which serves as a campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing, recently nabbed a silver Ruby Bruner Award for Urban Excellence and is the venture for which Bauta is best known.
Anne-Marie Lubenau, director of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence for the Bruner Foundation in Cambridge, Mass., describes the Steel Yard as a bustling, creative center that bridges industry and the traditional arts.
Also a sculptor, a former real estate developer, and self-described “creative entrepreneur,” Bauta has several other “irons in the fire” entrepreneurially, including his newest project, Fete, a live-music venue in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood, and a new venture, SymBionX, in development.

PBN: You identify as an artist first and an entrepreneur second. Why is the identity of sculptor so important?
BAUTA: Sculpture has always been my passion. I discovered it at Rhode Island School of Design when I took my first 3-D class. The entrepreneurial part of my life has all been a means to the end of supporting myself as an artist. I asked myself: What do I need as an artist to be here – an affordable place to live, a studio I can continue growing with; a good place to converse and work with contemporaries; a place that’s sociable to meet new people. The real estate I started with, Firehouse 13, was my first foray into being an owner, then a business owner. It took me away from my passion for a while, but I’ve been building a very good skill set for my sculpture.

PBN: You founded the Steel Yard in 2001, with Clay Rockefeller, repurposing an industrial complex as a nonprofit to help artists teach one another in the industrial arts. What’s the relationship like? BAUTA: There were a myriad of problems the Steel Yard had to overcome in order to arrive at where it is now. Drake Patten was the director and she handled the bulk of the issues which revolved around environmental concerns and fundraising. Clay is a great people person and I’m a very interested facilities guy. I was interested in the Steel Yard for selfish reasons: I needed a big challenge, the need for platforms for the arts to come together. And that’s when it really dawned on me what we were doing. Clay is an amazing collaborative and community activist. He continues to collaborate with people. While I was looking for a bigger shop, after meeting Jane Jacobs, the author of “The Commons,” a book about revitalizing neighborhoods, I realized the importance and need for it here in Providence.

PBN: What does the Bruner award mean to The Steel Yard?
BAUTA: What we did [was] preserve the history of a place … that built a lot of Providence while changing its function from fabrication to a teaching facility, and cleaned it up environmentally. We also provide an opportunity to learn the skills and tools of the industrial arts at a very low cost. We will now hopefully be awarded more grants because we have such a prestigious award under our belt. Having a good grant writer is essential to The Steel Yard but the Bruner Award people did a lot of onsite gathering of information on their own. It shows that we present very well in person. Grant writing is a big part of the future moving forward for the Steel Yard. It is a big facility and our classes and public projects only go so far in supporting it.

PBN: What does the future hold for the nonprofit?
BAUTA: Our comprehensive plan to develop an anchor in the back, we’ve called it many different things, but it’s set up for shipping-container studios to be built. So the more capital we can raise, the more we can help incubate more work space for individuals and nonprofits, groups or collectives. The board of directors is always looking to become stronger. There are two people stepping off the board currently. We have some positions to fill. That’s how a good nonprofit board grows, by having good board members.

PBN: What is Fete and what are your hopes for its future?
BAUTA: It’s a live-music venue for [slightly less than] a thousand people with state-of-the-art sound at 103 Dike St. [near] Olneyville Square. It’s about the experience of music. Music is the strongest of the arts; it’s the most supported as well. My company, Art Recreation Center, develops real estate for the arts. Fete gives a musician a pedestal: the stage and a microphone to amplify what he has to say, so it’s a great platform to inspire. And it’s become an anchor institution for the arts in Olneyville Square. I’m putting a greenhouse on the roof and will grow the vegetables for a pizza parlor in the club that hopefully will be open by spring.

PBN: What, if you can say, is in development?
BAUTA: There’s a new product and new company we’re bringing to market: It’s a stone-coating company called SymBionX. It changes how we will make things in the future and it’s a disruptive technology that can be applied to just about anything. It’s lightweight, fireproof and a revolutionary product. It would be used for my bartops; it’s good for floors, walls and countertops. I don’t know how much I can give away but we’re getting some different patents for products in the pipeline and getting set up with our production facility in the Promenade district. •

INTERVIEW
Nicolas Bauta
POSITION: Co-founder of the Steel Yard, principal and CEO of Firehouse 13, principal and president of Fete and president and CEO of the Art Recreation Center
BACKGROUND: Bauta is a sculptor and entrepreneur. His first love, sculpting, has led to a multifaceted career in running businesses while developing his artistic calling, which he continues to hone.
EDUCATION: Bachelor of fine arts, Rhode Island School of Design, 1999
FIRST JOB: Refinishing sculptures on a horse farm for the Edelman family in Fairfield, Conn.
RESIDENCE: Providence
AGE: 37