Molly Taylor is making something.
The musician and jewelry designer stands at the drill press, making a pair of earrings under her jewelry brand, Beneath the Bark. She has chosen the perfect scrap of wood from one of the milk crates she keeps in a corner of the shop, and is hollowing out a circle in it.
As 225 details in the cover story for the current issue, Taylor and her partner, Andrew Moran, are part of a growing subculture of indie makers that is changing Baton Rouge into an artistic hub.
Their shared workspace is the ground floor of the historic Book Exchange building on 19th Street that Moran bought, renovated and repurposed, constructing a two-bedroom apartment above it by hand.
“I feel like Mid City is going to be an artist community,” Taylor says. “Three years from now, when you say, ‘I live in Mid City,’ people are going to automatically think of color and art and bikes.”
They’re the poster children of Baton Rouge’s growing subculture: a “maker’s village,” pockets of indie makers, small businesses and ambitious creatives filling close-knit neighborhoods and supporting one another, tied together by walkable and bikeable streets. And they’re just getting started.
Taylor grabs coffee with her mentor Madeline Ellis of Mimosa Handcrafted, another established maker.
Formerly a landscape architect, Ellis first got into jewelry-making to scratch an itch. She left her job to pursue Mimosa in 2013, and she now operates her business out of a studio behind her home, tucked just away from the Perkins Road overpass.
In just a few years, she has grown a hobby into a full-time job for both herself and her husband, shipping pieces out for retail as far as Georgia.
“Finding out that you’re not alone,” Ellis says, “finding other people like [you], thanks to social media and doing arts markets and pop-ups—it’s been encouraging and exciting. … We all support each other, and it feels like the old days.”
