Downtown Digs: Longfellow Playground
The KC Downtown Loop
Amanda and Scott Jolley • Longfellow Neighborhood
3 Bedrooms / 4 baths • 13,000 sf • Main flat built c. 1895
When Amanda and Scott Jolley departed the Nashville suburbs in 2000 to return to Kansas City, they had a clear preference for a vibrant, urban, and walkable neighborhood. Initially settling with their two now-grown children into a single-family home in Longfellow, as their professional, creative, and social needs for space expanded, they began seeking alternatives. Eager to remain in the Longfellow neighborhood, Scott noticed one day a “for sale” sign on a nearby building. Despite initial lack of responsiveness from the owner, the Jolleys’ persistence eventually led them to view the property and ultimately purchase it about seven years ago: A two-story flat with an attached commercial automotive garage and warehouse space.
The couple operates Scott Jolley Production Services, offering jib arm, steadicam, drone, camera, and editing services for the film, video, and television industries. Additionally, Amanda is a visual artist renowned for her work in encaustic and mixed media, among other processes. Their property, located near 31st and Gillham, encompasses approximately 13,000 square feet in total, with around 8,000 square feet serving as living-working-creating space for the Jolleys, while the remaining 5,000 square feet are leased to their woodworker friend Joe Milana.
Below is my conversation with Amanda and Scott regarding their home in south Downtown/Midtown:
KCDTL: Describe your home and work “complex” to someone who has never seen it….
Amanda: Our work/live space is not traditional. We’ve spread out in an old auto body shop and two-story flat that are all connected.
Scott: It’s a big playground.
KCDTL: Do you have names for the different buildings or spaces or rooms? For the “complex”?
Scott: Our [video] gear room is an old car-paint room. We call it “The Vault.” Then my side is “The Shop” and Amanda’s is “The Studio”.
Amanda: Studio Joy is “the studio,” and houses our band stage and crew dining table and is in the center of the complex. Our private living space is a portion of the 2nd floor in the flat.
KCDTL: What criteria did you have when you were looking for a home to buy?
Amanda: Initially [before purchasing the current property], we wanted to build a large garage and eventually build a studio/edit suite in the lot adjoining our traditional home. The combination of architect trouble and our neighbor’s hesitation in selling took us on a shopping journey. We wanted to remain in the city, but were grieving leaving our wonderful neighborhood. We looked in the West Bottoms, Columbus Park, the Crossroads, and Downtown proper, but each building we found fell short of our needs.
Scott: We needed room. The production business had expanded beyond what our last place could hold and Amanda had grown out of her tiny bedroom studio. I wanted a live/work space that I could pull a truck and trailer into.
KCDTL: What ultimately sold you on the buildings you bought and live in now?
Amanda: The buildings met every hope that we had, including remaining in our beloved Longfellow neighborhood. Now I just have to walk a few blocks to the east to harass my long time friends. We were bursting at the seams in our traditional home. This complex allowed for an expansion of our video production company and it gave me a hearty studio space.
KCDTL: What shape was your home in when you bought it? Major changes you’ve implemented?
Amanda: When we took ownership, all of the space was mostly functional, but none of it was feng shui or even remotely attractive. The buildings had been cobbled together and also maintained in the same manner, as cheaply as possible. We are fortunate that we are able to tackle issues of functionality and appearance as we have time rather than having to immediately dump a lot of cash in to make it workable. The first major upgrade beyond heating/cooling was the kitchen and bathroom on the 1st floor flat.
Scott: It was habitable but had not been taken care of very well. I shudder to think if we ever time traveled back to when we moved in. It is like an old ship that requires steady maintance and upgrades.
KCDTL: What are your favorite things about your home and work spaces?
Scott: I love what I do, so it is nice to slip in and out of work. I can be editing, then run down and play the drums for 15, and then wander on to some other project.
Amanda: Our lives have never had a tidy line between work and play, so I absolutely love the ability to be able to move from one focus to another without having to also move locations. I can be painting in my studio one moment and setting up a video production shoot the next without having to “go to work”. That is magic to me. Beyond that, I really enjoy all the landing places for community that we have in the buildings. We have the album station/potential hookah lounge [in Scott’s Shop area], the various napping couches (essential to any proper work), the drum kit and organ, the parking-lot fire pit, and the rooftop sunset perch.
KCDTL: How did you approach decorating your place?
Amanda: I approach decorating by letting Scott do it.
Scott: The Shop is a look inside my brain. Upstairs [in the living area] is a little more like an art gallery. My grandparents had this cool cabin full of interesting things. That style stuck with me.
KCDTL: Tell me about the murals on the outside of your buildings….
Amanda: The mural outside my studio was commissioned. Emily Elder Cramer, also a Longfellow resident, designed and painted it for me. She is amazing. The mural on the west side of the building and the George Floyd strip on the south side are done by Chico Sierra. And the corner piece is a collaboration of four artists as a memorial to those who have died in immigration detention centers, Chico Sierra, Isaac Tapia, Rodrigo Alvarez, and Jose Faus. [See images below]
KCDTL: Amanda, tell me more about using Studio Joy for workshops and other creative pursuits….
Amanda: On most days, the studio is my working studio for painting and such. But several times a year I host workshops with either a guest artist or myself as instructor. Most, but not all, workshops are centered around encaustic painting. I’m offering an asemic writing and encaustic workshop in March and have a guest artist from California teaching a three-day collage workshop in April. Pre-pandemic, I was hosting around six guest artists per year. The pandemic down time gave me space to re-evaluate how I wanted to spend my studio time, and I chose to focus on my own work, so I’m down to a couple guest artists per year. The guest instructors are by invitation only. I select artists that I want to study under or teaching artists whose work makes me swoon. I’ve found that those who register for the classes are about half local and half traveling in to Kansas City—including international travelers on occasion. The workshops sell out pretty quickly. I really look forward to them. There is a certain magic that happens with a gathering of artists.
KCDTL: I see lots of musical instruments. How does music play a role in your family and your living space?
Amanda: I was raised surrounded by instruments and learned to play the piano at a young age. As our kids were growing up, we found it important to introduce as many instruments as possible to them, so the gathering of instruments began. [Videographer/editor] Dave Simmons, who has an office in our building, is also a musician that plays in a few bands, so our mix of instruments makes for a great time. We don’t always sound great, but we do have a lot of fun.
Scott: We have carried Amanda’s childhood piano and my grandpa’s drums around for a long time. At the start of the pandemic, I began tinkering with them both. I also play guitar very badly. Playing is therapy to me. To sing out loud with no fear is a very liberating thing.
KCDTL: Were your kids grown up when you moved here, or were they still living at home? What’s it like for kids to live in the city?
One of our kids moved with us when we moved into our space and was here a couple years before moving into his own place. The other stayed in our traditional home with some roommates. We always joke that we are the ones who moved out when they grew up. Both currently live in Midtown by choice.
When we moved into Longfellow in 2000, there were very few kids in the neighborhood. The school systems has improved since that time, so now there are lots of children growing up in Longfellow.
KCDTL: What are your favorite things about where you are in the city?
Scott: Probably the same reasons I love India. It is a beautiful chaos. A wonderful mix of cultures and people. In Midtown, you can be yourself.
Amanda: The walkability of the neighborhoods surrounding our space, the close proximity to anywhere we need to go, the wonderful restaurants surrounding us, and since our move into the space, watching the vibrant art scene take off in the Tower East District.
Scott: During nice evenings we play King of the Hill” and sit in the driveway and play guitars. You never know who might stop and grab a chair.
KCDTL: What nearby spots feel like “my neighborhood” to you?
Scott: Longfellow has this amazing community garden. We have been in this zone for over 20 years. I know every crack in the dirty sidewalks of Broadway.
Amanda: You Say Tomato is the first place to come to mind. Established by our neighbors around 15 years ago, it quickly became the delicious meeting place for the neighborhood. Another wonderful spot is our neighborhood garden, Longfellow Farm, founded and operated by Ami Freeberg. A beautiful space for food and community has been cultivated on that farm.
KCDTL: What nearby places do you suggest to visitors to your neighborhood?
I host guest instructors for art workshops, so I have a list of my favorite galleries, shops and museums to visit. We always end up at the Kemper Museum and often the Nelson-Atkins contemporary wing. I try to plan the workshops on First Friday weekends so out of town guests have a fun night of wandering all the galleries in the Crossroads. Now that Urban Mining moved in a block away along with The Gathering Place and Populuxe, we walk to our shopping destinations. Another hot spot within walking distance for my artist friends is the Union Hill Cemetery.
KCDTL: Final thoughts?
Amanda: This neighborhood is diverse in all respects, so not everyone comes in a tidy bundle of outwardly having their lives together. We have houseless neighbors, neighbors that deal with mental illness, neighbors that keep very unique yards, we have actual graffiti and broken sidewalks. But these are actually things that I love about living Downtown. For the short time that we lived in the suburbs in Nashville, I found it easy to forget about that diversity, about the cultural and socio-economic differences of those who lived in other parts of the city. Downtown we are all living together and embracing one another in the best way we are able. Downtown we get to be ourselves with less pressure to conform to societal norms, and we support one another in that.
Scott: Midtown is certainly not for everyone but I love it.
MURAL IMAGES
I love Amanda’s quote: This neighborhood is diverse in all respects, so not everyone comes in a tidy bundle of outwardly having their lives together. We have houseless neighbors, neighbors that deal with mental illness, neighbors that keep very unique yards, we have actual graffiti and broken sidewalks. But these are actually things that I love about living Downtown. For the short time that we lived in the suburbs in Nashville, I found it easy to forget about that diversity, about the cultural and socio-economic differences of those who lived in other parts of the city. Downtown we are all living together and embracing one another in the best way we are able. Downtown we get to be ourselves with less pressure to conform to societal norms, and we support one another in that.
We live in Columbus Park and have taken an old warehouse and converted into our Loft home, as well… This perfectly sums up why we love living downtown so much.
In my opinion, Amanda and Scott are KC treasures. They are both very talented at what they do and they are really good people on top of that.