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Meet Melissa Gibson Smith of Epiphany Space in Hollywood

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Gibson Smith.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Ten years ago, my screenwriter husband Bren and I left our vibrant artist community in the Big Apple to pursue film careers in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we arrived during the 2008 financial crisis and writer’s strike.

Unable to find employment, I volunteered with a couple of local nonprofits and began to discover the challenges that face LA’s creative and freelance community. It’s a stark contrast to where I’d been. In NYC, I could text friends across the city, and an hour later everyone would converge on a local dive or coffee shop to hang out and catch up. That never happens here. The sunshine and pace of life in LA is wonderful, but work schedules, geography, excessive traffic, and the exorbitant cost of living perpetuate a sense of isolation and disconnection to the most resilient of creators.

So, I began dreaming of a place where artists could gather, work on their own projects and be in an intentional life-giving community. I pictured a blend of an artist salon, coffee shop, writers room, and community center. I hadn’t heard about “coworking” at the time, but in researching how to talk about what I was seeing, I stumbled upon the coworking movement. I wrestled with whether or not I was just seeing the need or if there was a divine call to create it.

I had been a key player in starting multiple businesses for others but had not dreamed of venturing out on my own until it began haunting me in my dreams and waking hours. My dreams for Epiphany Space are enormous. I see a large theater and studio space hosting a vibrant multi-disciplinary community including film, theater, dance, music, and fine art. Various mediums of art and craft informing each other. Facility, talent, and resources being shared. Collaboration and encouragement, not toxic competition. Resources to help creatives to become healthy and thrive which will impact their art.

At the beginning, I started with what I had. Friends and I co-worked in each other’s apartments, and I began meeting with artists for coffee, hearing their stories, helping them process life and pain. I formed a 501c3 in 2010, with the help of friends and Legal Zoom. The big challenge for us was how to take Epiphany Space from a small community with limited funds to the step of obtaining property in expensive LA. I’m a big dreamer.

In the spring of 2013, while pregnant with our first child, I had a dream that my husband and I forgot we had a surrogate. In the dream, the surrogate was fully pregnant on the birthing table, and I was behind her fully pregnant holding her elbows. The dream ended with my husband, and I have two girls! I knew the dream was significant, but at the time I didn’t know the full meaning. A few months later, Ecclesia, our church community, called and asked if Epiphany Space would be interested in sharing a building with their office.

At seven months pregnant, I waddled through the building praying if this was the right step into a coworking and community space for us. This is not how I would have planned it, but the dream gave me the courage to move forward and accept the offer. We launched an Indigogo campaign that coincided with the due date of our daughter. The start-up budget we submitted when forming our 501c3 was $650k. This would have gotten us everything we needed.

However, the reality was that Epiphany Space had $2K in our bank account when I toured the new location, so we asked for $50K in our Indigogo campaign. We campaigned hard, our creative community and friends back home gave generously. On the due date, we had only raised $4,500. I sat in the rocking chair in my living room.

Uncomfortably tired with a swirl of thoughts and emotions flooding my being. We were moving forward. We had barely enough money to pay the first month’s rent, and I’d probably have to move most of the second-hand furniture from my home into space, but we were moving forward. An email from friends came through. They wrote to see how the campaign and I were doing.

I sent an emotional and rambling email to them. They were out of the country but responded a short time later letting me know that a check for $40K was on its way. They had set aside money a few years prior for a good cause, had heard about what we were doing and wanted to contribute, but the funds were not made available until that morning. I cried. I was completely overwhelmed, and it felt to me like God said, “You’ve done your part, now let me do mine.”

My daughter was born a few days later, and three days after her birth, we received the keys to our new space. Family members flew in, friends stepped up, and we transformed the rooms with paint and elbow grease. We made a few strategic purchases and scoured second-hand shops for furniture: Pirate Art Department, our set designer friends, created tables and a work bar. We launched less than a month later with Viola, our daughter, as our mascot.

I was surprised (and am now thankful), by how much forming and shaping was taking place in me in the midst of this journey to create and birth Epiphany Space. I learned to become a mother, a minister and a non-profit executive at the same time. I wrestled with having my daughter and the coworking community together but came to see her gift in inviting people in to the family of Epiphany Space. My unhealthy independence and perfectionism yielded to the refining of motherhood and learning to thrive with limited resources.

Please tell us about Epiphany Space.
Epiphany Space is an artist community and coworking space. Filmmakers, freelancers, and creatives gather together to co-work and collaborate. We have a song circle on Monday nights for musicians and larger monthly house concerts or open mics. We host storytelling events, workshops, and write-a-thons. Art shows and mixers take place in our gallery spaces, and we have production offices and meetings spaces.

Epiphany Space is a place where you matter regardless of what was in your bank account and your latest success or rejection. I love the people of Epiphany Space. They are kind, genuine and generous. When you gather artists together, there are a lot of diverse and strong opinions. We believe different things. We see the world and art through different perspectives. It is beautiful to see how space is made for people to be seen and heard.

How ideas spark creativity. How we courage each other to overcome our fears and take a risk. Epiphany Space is a non-profit. Although good financial stewardship is important, we are not driven by the “bottom line” as many for-profits are. Instead, we can focus on people and our core values of Community, Creativity, Collaboration, and Breakthrough. Our community’s success and flourishing is our success.

We are incredibly thankful to our partners and patrons of the arts and volunteers who partner with us in helping us to maintain an affordable space for creatives.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of my favorite memories from childhood was playing in the hut behind my best friend Jenifer’s house. It was a rustic 10’x12’ hut that had been used over the years for goats and chickens and was converted into our playhouse.

Inspired by Little House on the Prairie and stagecoach movies, we turned the hut into everything from a ranch house to a store, while wearing in long denim skirts and boots.

We hung old sheets from the rafters to create “rooms” inside the hut, banned plastic and toted buckets of water from the spigot down to the hut for gardening, washing and creating mud pies and stew.

Pricing:

  • Coworking Membership: $200 monthly, $75 per week, $20 per day
  • Space Rental: $35-100/hour depending on use

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Erin Brown Thomas, Mondo Scott, Melissa Smith

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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