It’s just after 5 p.m. on a school night at The Bodgery, located within the old Oscar Mayer campus on Madison’s north side. The makerspace is co-hosting December’s Art Party Happy Hour, a monthly gathering held on Tuesday evenings at different venues around the city. Primarily an event for creatives to inspire and support each other, tonight’s happy hour has two bonus features: a tour of the 21,000-square-foot workshop filled with tools for woodworking, metalwork and more, led by Bodgery co-founder John Eich, and a chili cookoff, which accounts for the tasting-size styrofoam cups people are carting around while they mingle.
Samantha Crownover, executive director of Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, and Oscar Mireles, executive director of Omega School and a former Madison poet laureate, are the co-founders of the parties.
Mireles says he and Crownover did not know each…
