No Hate, Only Love

As a live-music loving kid, I once dreamed about living at my favorite venue and how amazing it would be. I imagined waking up, and just having to go downstairs to see live music and bands.

Monika Maddux and her family are living that dream. They reside upstairs in a historic house that is also a thriving all-ages venue. The big yellow house in Riverside is as unique as it is community oriented. It is called MONIKAHOUSE.

Monika is a Wichita native that grew up as an artist always struggling to break into the local art scene. When she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, she saw many of her peers struggling to find a place to grow and show their work.

“I just saw so many of my comrades floundering and not being able to have a studio or the materials and tools they needed to pursue [art],“ said Monika.

In her eyes, Wichita had a void that needed to be filled with opportunity and support. In 2004 Monika wrote a business plan for a community center that would give artists access to tools, studio space and retail space. She launched No Craft Left Behind, a nonprofit organization that would serve this need in the Wichita artist community, but she would wait nearly a decade for the opportunity to acquire the physical community center she envisioned.

The historic house at 1121 N. Bitting, now known as MONIKAHOUSE, began as the first home built in the Riverside neighborhood in the 1800s, said Jarrod Maddux, Monika’s husband and partner. The house has three floors, a basement and a wine cellar, with over 5000 square feet of internal space and ponds in the backyard. Monika said she remembers visiting the house when her mother would service the grounds as a master landscaper. Jarrod remembered this Riverside home being a common topic of conversation since it was also the house across the street from where his former band would practice. When the last resident owner put the big yellow house up for sale, someone else snatched it up. Monika believed the house was lost to them forever.

Then life happened and Monika focused on her family, graduate school and other projects. As a large-scale sculptor and installation artist, Monika needs plenty of space to exhibit her pieces; that can be hard to locate when you don’t own a gallery, Monika said. When the time came for Monika to put together a senior thesis project for the culmination of her master’s degree, she envisioned using an entire house to build a life-sized dollhouse that would both serve as a display and an experience for viewers. As good fortune would have it, the owners of the big yellow house on Bitting Street in Riverside were also interested in selling it.

“We came across a nonprofit that was using this house and asked if we could use it or possibly buy it,” Monika recalled.

At the end of 2018, Monika and Jarrod acquired the home and transformed it into the capstone art exhibit of Monika’s collegiate career. The art installation was open to the public in April 2019 and saw thousands of visitors, said Monika. A tour of the exhibit can still be viewed at https://monikastocktonmadd.wixsite.com/monikahouse

After the art exhibition closed, Monika and Jarrod began working to bring their vision of an artists’ community center to fruition. An unexpected event would alter that trajectory and put them on the path toward MONIKAHOUSE’s current iteration.

“Some friends lost their space for their band’s performance and we had space here so we cleared out a room for people to watch and we hosted our first live music event. We didn’t even have a stage or anything.” Monika said.

Monika and Jarrod, the bass player for the local band Sproke, began to transform their vision for the community center by imagining they could expand to supporting both musicians and visual artists.

Then COVID shut everything down.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Monika recalls.

Those times were very uncertain and the big yellow house is large and expensive to maintain, so Monika and Jarrod decided to consolidate their expenses and move their family into the venue to weather the storm.

“We moved into the second floor so we could keep operating out of the first floor. We didn’t really know if people were going to come back,” Monika said.

After 18 months, MONIKAHOUSE reopened with an all-ages goth dance party that moved from its previous venue due to age restrictions. Monika said this reinforced her belief that there was a tremendous need in Wichita for a place open to young people and adults looking for an alternative to the bar scene; a place where parents can bring their young children to enjoy live music together.

Today, MONIKAHOUSE is more than a venue; it is a movement. In a social media video, Jarrod stands onstage joyfully proclaiming into a microphone to a crowd of excited onlookers, “We built this for you.” The crowd responds back with equally enthusiastic revelry.

MONIKAHOUSE is governed by a philosophy of inclusion that extends beyond genres and subcultures.

“If you are brave enough to put yourself out there, we will help you,” Monika said.

From a full-scale recording studio to a crowded festival venue, to an artist gallery, MONIKAHOUSE serves Wichita as an incubator for visual and musical artists to grow and thrive.

“We’re not here to make money; the vibe here is not capitalist driven,” said Monika.

Her goal is to make MONIKAHOUSE a self-sufficient community center that can be run by the community that is building it.

“Nobody does anything like this alone; it takes a village,” Jarrod said, “you just got to go and do it and people will help.”

MONIKAHOUSE hosts events every week including live shows, art exhibits, live art demonstrations, band practice, open mic, goth dance nights, and several large festivals throughout the year. Visit 1121 N. Bitting in Riverside or IG @monikahouse.events for details.