Fire Escape opens doors to creativity, paints, and goats

Fire Escape Pottery Studio is usually filled with the sounds of ceramic projects clinking, brushes dragging across wooden boards, and families and friends chatting while working on their painted masterpieces. During the afternoon of February 23, however, this soundtrack was livened up considerably with the bleats of newborn goats and the ooh-ing and aww-ing of enchanted customers waiting their turn to cuddle with the animal guests. Paint with Goats, a recurring event at Fire Escape, provides visitors with the opportunity to get quality time with animals and express themselves through new creative mediums. 

Fire Escape employee Morgan Jones enjoys the furry friends’ presence and the delight gleaming off visitors.

“My favorite thing is just seeing people’s faces when they get to see the little goats,” she said. “They’re just born, and they’re learning how to walk, and it’s just very cute. A lot of people are like, ‘Wow, this goat is gonna be jumping over to us,’ so they’re very excited to see this different animal they don’t see all the time and to have an intimate connection with it.”

During the event, customers have the option of painting a specialty goat board or choosing their own project from the wide array of mugs, plates, figurines, and other ceramics offered at Fire Escape. To help support their goat farm partner, the business charges clients to reserve spots at the event and gives a share of profits to their goat provider, but Fire Escape owner Rebecca Graf tries to keep the event highly accessible.

“There’s the cost to come in, but you don’t have to paint a huge thing,” she said. “We don’t sit here and go, ‘You’ve got to spend this much.’ We just want people to come in and enjoy it.”

Paint with Goats is a favorite among the business’s regular patrons and a draw for first-time customers like Oshkosh resident Ann Knol. Knol, who moved to Oshkosh last November, appreciates how the event helped her feel more connected with the community and plans to visit Fire Escape again.

“It’s pretty rare for me to paint,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here without the goats on the scene, but I’m glad to come here. They’re amazing.”

Thanks to the use of artificial insemination by the farm that provides goats for this event, Fire Escape is able to carefully coordinate the arrival of the newborns. Though they began advertising the event several weeks before it took place, the goats were less than a day old when they were brought to the business. Graf likes how this makes them ideal for cuddling and passing between customers.

“They all sit on the humans’ laps,” she said. “They really don’t like walking on the ground here because it’s slippery, so they kind of do the Bambi push-out.”

Caitlyn, a regular patron of Fire Escape, was excited to come to her first special event at the business.

“It’s soothing, in the same way that sometimes college campuses will bring dogs in during finals week,” she said. “Just connection with any type of animal, especially like baby animals—baby goats, puppies, whatever. It’s a new experience, and I think it gives you a boost of happiness and interest and joy.”

While she values the chance to use painting as a creative outlet, Knol reflects that the highlight of the event for her was getting to hold one of the goats. 

“It was heaven,” she said. “I told my husband; I want a goat. In fact, I asked them how much they cost, but they said they aren’t for sale.”

Paint with Goats draws upwards of 60 customers, creating chaos during the event. However, Jones notes that the animals tend to have a calming effect on painters and fill the studio with a joyful atmosphere.

“Sometimes people are a little nervous to do art, just because they don’t know what they’re doing,”  she said. “It’s nice to have the other outlet where you can calm yourself down because you can hold this goat for a little bit. Especially if you’re a person who paints way faster than your partner that you’re with; it’s not like you’re sitting there and just doing nothing. You have this nice goat to interact with, and it’s just something different.”

Caelyn, a painter at Paint with Goats, valued the opportunity to practice self-care by coming to the event. She was amazed when the goats arrived at the studio.

“I squealed,” she said. “I was really excited. They’re so tiny, I couldn't believe they were only 12 to 24 hours old.”

To many, it is not intuitive that painting pottery and petting goats would be compatible activities, and several painters at the event were surprised when they first learned of this opportunity. However, Paint with Goats is a long-standing tradition.

“Nine years ago, soon after we opened, we did our first Paint with Goats,” Graf said. “We had adult goats, and we hated it because they’re naughty. So, we went to baby goats, lost our first baby goat lady, and then we had to find a new one. We’ve been with Becky Mills out of Winneconne probably for at least six or seven years now.”

Goats are just one of many animals that the Oshkosh community has the opportunity to meet at Fire Escape. Among the animals that have been hosted by the pottery studio are puppies, sheep, a unicorn, and Graf hopes to expand this repertoire by bringing in bunnies for Easter. 

“We’ve probably done over 120 paintings with animal events,” she said. “We do them for the non-profits, like Sandy Paws and Wild and Free. We’ve done the Humane Society. The zoo brought a bunch of animals in.”

Fire Escape’s partnership with these groups reflects its vital role in the Oshkosh community. Jones believes that the business provides a unique opportunity for people to connect with one another and share moments of joy.

“You may connect with your family members here, or you may sit with some random people because we're so busy that we have to share tables, and then you just made new friends,” she said. “It’s nice that you get to do the art and hone in on new skills, or learn that you can be more artistic than what you think, but you’re also like connecting with the other people.”

At the heart of Fire Escape’s mission is helping families, friends, and fellow painters feel closer to one another. Graf works diligently to remind her work team of this journey.

“I always tell my employees when I hire them, it’s really not about the piece,” she said. “It’s the memory the piece brings to them. It’s seeing the piece, remembering they sat around as a family or a group or a couple, and that’s what they painted. The joy it brought them, the conversation, the bonding time; it’s all about that warm feeling.”

Caelyn recognizes that art creates a valuable opportunity to connect with others and embrace imperfection.

“Besides the creative aspect of it, trying something new is good for you because it pushes your boundaries, and it allows you to learn more about yourself,” she said.

Caitlyn believes that Fire Escape and Paint with Goats in particular offer a vital resource to promote mental and emotional health and practice self-care.

“I think it’s really important because there’s a lot of things that art can express that words can’t,” she said. “I think that it also provides a really great way to take care of yourself to just set aside time to relax, be creative, do something like painting.”

by Aria Boehler

Published March 17th, 2025

Oshkosh West Index Volume 121 Issue VI