Buffalo Rising Online

Nathan Naetzker said, "The only thing worse than being a painter, is being a poet." This was his off the cuff response to the lifestyle of his past. "I've spent a lot of time in places from San Francisco to Brooklyn where I was forced to wash my dishes in the tub. Dirty places where security and was an issue and doors and windows didn't meet."

Not so now. "I feel like I died and went to heaven," Naetzker says of his new apartment in Artspace, the year-old, Midtown Buffalo artist's residence that consists of 36 units in the Breitweiser Building at 1219 Main Street, as well as 24 new builds behind it. With nearly 30 projects either completed or underway nationally, Artspace has become America's leading nonprofit real estate developer for the arts.

Naetzker, who paints in a variety of styles from abstract to realist, said that when he first saw Artspace he was awestruck and didn't feel worthy. "It's cra…