Owner Rebecca Zhukov originally went looking for a place to build a glassblowing studio. She ended up finding something much bigger. We sat down with her to talk about how Blackstone River Glass Center came to be, the community she's building around it, and why she calls what happens there “glass therapy.”
Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Rebecca: We came here looking to just build a glassblowing studio, and was not expecting to basically find this place. 20,000 square feet on a river. But here it was. And the price was good.
So we're super excited that we built a glass school, the only one in Rhode Island. And this school teaches all glass disciplines. Glassblowing, stained glass, fused glass and flame.
Rebecca: It keeps growing. We have a wonderful customer base. We have just tremendous support for this in our community, and we're trying to offer programs for teens and summer programs for teenagers. So we keep going with different curriculum. We offer over 30 classes right now.
Rebecca: This is a community studio, and we like to support everybody that's involved with our community here. The gift shop is work that is made by all of our residents, myself, a lot of our instructors. We like to have a place for everybody here to sell.
The glassblowing studio we rent to professional artists that don't have their own equipment. Plus we teach all our classes here over the weekends, and some workshops during the week.
Rebecca: The furnace is electric. It has some very large elements inside. Right now it's at 2,000 degrees, and it has a big ceramic crucible inside that holds 400 pounds of molten glass.
The flame working studio is where people get to work on a bench torch. It's very much like the glassblowing we have in the hot shop, except this is a miniature level.
Rebecca: I want customers to feel comfortable. I want them to feel like they're in a safe place. I want them to know it's okay to make mistakes, that this is art, but art for fun. It's art therapy, glass therapy.
We really want people to just be able to put down their phones and their tablets and come in, relax, enjoy themselves and make something fun.
Rebecca: I love it because everybody comes in never having done anything like this before, and they leave with a huge smile on their face. And that makes me really happy.
Rebecca: So we were approached by Mighty and excited by the opportunity to be able to share our studio with Mighty, because we're a little bit off the grid here. Not everybody knows that we're here.
Blackstone River Glass Center is a glass school and studio in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and one of the many small businesses Mighty helps. Every Mighty member gets an Authorized Mighty Rep, a real person who comes to your business in person. Find out more at joinmighty.com.
