By AARON MUELLER
aaron@offthewater.com

Things are heating up at Water Street Glassworks, a glass and metal works art school and gallery in the Benton Harbor art district.

After adding metal work classes a year ago, the business is expanding even more, as it gains in popularity in the area and gains respect at a regional and even national level.

Water Street Glassworks, 140 Water St., will be opening a retail gallery and gelato ice cream shop in May called Water Street GelatoWorks in its second storefront next door.

“It’s a new kind of social enterprise for us,” executive director Dorris Akers said. “We will run a retail facility to help support our programs and to fill a need in the arts district for an ice cream shop.”

The retail gallery will allow Water Street’s teenage students in the Fired Up! program to sell their work and learn about the business side of art.

“We will sell the art of the students, and they will actually have paying jobs in the shop,” Akers said.

The new business will also open several jobs for people to work in the gelato ice cream shop.

Fired Up!, a non-profit program that has served 88 teenage students since it began in 2004, was named one of the top 50 after-school arts programs in the country by The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

The benefits of the program for the teenagers are numerous.

“Teachers tell us that their students immediately focus better in school once they start Fired Up!,” she said. “They’ve also become a part of a family – the Fired Up! family. We celebrate their birthdays. We take them on field trips. And we praise their work.”

The classes in glass-blowing, bead-making and glass-fusing meet once a week after school at the professional studio and are free to the students.

“It’s one day a week, but they beg us to come in more,” Akers said.

Budget constraints keep the school from expanding the Fired Up! classes to two days a week. It costs $1,200 per student to run the program.

Shickereiya Wells, one of the Fired Up! students, said the program has allowed her to find hidden talents.

“It makes me see my inner creativity,” she said. “It makes me happier, because I can do something unusual and fun.”

Quinshon Evans, 13, started the program in the fall because he had an interest in art, and his instructors say he has flourished.

“It used to take me three to four class hours to make one of these,” he said, pointing to a colorful glass-fusing piece. “Now I can do one in 30 minutes. I love art, and this gives me more experience with glass. We never get to do this kind of stuff in school.”

But the learning goes beyond the hands-on classes. Last year six students were commissioned to help produce 32 Italian glass mosaic panels installed in Jean Klock Park. Students also had the opportunity to visit Toledo Glass Pavilion, where they were publicly recognized as glass artists.

Water Street isn’t just limited to youth though, as it has dozens of classes for adults. In the January through March semester, 52 classes were available – 35 of them brand-new.

“The interest is growing,” Akers said. “The facelift, the revitalization of Main Street and the streets of the art district has had a very positive impact on traffic.”

Water Street also has a gallery to display the work of staff and students as well as professional guest artists from throughout the Midwest. The staff often gives live demonstrations as well.

Akers believes the development of Water Street Glass Works and other businesses in the art district is a big positive in a community struggling financially.

“The arts add to the quality of life, making people want to be here, want to move here, want to participate,” she said. “Our students go back out into their communities with their families and churches and then we see more people with no connection to art realizing this is a safe, meaningful place to come. It’s developing a culture.”