Igniting a love for glass art

Through an ongoing partnership with Ignition Community Glass, youth from CYC’s Centers are participating in a five-week glass art session with the local non-profit.

In the classes, which are held at both CYC Centers and at Ignite Glass Studios, youth are learning cold and hot glass techniques, while creating art pieces like decorative glass squares, night lights, and paper weights.

The partnership is made possible due to funding from the Zakat Foundation of America. CYC Auxiliary Board Co-Chair Paul Morgan, the executive director of Ignition Community Glass, has also helped to nurture this relationship.

CYC Arts and Innovation Coordinator Monica Wizgird said the youth are learning professional skills like collaboration, persistence, discipline, focus, and more through this partnership. The amount of planning and pre-visualization and follow-through involved in glass art creation is great practice for success in all sorts of future projects and endeavors.

“The youth were pretty amazed at the level of teamwork and communication between the artists doing demonstrations in the hot shop,” Monica said. “When it became their turn to collaborate with the glass artists to create their paperweights, they were laser focused and incredibly attentive because they saw how vital teamwork and communication are in that type of environment.”

The children love working with the glass because it is a unique, and new experience for many of them.

“It was fun, exciting, and I've never seen anything like that before,” said Mikayla, 12. “I'd recommend it to other kids because it was awesome!”

Monica said she has seen much joy, wonder, and growth in the youth involved in the partnership.

“Even though we can still accomplish a lot with classes at our Centers, the field trips are the best part of the program because when we're there, our youth can learn how to create amazing things in the hot shop while being in an interesting, state of the art space, surrounded by gorgeous glass artwork and cool people,” Monica said.