Andy Young strode through the campus of connecting buildings at Pearl River Glass Studio in Jackson with the easy comfort of decades, the anticipation of impending celebration and, much like the striking stained glass windows the studio creates and restores, a keen sense of pieces falling into place.
The studio’s founder, lead designer and artist checked in on the latest progress. Colorful glass mosaics, including the studio’s iconic spirit bird, spiff up the floor of a renovated bathroom. A new kitchen awaits catered events, and the reworked marketing space holds stained glass windows studio visitors always want to see. A former ceiling joist is charred and treated for a second life in a window. Young happily demonstrated an ADA accessible automatic door, among upgrades possible by a Mississippi Arts Commission Building Fund for the Arts grant, for the relatively new Pearl River Glass Conservatory, a sister nonprofit with glass art classes for the public.
A huge window, encased in a steel frame Young salvaged from a downtown office demo 21 years ago, streams natural light for the new ceramics studio. Asiatic jasmine twigs peek up from a thick blanket of pinestraw in a sidewalk bed with two young tulip poplars, and transplanted irises settle into their new home along a border…