The Cressman Center
Interactive downtown arts center offers peek into the artistic process
After months of planning and design, University of Louisville art students turned up the furnaces and blew glass at the new Cressman Center for Visual Arts in downtown Louisville. For the 23 glass students and for their professor, Che Rhodes, the center's grand opening in February before a packed house of well-wishers was the culmination of frenetic activity.
"The last week before our opening was very Hollywood," Rhodes jokes. "It was like a stage set. If someone had leaned against the workbench, it would have collapsed."
The 12,000-square-foot center—named for benefactors Drs. Elizabeth and Frederick Cressman—is located at First and Main streets on the first floor of a city-owned parking garage. It features a glass hot shop, which is operational and open 17 hours a day, as well as coldworking, metal and woodworking studios. Also, the center's three galleries are open daily to the public.
A unique aspect of the Cressman Center, according to Rhodes, is that its hot shop, which faces Main Street, allows those passing by to watch students making glass.
"I don't know of many university glass programs or even art programs that are this visible, this interactive with the community, where people can come by off the street and talk to students and see how art is begun, finished and presented all in one space," Rhodes says.
Fine arts student Amanda Briede helped design and build the workspace and furnaces. "I'm so proud of this place because I helped build it. I can come back after I go to grad school and say I helped build the furnaces—brick by brick," she says.
The Cressman Center is also energy efficient. Louisville Gas & Electric, a subsidiary of E.ON U.S., conceived and funded an energy-recovery system, which harnesses the heat from the glass furnaces to warm the building. The system may result in a 20 percent reduction in the center's natural gas bills.
At the grand opening, UofL President James Ramsey said the center is a visual indicator of the university's interest in downtown Louisville.
"We are committed to downtown," he said. "Our medical center is here. Our College of Business will be relocating here. We have partnerships with the Frazier History Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center and, someday, with the Museum Plaza project."
Ramsey said donations by local arts supporters have been crucial to the center and UofL's glass program. The Cressmans donated $1 million to get the center off the ground, which was matched by the state's "Bucks for Brains" program.
Other support came from lead volunteers and glass collectors Leonard and Adele Leight, for whom the center's main gallery is named. Two other galleries in the center are named for benefactors John and Bonnie Seidman Roth and Alice and Irvin Etscorn.
A $500,000 endowment from Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson's family foundation (also matched by the state) will bring visiting glass artists to teach in the program.
