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Photos by Jordan Bissell

Legacy Glassworks, opening in September of 2010, has had a very successful six and-a-half year run thus far in Duluth. Displaying and selling some of the highest quality functional glass in the area for some time now, and also having served as a gallery to many art forms, and as a music venue as well. They are now expanding to their second location in Minneapolis. The official Grand Opening is Saturday, February 11, their new store located at 2928 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis. Their Minneapolis opening event will feature four internationally recognized artists: Chris Ahalt, Eric Ross, Brandon Martin, & Scott Andrews.

They will be joined by over 30 Midwest glass artists. Another all day event, from 11 am - 11 pm. As has become a tradition of the original Duluth location, Josh Wilkens-Simons (founder/owner/operator) will be kicking off the location’s opening with a party. The Duluth location is known for its 12-hour celebrations every anniversary of the Duluth store’s opening, and every April, 20th for obvious reasons. These parties usually ring out with all day unforeseen deals on glass, as well as live glass blowing demonstrations, and live music.

This time around, Josh will be featuring his gallery in Minneapolis that isn’t quite the same as the original location in Duluth. This location in the Twin Cities will be focused more on featuring arts of a vast variety of mediums, and will also include an on-site glass blowing studio. “We’re going to do some local music, but really what we’re going to focus on is art shows of various mediums. So, we’re going to do glass shows, we’re gong to do paint shows, photography shows, sculpture shows, graffiti shows, etc. There are just so many great music venues near by, that we’d like to focus on other things. We’ll still always do live music for big events, like the anniversaries,” said Josh. Josh elaborated, “I think it’s very cool that we were able to start small in Duluth, and Duluth met us with welcome arms. We’re very grateful for that, and we were able to meet more artists and show most artists from all over the country, as well as definitely many from Minnesota. It’s great after six and-a-half year years, to really be able to open my dream gallery that I’ve always been working for. It’s more of a classic gallery than Duluth is, with more emphasis on lighting and display, and the big thing is having the glass studio in house in Minneapolis. Now we’ll be able to have up to 10 artists working at a time, and be able to have classes and live glass blowing demonstrations.” The event is free, all ages, and open to the public. Find out more at legacyglassworks.com or follow on Twitter @LegacyGlassworks.