About Us

Our Mission

The mission of the Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts is to ignite the flames of creativity through the magic of hot and cold glass. We provide a world-class, glass fabrication center where professional artists can realize their full creative potential. We then connect these working artists with both children and adults to educate and inspire a much deeper appreciation of art and the creative process behind it through classes, visiting artist programming, and elaborate glassblowing demos.

History

The Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts was the vision of artist and entrepreneur, JB Berkow. Since thirty percent of America’s artists live in the Southeast United States, Ms. Berkow wanted to encourage young, emerging artists as well as established artists to continue living and working in South Florida. The Benzaiten Center will support these artists’ efforts to create glass and metal fine art sculptures in a world-class fabrication center by providing them with extremely reasonable studio rental costs along with a gallery for showing their work. This is all in a seaside community that is an affordable location for artists to live and work.


This project began in 2010 with the development of the prospectus and business plan. The professional development team provided input and guidance about the Benzaiten concept, mission, vision and charitable purpose to establish this nonprofit organization. They also conducted a feasibility study to determine the project need in the community. In addition, JB Berkow and her team networked with civic, social, and key business leaders to gain support for the Benzaiten project.


The City of Lake Worth and the Lake Worth CRA have been extremely supportive of the Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts. They consider art an integral part of the Lake Worth community. The City and the CRA support the arts and are committed to raising awareness of the arts by cultivating the Lake Worth Arts District. The Benzaiten Center is proud to be their partner and a part of this revitalization of Lake Worth.


Why the name Benzaiten? Benzaiten is the Japanese Goddess who represents all things flowing i.e., love, knowledge, music, the river and in our case hot molten glass and bronze.

About the Center

The Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization located in an Historic FEC Train Depot just a few steps from the heart of downtown Lake Worth Beach. Our 14,500 square foot space is a fine art glass fabrication facility dedicated to living and working artists, the creative magic of glass art and to the citizens of Palm Beach County. We bring art to life, immersing the public in arts production and its creative processes, while providing direct interaction with highly skilled artists.


We provide beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes in glassblowing, flameworking, and fusing. Besides our regularly scheduled classes we also hold fun workshops, and several times a year we bring in outside artist to conduct master classes for professional artists. Our 'Venetian Chandelier Workshop' with Fabiano Zanchi brought in students from all over the country!


Our most popular outreach program are our 'Artist Blow-Outs' where we bring in world renowned visiting artists from all over the world to conduct 3-hour demo for the citizens of PBC. These are muscular, fiery shows that consist of the artist plus 4-5 of our staff members helping them to produce a large and complicated work of art accompanied by live band music.


The Center Currently has the Following Components:

The Largest Glassblowing Hot Shop in the State of Florida

Which is a full-service 5,000 square foot facility with four glory holes, two furnaces, multiple annealers, and a large cold-working room.

The Flameworking Studio

is a 750 square foot air-conditioned room with multiple stations, various torches and multiple kilns.

The Fusing Studio

is a 750 square foot air-conditioned room with large work tables and multiple kilns.

The Glass Casting Studio

is a 600 square foot area. With state-of-the-art equipment, it is capable of casting small to medium-large works in glass.

The Gift Shop

is its own special shop jam packed with unique one-of-a-kind collectables made by our own staff. All the money earned from this shop goes towards our extensive Children and Scholarship programming.

The Fine Art Gallery

is an elegant 2,000 square foot air-conditioned space that showcases fine art pieces created by our own staff and the many ‘Visiting Artists’ that we showcase yearly from around the country.

Working Sculpture Garden

TBA

Future Plans Include


  • Working Sculpture Garden, which will located in a 4,000 square foot area on the West side of the building. One third of the space will be dedicated to creating large-scale, monumental sculptures. Visitors will have a protected area with bench seating where they can come and watch as these huge creations come to life. The other two-thirds will be devoted to displaying sculptures, plantings, seating with special designated areas where stone-carvers will be working at cement tables and benches.
  • A Stained Glass Program, which would be integrated within our existing Flameworking Studio
  • A Jewelry Making Studio that is a natural offshoot that will utilize much of the equipment and supplies that we are already using in the Glass Casting Studio and Foundry.


WE ARE ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR CORPORATIONS TO HELP MAKE THESE FUTURE COMPONENTS OF BENZAITEN COME TO FRUITION. PLEASE CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR MANY UNDERWRITING AND SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES!