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Art center and supplies thrift shop opening in Staunton

Art Hive is slated to open on Spring Hill Road on July 1st.
Art Hive
Art Hive is slated to open on Spring Hill Road on July 1st.

A new, multi-faceted art space is coming to Staunton. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.

Co-owner Kirsten Schneider is the business's "hive mistress."
Art Hive
Co-owner Kirsten Schneider is the business's "hive mistress."

The storefront at 835 Spring Hill Road will soon open as a creative reuse shop called Art Hive, where people can donate clean and reusable arts and crafts supplies, and buy them for cheap. Co-owner Kirsten Schneider, who lives in Staunton, is a lifelong artist who works mainly in digital art and multimedia collage.

KIRSTEN SCHNEIDER: Staunton doesn't have any art supply stores at all, which is insane to me. I don't want to drive 30 minutes to go to Hobby Lobby or to go to Michael's, a big box store. I'd rather support local and small business.

Co-owner Mary Pearce, whose primary medium is found object mosaics, served on the board of a nonprofit reuse center in Richmond called SCRAP RVA.

Co-owner Mary Pearce is the art center's "queen of events."
Art Hive
Co-owner Mary Pearce is the art center's "queen of events."

MARY PEARCE: It's all donated from people that don't have a need anymore, or want to change up their medium … We're going to be the depot for redirecting it into new creative hands – again, saving it from the landfill, and providing a lower price point for creative materials.

Art Hive will also host classes for children and adults – their current roster of instructors includes a chef, a mosaic artist, a collage artist, and a painter. And it'll offer gallery space, a co-working studio for members, and drop-in crafting hours.

SCHNEIDER: It's part of that DIY ethic, isn't it? We're going to do it for ourselves. We don't have the community that we want, so we want to create it.

They're planning a soft opening for July 1st. To learn more and see what materials they're currently accepting, visit arthive.art.

Randi B. Hagi first joined the WMRA team in 2019 as a freelance reporter. Her writing and photography have been featured in The Harrisonburg Citizen, where she previously served as the assistant editor; as well as The Mennonite; Mennonite World Review; and Eastern Mennonite University's Crossroads magazine.