SARANAC LAKE — Local ceramics artist Jazen Reuss is preparing to reopen the former BluSeed Studios arts center as Cedar Street Studios.

Months after BluSeed — a pillar of the local arts community — dissolved amid a “dire” financial situation, Reuss is preparing to purchase the building, renovate it and start holding arts classes, gallery showings and music performances by the start of summer.

The 7,500-square-foot building on Cedar Street is still actively used by a handful of artists for its studio space, and a few classes have been held there since October, with more planned in the future.

Reuss will be running Cedar Street as a for-profit business with several retail spaces, instead of as a non-profit, which BluSeed was.

She hopes that with these retail spaces, she’ll be able to do what BluSeed couldn’t do as a non-profit.

The coronavirus pandemic had a long-term effect on the center. Grant funding dried up. The nonprofit had attempted a GoFundMe campaign and raised more than $40,000, but it wasn’t enough.

Reuss said she was “heartbroken” when BluSeed closed after 25 years of operation. She had been the ceramics studio manager there since 2020 and learned about the dissolution two months before it went public — around the same time as the ADK ArtRise art education business announced it’s closure.

“The thought of town losing both of the arts centers was just heartbreaking,” Reuss said. “Like, we’re an artsy town. We can’t not have an arts center.”

Almost immediately, she started looking into if she could buy the building and maintain it as a community arts studio.

Because BluSeed was a nonprofit, the sale is regulated by the state attorney general and needs to be at or near full market value to get AG approval. The required appraisal of the building increased the price by $150,000 and Reuss wasn’t sure if she’d be able to make that price work. But several friends and family came forward and became investors. She’s also taking out a sizeable loan.

Reuss said they just got approval from the attorney general’s office. She plans to close on the sale after the holidays.

The decision was exciting and scary, she said. Usually she likes to plan things in advance. This has been “quite the rollercoaster.”

It still doesn’t feel real, she said.

She didn’t tell anybody about her plan for the first two or three months — not even family or friends.

She started calling banks and asking if they’d give her a loan. They said she needed a business plan first, so she created one.

The experience has been uplifting, but every so often she stops and asks herself, “What am I DOING?”

It will likely not make a profit for a while, but she hopes it will be able to support itself.

She’s got a lot of bills now. Heating the building is expensive. She shovels the parking lot by hand, along with friends and family, to avoid paying for a plow or snowblower.

Reuss said she’s bad at asking for help, but she has created a GoFundMe campaign to get the center off its feet. This campaign can be found at tinyurl.com/bdcmntna. The campaign says funds will go “directly toward essential repairs, heat, transition costs and equipment upgrades to ensure that our artists have the tools they need to succeed.”

Reuss said she struggled with whether or not to do this. As a business, she wants Cedar Street to be able to support itself and not have the same worries as BluSeed about being dependent on others.

The front room will be an art retail space — The Wander In Art Shop — with arts supplies for all sorts of projects.

Clay is very hard to find in Saranac Lake. Most ceramics artists have to drive three hours to get it, or order it online. Reuss wants to get it in bulk to sell it at wholesale prices.

She works at Goody Goody’s Toys and Games and knows a lot of people who paint miniatures or Warhammer 40,000 figures.

Textile artist Martha Jackson will sell supplies for quilters and knitters.

Reuss has plans for a second retail space in the back of the building, to work with the Adirondack Rail Trail, which runs directly next to the studio.

She’s already reaching out to artists to feature in the gallery.

She’s looking forward to bringing back the music events that gave the place so much life.

The retail spaces and the gallery need some work to get operational. She needs to cut some doorways and install walls. Reuss hopes to be fully operational by June.

When BluSeed was dissolving, then-Executive Director Marissa Hernandez said they were looking for a buyer who was interested in maintaining the building as a community art center in some fashion.

The board had some discretion in who they could sell to.

Reuss said members of the BluSeed board — past and present — have reached out to her to tell her they’re supportive of her endeavor.

She had wanted to keep her private studio in a tool shed in the back of the building. This space allows her more creative freedom. It’s not filling her house with clay projects and it’s not a space where she needs to clean up every time she creates.

And she didn’t want the community to lose what BluSeed brought.

Reuss has living in Saranac Lake for around 14 years now. She said everyone is so friendly and helpful, she wanted to give back.

Art is an outlet, she said.

“It’s a good thing to do no matter what you’re feeling,” Reuss said. “If you’re happy. If you’re sad. If you don’t have any energy and you need something to get you going. Or if you have too much energy and you need to get it out.”

She’s a self-described “hermity” person, and said art has been a great way for her to meet people and open up conversation with strangers.

Reuss also said kids need art in their lives, especially with how screen-focused the world is now.

When she was bored as a child, she remembers picking up paint or clay. Now it’s so easy to pick up a phone when boredom sets in. She does it — replies to a message, starts “doom scrolling” and, boom, 30 minutes have gone by.

She’s hoping the studio can be a place where kids take classes and learn skills, friends get together and appreciate art, and visitors stop in and buy works for their homes or cabins.

She’ll be expanding the ceramics space — splitting it into a studio and a classes space. The studio is open 24/7 to artists who rent it, but she said it has often clashed with classes.

With two studios, classes can happen whenever and artists won’t have to schedule around class times.

The printmaking studio will be split into a new classroom space and a glaze-making space. The glaze room will be ventilated. Reuss said glazes are made with silica, which is terrible for lungs.

Reuss said there are several artists interested in instructing classes.

To keep the cost of classes down, she said the studio will be donating clay in the first year.

The Paul Smith’s College pottery club works there and Reuss is talking with them about building a wood-fired kiln on campus.

There’s an apartment in the upstairs area she wants to use for an artist residence program, bringing people from all over to Saranac Lake to create art.

Reuss was worried about what would happen to the building when BluSeed dissolved. There was a potential it could just go back to being a warehouse, she said.

“I really like it here,” Reuss said, gesturing around the building, where murals still adorn the walls and the air still smells like paint and ink.