Meet Rebecca Schmidt, a creative dynamo in her 60s, who has helped deliver more than 1,000 babies and many other amazing works of art.
A doula for close to 20 years, Schmidt has used abstract art as a way to pass the time between births. Her newest love is making masterpieces with alcohol ink and teaching others techniques to master the challenging medium. 
Schmidt has taught about five alcohol ink classes at Creative Space Avon. In the two-hour class, participants fashion a vibrant, one-of-a-kind piece of art.
“Finding alcohol ink four years ago was a perfect match for me,” says Schmidt, who sells most of her pieces on Facebook. “I say to my class, it’s like trying to tell a pile of worms to quit moving. It’s just fascinating to work with. It moves and morphs, and you just have to learn how to control it a little bit.”
Schmidt found her way to the Avon studio through a friend who suggested she show her work to the public and introduced her to Judy Kean, stained-glass artist and owner of Creative Space Avon, which is home to the Glass Studio. 
Kean, who has been working with glass since 1984, opened her multipurpose facility in June 2015. The location includes three spaces — a gallery room, Kean’s glass studio and another space that can be used for classes, receptions or community events. 
The vision for Creative Space is to be able to showcase artists in gallery shows and to have a multipurpose space that other people can rent for their own event, whether that is a birthday party, shower, teaching or fundraising. 
“I do art gallery shows usually about once every six weeks, featuring everything from photography, sculpture, pottery, painting and jewelry,” says Kean, who estimates she has shown more than 200 musicians and artists, many of whom had never shown their art publicly. “We’ve had about 13 gallery shows, and I’m averaging about 25 to 30 artists per show,” she says. 
At her Glass Studio, Kean aspires to pass on the trade and the skill by teaching classes to people who want to learn stained glass and fusing. An accomplished artist, Kean has done four guitars for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as well as public art piece for Chinatown downtown. 
Her other glass works include commissions for businesses, residents and churches, and she also does a lot of repair work.  
In March, Creative Space will be hosting a Creative Women art show and a Floral and Fairies garden show in April.