Healing through glass: Yukon studio opens doors to the vulnerable

Where others may see fragility, Luann Baker Johnson sees power and strength.

"The first time I touched glass, I fell in love with it," she said, sitting inside the busy glass-blowing studio she opened in downtown Whitehorse a year ago.

She believes molten glass has healing properties. She learned that after she lost her daughter to leukemia, and found solacein creativity.

"It provides these absolute moments, where you are absolutely focused on one thing, and something very powerful 1,200 degrees of molten glass."

Johnson wants others to have similarly profound experiences. Specifically, she wants to invite some of the city's most vulnerable people in to the studio, to learn about and try working with glass.

"We've built our studio in a great place.It's beside the river,but it's also close to the liquor store," she said.

She remembers building the studio in 2015, and getting to know manypeople who frequented the area.

"From that first dig down for plumbing all the way up to the top of our roof, we were watched by people walking from the liquor store to the river. And we call them 'street people' in Whitehorse.But in the end, I think that 'river walkers' is a better term.

"So we got to know our river walkers. We were building right on their spot that they would walk through. And we're in their way now."

Johnson says there was "lots of laughter, conversation" with manyriver walkers over thosemonths of construction, and many of them still stop by the studio.

'An evening of joy'

Theplan, Johnson says, is to hold regularglass-making workshops starting this spring, geared towardriver walkers.

The studio has invited some guests from Hilltop Artists, a non-profit glass studio in Tacoma, Wash. to hold an initial session. That studio runs similar programsfor vulnerable people and at-risk youthin Tacoma.

"We are going to have one day of adult river walker workshops, where everyone who works with them in our community is going to try to get as many of them in, as possible," Johnson said.

The studio will also host regular workshops for youth.

Johnson says it's part of her original vision for the studioas a community space, for everyone.

"What we want with our river walkers programming is just an evening of joy. You come in, substance-free, you sit on our bench, and it's an opportunity just to thrive."

• Ashes to glass: a Yukon studio's colourful way with cremated remains