By All Means

“Art is about exploration, process, potential.” A glassblower by training, Jackson Schwartz is an entrepreneur by instinct. A graduate of the Australian National University, renowned for its glass program, Schwartz returned to the Midwest to teach, and co-founded the Hennepin Made glass lighting studio in 2012 with the goal of creating jobs for his students, and himself. Today, Hennepin Made manufactures lighting for Room & Board and sells direct to consumer while also growing its business clients in commercial architecture and luxury residential design. You’d think that would be enough to keep the artist-turned-business owner occupied, but Schwartz set his sights on broader goals. He purchased a 30,000-square-foot industrial building on the edge of downtown Minneapolis to give the business plenty of room to scale, and also, to transform an underutilized pocket of the urban core, which he helped to name the Root District. “I want to see artistic production in the city,” Schwartz says. “We have the opportun