Olivia Hosken
palmettoreport@gmail.com

* Editor’s note: May is small business month in York County and this story is part of series of reports on local businesses in the community.

(Rock Hill, S.C.) — Located just a block away from Winthrop University, in Rock Hill, sits a local art store, gallery and creative space for artists of all skill levels.

Andrew and Mary Lazenby said they opened Blue Goose Art Supply in October 2024 as a place for artists to gather and be creative.

“We really came into this with hopes that we would build a small community,” said Andrew Lazenby.

“We love our folks,” he said. “The folks that we come into contact with here are, I mean they’re just pleasant, they’re fun, fun to deal with (and) great customers.”

Mary Lazenby said they felt like the city really need a creative space for artists.

“This area is just so full of artists and a lot of us, even as artists, we would bump into each other at shows and whatnot,” she said.

“Rock Hill hasn’t had an art store in a very long time. So, it was kind of something we knew we could offer everybody in the area and…there’s just a lot of visual artists here.”

Initially, the Lazenbys opened their retail store in half of the building located at 361 Oakland Ave., but not long after the other side of the building became available.

“As a business, you sort of plan out three or four or five years out in the future, and we had hoped at some point this (other) side of the building would become available. We just didn’t expect it to become available the first month we opened,” Andrew Lazenby said.

“So, we had to kind of pivot and delay some plans that we had and accelerate others to take advantage of the opportunity, because, it just wasn’t going to present itself again and if we didn’t take advantage of it, we would lose it,” he said.

Thus, the owners of Blue Goose were involved in construction projects to convert the space next to their retail store into an art lab with a lounge and creative space for artists.

“We kind of joked that our first year as a retail store, we didn’t get to enjoy being a retail store, because we were doing construction the whole time,” Lazenby said.

“We ended up expanding a little bit quicker than we anticipated with taking over the whole building, but it has allowed us to offer opportunities, whether it’s for just groups that have come and kind of just come to hang out and do art, or provide them a space.”

Now, Blue Goose offers art classes and workshops in the space, covering topics such as book binding, sketching or painting with watercolors, acrylics or oils.

“It’s been overwhelmingly good, I mean, there haven’t been any parts where we’ve been like ‘oh lord, why did we do this,'” Lazenby said.

“It’s kind of worked out…things kind of fell in place the way we needed them to.”

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