Jan. 7—ZUMBROTA, Minn. — The Carnegie Library in Zumbrota is under new ownership again with a new name, the Crossings Art and Community Education Center.

Virginia Cooper has been a member of the clay studio in the lower level of the historic Carnegie Library in Zumbrota for five years. She had fallen in love with pottery and ceramics while taking high school classes and has turned her passion for it into a hobby and now a business.

Ceramics has become almost therapeutic for Cooper over the last five years. It gave her a healthy, creative outlet and she wanted to ensure the clay studio continued on when the building went back on the market.

“I find it centering and calming,” said Cooper. “When you’re really in the zone of working with the clay, it’s very relaxing. I was going through kind of a difficult time at the time that I moved to Zumbrota five years ago and this place was really a respite, a place where I could find focus and creativity.”

When Marie Marvin sold the library in 2022, Cooper had thought about buying it but it wasn’t the right time. Cooper was working full time as a registered nurse still and it would have been too much of a commitment.

“I’ve been a registered nurse for 25 years and I worked in home care and hospice,” Cooper said. “I moved to Zumbrota and I was the director of the assisted living in town through the pandemic. The pandemic was really hard on me and I left that job and I started working as a director of a homecare agency in Rochester. So I’ve always been in the clinical director role.”

Andy and Anna Smith bought the place in February of 2022 from Marvin. They

purchased the old Carnegie library

with its original shelving and have turned it into a second used bookstore called the Zumbrota Literary Society. Their

first store is Garden Party Books in Rochester,

which remains open.

The couple also owned Gray Duck Theater, an independent movie theater and coffee shop in Rochester. Before they sold the business,

Andy Smith filed for bankruptcy in February of 2023.

The pandemic was tough on business and was forced to close this year.

Before selling the business to anyone, Andy and Anna sent an email to all of the clay studio members asking if anyone was interested in taking it over. This time, Cooper was ready to make the commitment.

“So then here we are two years later, and I’m a little closer to retirement age,” Cooper said. “So here we are. I made the agreement on December 1. I purchased the business from Andy and Anna and Marie Marvin is still very involved. She lives very close by and she’s really involved which is great. She really gives us a great resource because she of course built the business. So the plan is now to keep the clay studio going with classes and workshops and then upstairs we’ll have event space, classes and workshops on other things.”

Cooper has many ideas for classes, events, art fairs and more for the future, but she doesn’t want to change things too quickly. She wants to work on preserving the building and restoring the condition a little bit, but her main priority is getting the art community back up and running.

The clay studio currently has 14 members. They pay a monthly membership fee and have access to the studio at all times. Members are given a key to come and go as they please. There is a small fee for clay and glaze, but the studio is filled with everything for artists of all skill levels. They have multiple types of clay and many different glazes and each artist makes unique work that they can sell in the upper level of the library.

“We’re going to continue to sell member pottery and have regularly scheduled art fair-type events where people will be able to sell their pottery or jewelry or crafts,” said Cooper. “The other nice thing about this town is there’s a very active business association. I’m going to be joining that this January.”

Cooper is excited to get classes and workshops into the space as soon as she can. She has workshops planned for later this month and is excited to see how the Crossings Art & Community Education Center will grow in the future.