"I love art, because you are able to do whatever you want with it," said Alana Cassel, who owns The Glazing Sun in Wrightsville. "There are no guidelines on creativity."
Cassel, 24, spends her days getting creative, hand-painting and firing pottery from her studio on Hellam Street. Although she's passionate about her small business, this wasn't always Cassel's path.
"I was going to college for nursing," she recalled. "My whole family had hyped me up to be a nurse." It was a part-time job during college that sparked a career change.
"I was working at The PotteryWorks in downtown Lancaster, and I loved it," Cassel said. "I've always loved art. One day, I realized, I don't want to be a nurse. I want to do something art related, something small-business related. I wanted to make my own schedule and my own rules."
Cassel dropped out of nursing school, earned her associate degree in business from Penn State Harrisburg and began selling her pottery on social media. When she signed up to do her first craft show four years ago, she had to come up with a business name. The Glazing Sun pays tribute to both Cassel's sunny personality and the type of paint she uses, called glaze.
Cassel set up The Glazing Sun in the living room of her mom's Wrightsville house and arranged to use the kiln in The PotteryWorks, spending hours transporting fragile pottery pieces back and forth across the river. When an opportunity arose in June to open her own studio, she took a leap of faith. During this time, Cassel also got married and bought a house, which she is renovating. And she purchased her own kiln, saving her the trips to Lancaster.
Cassel mostly specializes in hand-painted mugs, but she creates all sorts of pottery pieces, including planters, trinket dishes, ring holders and more. "I love color, so I use a lot of it," she said. "I don't have a rhyme or reason for how I approach a piece. Each one is different."
She sells her products across the United States. "There are only about three or four states I haven't shipped to yet," she said. Locally, The Glazing Sun products can be found at the Prussian Street Arcade in Manheim, Molly's Courtyard Cafe in Marietta and York and Virtue Art Market in Hellam.
Cassel acknowledges that being a small-business owner does have its challenges. "The work never stops," she commented. "You can't call in sick, and it's hard to shut work off at the end of the day." Still, she said, she can't imagine doing anything else, and she encourages others to follow their dreams.
"I would encourage anyone with a passion to just jump into it," she said. "Just say to yourself, 'I know I can do this.' I manifested what I wanted to happen, and it has. Some days, I can't believe this is what I do for a living."
For more information on The Glazing Sun, visit https://theglazingsun.com.
Leave a Review