A South Street art supply shop evolves into a creative hub for makers, framing, and Vermont-made work
By Ahmad Yassir, Vermont Country Magazine.
There is a particular kind of quiet that lives inside an art supply store, the soft friction of paper, the stacked geometry of frames, the smell of wood, pigment, and possibility.
At JAYS — Bennington Artisan Market on 115 South Street in downtown Bennington, that quiet has shifted. It hasn’t disappeared. It has widened.
Since purchasing the 50-plus-year-old business on March 17, 2026, Jasen Frederickson has been reshaping the former Jay’s Art Shop into something both familiar and newly alive: a working studio-adjacent retail space where artists don’t just come to buy materials, but to linger, talk, sell and share what they are building.
Originally founded by Jay and Joan Zwynenburg, the shop long served as a dependable stop for art supplies and framing in the region. Frederickson says the intention now is not to reinvent that foundation, but to deepen it, aligning the store more closely with Bennington’s artistic identity, tourism culture, and long-standing maker community.
“Art supplies are a great service to local makers and artists,” he noted, pointing to a renewed focus on the essentials: watercolors, acrylics, oils, brushes, paper, and tools for mark-making in nearly every medium. Greeting cards, puzzles, and Vermont branded souvenirs, and local and regional artisan goods now share space with those materials, reinforcing a broader sense of Vermontiana, objects that feel rooted in place.
Framing, once a defining service of the shop and partially diminished during the transition away from the Zwynenburg era, has also returned with new energy. Frederickson introduced an automated pricing system that standardizes framing quotes and, notably, has reduced costs by roughly 10–20 percent even as material expenses rise.
At the counter, change is already visible in who is doing the work.
Kristen Useted, long known to regulars as the welcoming presence behind the register, now leads the framing department. An artist herself, she stepped into the role after Frederickson recognized both her technical intuition and her ability to translate conversation into design. What was once a transactional service is now a guided process, shaped by dialogue between maker and framer.
That shift, from transaction to exchange, defines the new character of JAYS.
Artists now bring work not only for framing or supplies, but for conversation. Some leave with materials. Others leave with commissions, connections, or the possibility of showing work in-store. The shop has begun hosting artist receptions, further blurring the line between retail space and creative gathering point.
“It used to feel like people came in, completed a purchase, and left,” Frederickson said. “Now it feels like people stay.”
The store itself has become more intentionally scaled, with a reduced footprint that prioritizes quality over quantity. The goal is less about volume and more about curation, materials chosen with care, Vermont-made products integrated into the shelves, and an atmosphere that supports both working artists and visiting travelers looking for something made locally.
At the same time, Frederickson is continuing to expand the framing side with new materials, including samples sourced from Italy, signaling a balance between local focus and global craft standards.
What emerges is a business that functions like a studio in motion, part supply house, part gallery, part gathering place. Painters, photographers, printmakers, fabric artists, glassworkers, and even doll makers now appear in its orbit, contributing to a growing sense that JAYS is not just selling art tools, but participating in the making of art itself.
In a town long shaped by creative industry, JAYS — Bennington Artisan Market is becoming something more than a shop on South Street. It is, increasingly, a place where art begins before the first brushstroke is ever made.
Follow JAYS – BAM on Facebook for more updates.
