Ceejay Renner-Thomas’ passion for art goes beyond his job as an art teacher at The Covenant School. Outside of his day job, Renner-Thomas runs Milk Glass, a mobile glassblowing studio that he created to better connect with others in Charlottesville.
In winning $5,365 on Feb. 28 in a fundraising competition for Charlottesville artists, Renner-Thomas also came one step closer to reaching more people in central Virginia and introducing them to different forms and functions of glass making.
“After my name was called, it felt like a moment of validation from the community and what I’m doing,” Renner-Thomas, 30, recalled thinking when he won the grand prize at the New City Arts Initiative SOUP dinner.
New City Arts Initiative started the program back in 2013 as a way to support local artists through a fundraising dinner. New City Arts modeled the SOUP dinner after InCUBATE, a Chicago-based art program that wanted to provide alternative means for artist funding.
Donors give money to the fund prior to the dinner, and New City Arts adds the money made from dinner tickets into that pool. The art collective raised $3,795 prior to the SOUP dinner. All proceeds from the dinner went into the prize fund, which rose to $5,365 by the end of the night.
Renner-Thomas said he plans to use the money to host free glassblowing workshops throughout Charlottesville, hopefully starting in May.
The SOUP grant isn’t the first time Renner-Thomas has received community funds to support his work. In 2024, he raised $35,551 in a Kickstarter campaign for his mobile studio. Both the Kickstarter and SOUP dinner grant money will assist Renner-Thomas with immediate costs such as a mobile glass furnace, tools, a trailer for transportation and more.
The idea for Milk Glass began when Renner-Thomas was studying craft and materials at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. His major centered around mastering technical art mediums, such as woodworking, jewelry making and glass blowing. But something about glass blowing stood out to Renner-Thomas. He enjoyed the challenge that glass blowing entails and fell in love, he said.
“It was there that I developed my passion for craft using historic and ancient techniques as it relates to modernity and pop culture,” he states on Milk Glass’s website. “Most of my personal art delves further into this intersection.”
After graduating from VCU in 2018, his interest in the art led to him working part-time at The Glass Spot, a glassblowing studio in Richmond.
The studio modeled many of the aspects Renner-Thomas wanted to incorporate into his own studio, such as routinely hosting community workshops and educating people about the process of glass blowing.
But what the Richmond studio didn’t have was a presence in Charlottesville. So, he created Milk Glass studio in September 2024.
Now Renner-Thomas sells glass products, such as ornaments and drinking glasses, and hosts classes regularly at the IX Art Park Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.
“I hope to create a space where people can fellowship with each other and hang out,” said Renner-Thomas.
Fifteen people applied for the SOUP dinner grant, and four were selected as finalists, said Lindsey Leahy, communications and community programs manager for New City Arts. The three other artists who were considered for the grand prize were musician Marie Tatti Aqeel, botanical artist Hafsa Ramay and video artist Amanda Finn. New City Arts awarded each runner-up a $250 honorarium.
“[Their project] doesn’t have to be a community-based project, per se. But there needs to be some way …that it is accessible to the community,” said Leahy. “And each of these artists had clearly articulated how they would do that.”
New City Arts elected Tobiah Mundt, a fiber artist, along with Andrea Douglas and Leslie Scott-Jones of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, to help select the finalists for the grand prize, said Leahy.
The first Charlottesville SOUP dinner took place in 2013. Since then, the art collective has raised more than $52,000 for artists to pursue their projects. Maureen Brondyke, executive director of New City Arts, said in a statement to Charlottesville Tomorrow that the artists who founded the very first Sunday Soup in Chicago described this micro-granting program as a way to “build a culture of support for the arts into the texture of our everyday lives and affect a more equitable, participatory, and democratic future.”
Editors’ note: Article updated on March 31, 2025, to clarify a quote from Maureen Brondyke, executive director of New City Arts.
