Rachel Rivera sat at a bench in The Rivet’s pottery studio, painting delicate touches of colored glazes on her hand-built, realistic-looking humpback whale after it was bisque fired in the pottery kiln.
“I moved here from Hawaii and a lot of my stuff is ocean and sea-based,” she says. “I worked here last year in science education for STEM camp, then signed up for the makerspace. This is the first thing I ever made with clay.
“It’s so affordable. I live in a really small apartment. I don’t have the space for craft supplies. This was the only place in central Pennsylvania that has an open kiln where you can bring your stuff to fire.”
She says the makerspaces where she plans to go to graduate school are expensive. “I only pay $25 a month here. I’m very appreciative of this place and don’t think I can find anything like it anywhere else.”
The Rivet, a nonprofit makerspace in State College, provides an affordable place to design and build things, learn new methods, and share ideas in a community of like-minded individuals. It’s a branch of Discovery Space and is housed in a 5,000-square-foot former garage in the back of the science center building at 1224 N. Atherton St.
Developing the Makerspace
Michele Crowl, executive director of Discovery Space, says, “I’ve been in conversations with people for over a decade that wanted a makerspace.”
Discovery Space’s science center opened downtown in 2011 and moved to the current location in 2017. After the move, they were able to rent the garage area in back for The Rivet. The organization won a $100,000 Centre Inspires grant through Centre Foundation in November 2018.
“In 2019, we figured out what would go into the space and did renovations,” Crowl says. “We opened six weeks before the pandemic made us shut down, and reopened in August 2020.”
“We just keep growing,” she says. “We’ve already run out of space. Every month we see new people walk through the door, or community members who want to make one thing, like entrepreneurs using tools to make displays. Businesses use us as their workspace. They’re here a lot of hours each week.”
The Rivet also teaches polytechnic classes for homeschoolers and offers summer camps for youth. “There’s not another place where you can take a class on woodworking,” Crowl notes.
Evan Rosengrant, manager of The Rivet, says clubs meeting there include a knitting club, a pottery hand-building club, and Nittany Valley Woodturners, which teaches some of the classes.
Open workshop hours for regular members are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. Sustaining members can reserve additional hours on Monday through Wednesday. Youth workshops for ages 8 to 14 are on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon.
Upcoming classes are listed at therivet.org and are taught by staff, members, and clubs. Rosengrant, for example, teaches 3D printing. Safety is always at the forefront.
Crowl says, “We have good insurance, good instructors, and tools that stop automatically. With younger students, there’s a teacher beside each kid to oversee them.”
Rosengrant adds, “Clearance classes are required prior to working with certain tools. The wood shop has a person who oversees the entire time.”
The Rivet tries to keep costs low, Rosengrant says. “Memberships include free clearance classes. There are plenty of classes that don’t require clearances, like making a mug, or simple woodworking classes with hand tools.
Rosengrant started as a volunteer in 2019, working with exhibits. He has a background in retail and inventory management. In 2021, he became manager of The Rivet. “It’s been an amazing process learning everything,” he says. “I’m happy that no tools here scare me anymore.”
Other staff include Viktorija Nargi, The Rivet assistant manager; Katie Kunkel, project and volunteer coordinator; and Michael Pendleton, makerspace facilitator and primary overseer of the wood shop.
The Rivet community
“I think the community is the biggest part of The Rivet,” says Nargi. “It’s nice seeing the networking and friendships built. We serve people at all different ages, Penn State students to retired people. Seeing them all get together is a breath of fresh air.”
Crowl agrees. “The cool thing that’s happening is the regulars are all becoming friends. It’s becoming a community. A number of people have said, ‘I just want to talk with someone who does what I’m doing.’”
Eleanor Martin, a former South Hills School of Business & Technology teacher and birth doula, was working on a set of eight green and white fused-glass coasters, and two decorative glass Easter eggs. “I’m brand new to this. I took a class on fused-glass coasters with a friend of mine.”
After Martin’s husband died eight months ago, she started Googling classes. “I wanted to get out and be with people and keep those synapses firing, learning something new. So as a result, we took the coaster class, the pendant class, and wheel pottery. The glass—I just loved it.
“I teach knitting at Stitch Your Art Out,” she says. “In probably no more than three hours I can make eight coasters and two eggs versus a pair of socks that takes at least a week. It’s much more immediate gratification. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. It’s all fun.”
Full-time artist Michael Monko was assembling a shadow box sculpture composed of layers of thin wood that he’d shaped on the laser cutter.
“This place is like Disneyland for me because there’s so much I can do here,” he says. “As a professional artist, I have access to equipment that would be virtually impossible on a cost basis for me to own. That helps me both creatively to learn and to incorporate new techniques into my work, and as a business because I get to control all aspects of my supply chain and make components instead of purchasing them.
“I basically use everything here—3D printer, laser printer,” he says. “I use the large-format printer to print photographs on canvas.
“It’s a really great community of makers and artists that are always willing to share information and techniques. That exchange of information pulls all of us up together and helps everyone grow.”
In 2010, after completing an M.B.A, Monko decided he wanted to be an artist and went into it full-time for himself.
“I teach a class at The Rivet, ‘Hobby to Science: How to turn your creative hobby into a business.’ I want to empower people into doing the same things.” He also teaches classes in photography, polymer clay sculpture, and making embroidered patches with the CNC [computer numerical control] embroidery machine.
“My wife and I were thinking to leave State College because we wanted a makerspace,” Monko says. “The Rivet has become one of the top reasons we want to stay in State College long-term.”
Volunteer instructor Mike Greene oversees The Rivet wood shop part-time. He enjoys sharing the knowledge he’s gained from 60 years of woodworking experience and owning a home construction company, Greene Custom Building.
“I have a fully equipped wood shop at home, but I like being here sharing with a lot of people,” he says. “I like teaching. That’s why I volunteer. I’m sort of a roaming advisor whenever I’m here.” He helps people who have taken The Rivet’s clearance classes, have their materials, and want to know where to start with their own projects.
“It’s fun to teach and share ways to do things if you come up against something and want some more input,” he says.
Greene is leading the effort to install the Rivet’s new metal shop and welding station. He says he used the laser cutter to make acrylic distribution blocks for the wiring.
He’s also a member of the Centre Model Railroaders, which meets at The Rivet on Tuesday nights, and is helping to rebuild the Science Center’s model railroad display. “We did all the woodworking for the model railroad in The Rivet wood shop,” he says. “Hopefully by the end of the summer, the trains will run.”
At The Rivet, Green has been able to learn new skills. “For me, the fun is learning Adobe Illustrator and 3D programs. It’s fun to learn them so we can use the machines. The CNC router is just a machine until you can tell it what to do.”
Archeologist Brock James is creating a prototype of a backpacking tent for his new side business. He couldn’t find a tent made of lightweight Dyneema composite fabric with the design and price he wanted, so he decided to make his own.
“I’m starting as a one-man shop, going into production for the 2024 hiking season,” he says. “I came here to do this protype and use the big professional cutting table.” He plans to use The Rivet’s resources to make the tents while he’s attending graduate school for anthropology at Penn State.
Two Penn State undergraduate students from China sat together at pottery wheels to practice making pots. Heng Shan Hao, an art and data science major, came to The Rivet because she wasn’t able to fit a pottery class into her schedule. “When you are playing with pottery, you have to be concentrating,” Hao says. “Your hand has to be stable when you’re doing it. It’s definitely fun for me.”
Ting Bu is a general science major with a photography minor and has taken many clearance classes at The Rivet. Her favorites are pottery and 3D printing. For her fashion photography class at Penn State, she used The Rivet’s 3D printer to make plastic shapes that she attached to the models’ faces with eyelash glue.
“It turns out really well,” she says. She hopes to include more 3D pieces in her next photography projects.
Denise Wetzel comes to The Rivet after work and on weekends to use the pottery studio and other equipment. “This is where I come to de-stress. Especially when you’re doing pottery, you have to think about what you’re doing or it’s going to collapse.”
She joined The Rivet a year ago and took the introduction to pottery wheel throwing class. “It kinda sucked me in. Now I’m doing more hand building.”
She’s making a new dinnerware set for her house, decorated with folk art.
“I made ornaments with the laser cutter for Christmas presents last year and décor for my home and office. I learned to use the rotary cutter that’s part of it so I could make drinking glasses that have etched designs on them.”
She does photography and is starting to learn to sew.
“It’s really cool to see what everyone’s doing. With hand building, a group of us get together and talk, and everyone’s really supportive,” she says. “You feel you’re on this creative journey with other people. We’re all at different stages but when we’re in here, we’re all together. It’s just neat.”
The Rivet itself is a work in progress. Rosengrant says his partial wish list includes two laser cutters, more kilns, a bigger 3D printer, and more dedicated space for lathes. He’d like to have an area for recording videos, podcasts, and music, and have dedicated coworking space.
“Someone could rent a desk, have a phone and a business address for businesses operating out of here,” he says. T&G
Karen Dabney is a writer in State College. After researching this article, she signed up for membership at The Rivet.
Here’s some of The Rivet’s equipment:
Jewelry station with metalworking tools
Electronics station
Large work tables
Laser cutter
Vinyl cutter
Large-format printer
Pottery wheels
Ceramic kiln
Glass kiln
Large fabric-cutting table
Sewing machines
CNC embroidery machine
3D printers
Computers with Adobe Illustrator and 3D modeling software
Wood shop with saws, sanders, CNC router, hand tools
Metal shop and welding station (under construction)
How much does it cost?
One-day access: $10
Regular membership: $25/month or $250/year
Sustaining membership: $65/month or $650/year
Youth workshops (ages 8-14): $25/session or $500/season pass
Membership includes a free clearance class each month
Most materials are freely available
Vinyl cutter and large-format printer: charged by the vertical foot
Clay: charged by weight of what goes into the kiln, $4/lb. or $10/month for 10 lbs.
Class prices vary
