IPaintMyMind x Blick Art Lincoln Park: Working Together To Support Northwest Middle School & Nixon Elementary

Starting last year, the Blick Lincoln Park store has been generously supporting our mission to transform people & spaces through the power of art. As an organization that frames a lot of art, it’s always great to have partners who not only can help us source those frames, but who are also so down with our cause & super willing to support it.

Carlos and his team is always super helpful, so feel free to mention your work with IPaintMyMind if you’re a partner that visits the store in person.

Art teachers can also always access the vast list of Art Lesson Plans available on the the Blick website at dickblick.com/lesson-plans/.

When I reached out to Carlos to see what we could put together to help support students art engagement while doing e-learning to complete the academic year, he was on board immediately. It’s that alignment that makes working together so great, and we were able to pull something off fairly quickly!

We were able to get together Art Supplies for Northwest Middle School and then coordinate the making of 70 masks for kids and families at Nixon Elementary!!!

Northwest Middle School

Carlos’ team at Blick Lincoln Park assembled 100 bags of art samplers with supplies to make art at home. We also included some articles around process and making art from the IPaintMyMind Blog so kids have some fun references to work with.

Roxy Piersanti, the Art Teacher at Northwest Middle School is also on our Board of Directors, and when this Covid-19 stuff started happening, our board really wanted to focus on supporting Roxy in her navigating of e-learning while helping solve any immediate needs – art supplies being one of them. As we work with Blick on more art-actions and local makers to sew masks for schools, we’re really just trying to stay in touch with the schools we’re partnered with to help in any way we can.

Art Supplies for NWMS students!

Ms. Byrne, Ms. Carle and Team!

Principal Byrne and Vice-Principal Carle helped Carlos and his team unload supplies from the Blick truck then made sure kids & families got them when they came to school to pick up lunches and other school supplies.

Nixon Elementary

We also coordinated with Carlos’ team to deliver fabric and elastic to a local volunteer, Kelly Fox, who sewed 70 masks for kids and families at Nixon Elementary! We’ve worked with Nixon for two years now and when they replied to our email about masks super quickly, we wanted to make sure we could get them sorted out.

Over the last week or so, Kelly made all these beautiful masks which will be delivered this week!

IPMM Volunteer, Kelly Fox!

We’re so grateful to Blick and Carlos, specifically, for their generous support of IPaintMyMind’s mission to bring creative connection to artists, businesses, and schools citywide.

And if you need any art supplies during quarantine, Blick Lincoln Park now has curbside pickup available!