The first easel
I have been making work for over a decade on makeshift setups. Boxes. Chairs. Whatever the room allowed. It worked, because it had to.
Last month, I reached out to BLICK Art Materials and they offered to support the studio opening with a $100 supply donation. I used it to buy my first real easel. The BLICK Studio Medium-Duty H-Frame Easel. It is sitting in Suite 206 right now.
I did not expect to feel what I felt when I set it up. It is a piece of equipment. But it is also the first time in ten years of practice that I have had a dedicated space and a proper place to put a canvas in it. Those two things arriving at the same time hit differently than I expected.
BLICK Art Materials is not a new name to me. They have been part of my practice for as long as I have had one. If you have ever bought art supplies in this country, you already know them too. Founded in Galesburg, Illinois in 1911, family-owned for over a century and currently in its third generation, with over 60 stores and nearly 2,000 team members across the country. A Midwest company. One of the largest providers of art supplies in the U.S. The kind of institution that has quietly held up the material side of American art for generations.
It mattered to me that the first real tool in this studio came from them. A Midwest company supporting a Midwest artist, opening her first studio, buying her first easel. That is a full circle I did not plan but am not taking for granted.
