PAINT CAN PRESS

• FEBRUARY 2025 •

Snowdrifts and Weather Shifts

February has been a busy month here at BFA in every way possible! Alongside the run down about what's coming up, this edition features a glimpse of our grant-funded series ¡Arte Juntos!, a subscriber's only offer, some exciting news we've been waiting to share with you, and an update on our upcoming round of hiring.

Upcoming Events

Collage Collective Kick-Off

TONIGHT! • Thurs. 2/27 5-7pm

Connect, create, and cut it up with other artists! Free, age-inclusive, and open to all. Bring your own supplies or use ours!

Oil Painting 102

Sat. 3/1

9am–3:30pm

If you've completed OP-101 or have previous experience, this class explores the Zorn palette & completes a still life study.

Zentangle: White on Black

Sat. 3/1 10am–12pm

Ease into your weekend with mindfulness and creativity, and build on Zentangle basics with white ink on black paper tiles.

Intro to Alcohol Inks Sat. 3/8

1-3:3opm

Come explore the vivid world of alc inks! This popular class with Gail Fairfield explores color mixing and texture creation.

Art Club • March

Thurs. 3/13

5-7pm

Bring or borrow some watercolor paper + chalk to create marbled chalk prints! Art Club is free, all-ages friendly, and ability inclusive.

Block Carving Level 2

Sat. 3/22

10am-12pm

Join Fern Salvaggio for this more nuanced exploration of carving techniques and color, this time on mounted linoleum blocks!

Quik Pic Recap: ¡Arte Juntos!

The first month of our grant funded series, ¡Arte Juntos!, was enormously fun! Gatherings are held on Sunday afternoons, and will run through the end of May. February's theme was Movimiento de la citidad (Movement of the city). These sessions explored shapes, textures, and vignettes of citiscapes: from stacked, monolithic buildings to windowsill still-life objects that reflect the lives within. Our theme for March is Animales.

The lively sound of Spanish filling the shop has brought the Creative Commons to life in brilliant new ways, and collaborating with Gloria Manzanares-Romero to build this programming has been a delight! Our only challenge? Enough room around the tables––but more on that later.

New Chapters

The shifting weather over the past few weeks has felt like a reflection of the change in season for bfa.supply. As temperatures evolve this spring, so too does our neighborhood landscape. When our pals at Rhett Skateboarding shared with us that they would not be renewing their lease a few weeks ago, our exact response was *ahem* "NOOOOOOOOO." 😭

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Rhett Skateboarding has been a neighborhood hub for nearly 14 years, and from the moment we moved in, we connected over underground culture, retail war stories, goofy t-shirts, and shop fixture thrifting. When our first-ever delivery truck pulled up to the curb in October of 2023, it was owner Jonathan Prather who stepped in to snap a Polaroid for me. A few weeks later, we honored them with a skateboard icon in our mural.

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Since then, they’ve continually been the best kind of neighbors—helping with heavy furniture, taking in rogue package deliveries, and sharing tools. The folks at Rhett have also been endlessly patient with my kids, who (correctly) think they are the coolest guys in town. We’ll sincerely miss having them next door, but are grateful to have overlapped with their tenure on S. Rogers.

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In keeping with gratitude and a positive outlook, I'm pleased (and bewildered) to share that Bloomington Fine Art Supply will, in its own way, maintain this space as a community-oriented resource. Later this spring, a new double door will be installed in the shared wall to create an interior access point from the shop to the adjacent space, which will become the new Creative Commons. We look forward to expanding our lineup of workshops, increased availability for private events, and the launch of kids programming, including summer camps and after-school programming.

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This change opens the door—literally and figuratively—to more creative opportunities for our neighborhood. Change can be bittersweet, but we’re looking forward to having more seats around our tables, and shaping this next chapter with you.

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🤓 Job Listing Update 🤓

I had hoped to have the job description finalized and the application portal ready in time for the deployment of this email, but if you’ve been in the shop this week (or anytime in the past two months), you’ve seen the veritable mountain of inventory we’re unpacking—with even more arriving tomorrow if shipping notifications are correct! (Helloooooo Japanese papers, origami sets, bookbinding tools, and oodles more!)

That said, we’re putting the finishing touches on everything and will be sending out a special edition newsletter early next week to officially kick off our first round of hiring.

Our subscribers here will have a first-crack at the application, which we'll share more broadly after a few days. Thank you for your patience and enthusiasm!

See you in the next edition!