Clareo Partners

Sometimes, the best ideas come from unexpected pairings. In this case, two very different organizations, Clareo Partners and an artist collective, got together to give high school students from a low-income area of Chicago the opportunity to express themselves through art.

The partnership between Clareo and the artist, Baltazar Castillo, began nearly two years ago. Castillo, the son of Mexican immigrants from Monterrey, grew up in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. It was his idea to do an art project with West Side students. "I'd had a couple of good years and I wanted to give back to the community in some way," he explains. Castillo, along with his fellow artists King Farish and Ewa Bloch, got together and formed a collective, then approached Clareo about holding a silent auction of their work.

The results were a Charity Art Silent Auction that took place at Clareo Partners' Annual Holiday Party. The three artists each brought two paintings to the auction and all six sold for a total of $8,000. "Clareo Partners is about helping drive positive change through innovation," Robert Wolcott, co-founder of Clareo explains. "Creativity is an essential part of the innovation process and an area where we have expertise. So it makes sense that Clareo would help foster an arts program that helps young people envision a more prosperous and fulfilling future."

Castillo and Farish arranged with Alicia Kopec, the art instructor at Chicago's Orr High School, to visit the school once a week on Thursdays and help fifty students explore their creativity through a collaborative group art project. The artists divided the students into three groups, one to work with each of the three artists. Employing acrylics on canvas the groups created large, ambitious eight-by-ten-foot paintings.

Once the student projects were finished Castillo and the artists hung and critiqued the students' work, pointing out their strengths and giving them advice for improvement.

The next step is to have the students isolate individual areas within the group project and develop those areas into larger paintings. Castillo hopes to arrange another auction at year's end only this time he would like to auction off the students' artwork.

For Castillo and for the students, creating group artwork has been a mind and soul expanding experience. Castillo explains, "I want to show these kids that there are healthy options to express your emotions," he adds. "You can recall experiences and turn your feelings into these projects that are called art."