Wooden Houses at Jesse's House with Elise Aronson

Everyone knows Paint Love’s mission is to provide art programs for youth facing poverty or trauma. However, most of our followers don’t know much about our amazing partners.

Over the weekend, we got to work with an incredible organization called Jesse’s House.

 This is an emergency children’s shelter for high-risk girls ages 7-17 who are referred from the Department of Family and Children’s Services or Department of Juvenile Justice. The shelter seeks to reunify the residents with their families whenever possible and to provide a safe house until permanent placement is found.

 This place acts as a refuge for them to grow, connect, and just have a safe place to be young girls! We brought an amazing artist, Elise Aronson, who has worked with Jesse’s House before to lead our art project.

 Elise is known for taking little scraps of broken jewelry, or small pieces of wood, and turning it into an absolute masterpiece! This week, she brought some of her supplies to create little wooden homes with the girls.

 Many of these girls haven’t had a safe home until coming to Jesse’s House, so we thought it would be really therapeutic to envision their dream home and make it come to life! We brought fun paints, jewels, rhinestones, numbers, ribbon; all the things a typical girl would want on her future home!

 We hope that by allowing these girls to create their own special place, they feel a certain hope for their future, and redefine their idea of what home may mean. They would feel safe and peaceful thinking about their future homes.

 Thank you, Elise, for bringing this time of creative play and creating a safe space for these girls to express their thoughts. And of course, thank you to Jesse’s House for the amazing work you all do for these girls, we are so honored to have you as a partner!