Art supply store to open in East Village

Siren Ship — a new art-supply store and studio, 1019 Mound St., Village of East Davenport — will celebrate its grand opening Saturday, Feb. 18, from noon to 6 p.m.

The event will include $3 chili, door prizes and live music. Siren Ship founder Heidi Sallows (an artist and former art teacher in Arizona) organized the new nonprofit to collect art supplies, to be donated free to area teachers and sold to others at affordable prices.

Educators have access to donated supplies inside the Siren Ship Shop. With a flash of a badge, they can get a bag to fill up for free.

The new nonprofit is on the second floor of Village Market Place on the corner of Mound and 11th streets, Village of East Davenport.

“Why are we doing this? Well, as a former Art Teacher, I know how class budgets can often fall short… like way-way too short,” Sallows wrote on the Siren Ship website.

Occupying the entire second floor of the Village Market Place building, the new store front and studio spaces allow Siren Ship “to resell expensive materials at an affordable price and its location also makes donation drop-offs easy for the community to find us,” the site says.

They also offer reuse material classes, an evolving New-Tools for Teachers program and a Tiny Tinkers Room.

The Creative Reuse Studio is where items that are donated are dropped off, gone through, cleaned up and even up cycled before they reach the shelves on the shop side, Siren Ship says. The studio will hold up to 18 quests and one or two educators or volunteers.

DIY Educators/Artists/Makers can host a class teaching their techniques using the Siren Ship reuse materials.

Siren Ship will have its grand opening Saturday, Feb. 18 from noon to 6 p.m.

Siren Ship aims to help keep art supplies from reaching landfills by redirecting and upcycling the large waste stream art and hobby-making material. It will also provide local artists jobs making art and utilitarian items out of the supplies, that are then sold in the shop.

Sallows named the organization Siren Ship partly because of a scene from “The Little Mermaid,” Ariel has a collection of things under the sea. “She sings the song, ‘Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?’” Sallows said. “Yes, I want a cavern full of reused stuff, like a sunken ship full of treasure. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”