Once upon a time, the City of Las Cruces had a robust teen mural camp hosted by the Parks and Recreation Department. Many of our older public art murals painted on walls in the Hadley Sports Complex were created by young people who participated in the mural camps back in the day. It all started when a recreation coordinator noticed teens like creating art in public spaces and wanted to bring them together to make it more meaningful and cohesive.
“I wanted to show teens how to paint murals correctly,” said Shaunna Foster,* Library Assistant, Las Cruces Library Systems. “I was at Frank O’Brien Papen Community Center at the time and was doing non-traditional programming. The City started an initiative to get more teens engaged, and I noticed that young people liked painting with spray paint. I submitted a proposal for an aerosol art camp, and surprisingly, they approved it.”
The first mural was “Desert Diorama” done in 2014. Before trying to paint on a wall themselves, the camp kids were driven around the city to look at murals to get inspiration. Then they started playing with spray paint on the walls of a storage shed in the Hadley Complex. “We went through the basics like coloring and fading, pointing the can away from the face before spraying, which one of them did anyway, but they were wearing a mask,” Shaunna describes. She recalls a woman who lived in a home across from the shed hating that the kids were out there. When Shaunna told her the kids were part of a City camp, she responded “I don’t trust the City!” When the mural was finished, the woman changed her mind. “She said she loved it and loved looking at it while having her coffee in the morning,” remembers Shaunna.
Other murals done through the program were “Evolution of Loss”, “Kosmic Kamikazee”, “Sacred Rain Arrow”, and the 3-D “Tennis Ball” at Lions Park on the Laabs Pool outer wall. Shaunna also helped with the mosaic mural, “When Trees Play”, at the Armando “Mondy” Castañeda administrative building and the “Water is Life” acequia access in front of City Hall.
Her favorite project was “Hustle and Flow” at the East Mesa Recreation Center, which was for the basketball court and gymnastics area of the center. Shaunna and the kids researched people in different poses of sport activity and chose their favorites. Then they projected the poses on the wall and outlined the shapes. Each kid was given their own shape to paint. The only rule was they could not draw it as a person. It couldn’t be a human. The result was a very creative, cool mural.
Shaunna’s theory is that kids must want to do a project, and if you let them design their own art, they will be engaged. She has seen proof of this with every successful mural created through the camp. “You also don’t want to fix the imperfections when it’s completed,” she claims. Painting a mural gives the participants a sense of ownership. They love showing their work to their families and friends. If you fix their work, it’s not theirs anymore. There are all sorts of skills that kids learn through art programs. They provide a space for kids to be social with other kids who have similar interests as well as giving them a forum for self and creative expression. They learn other skills too like collaboration and even math. Concepts like focal points and depth of field are all math based. Art gives a sense of community and pride; kids can do something outside of their usual world.
As a Library Assistant, Shaunna tries to incorporate art into her job whenever she can, but the teen mural camp faded away long ago. “Not everyone can run programs like this. And the number of kids that can participate are a fairly small percentage compared to how many can participate in team sports and the like,” she reflects. “But the experience that the kids take away from this is often very impactful and something they will have for the rest of their lives. That’s what makes art programming so valuable.”
My favorite little-known fact about one of the murals – the kids who worked on the “Evolution of Loss” mural were looking at it after it was finished and some of them were very concerned that the dinosaur looked like he was going to eat the peacock in front of him. They added a little red heart between the two to show they were good. Love that!
*Shaunna is a professional artist outside of her daytime job and has an art piece on display in the current After Hours: City Staff Art Exhibit in City Hall. If interested in seeing more of her work, go to Instagram@ShaunnaF_Arts.
