Painting the town: Art project culminates with party

A bounce house, music, the smell of barbecue and children laughing and running marked the first collaborative block party hosted by a public art team.

The July 26 party at Silverado Village Apartment Homes, 3750 Arville St., included the Metropolitan Police Department and the Clark County Summer Business Institute. About 150 to 200 people attended the institute’s Action for Community Enrichment Project event.

“We’ve been working with Metro this whole ACE project, and this is the first time we’ve had SBI come in with the art project,” said Silverado Village community manager Eunice Sierra. “It’s turned the community (of 440 apartments) around. Our occupancy has grown because our residents want to stay here longer.”

Darryl McDonald, an officer with Metro, said he believes in the enrichment project’s mission of providing resources to youths who have limited exposure to positive life experiences.

“We focus the kids’ attention on good,” said McDonald. “We hold them accountable for doing good things and reward them with doing good things.”

Two of those rewards included a recent outing to an NBA Summer League game at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, and a field trip to the Discovery Children’s Museum, 360 Promenade Place.

“It’s so nice when the kids see a police car outside (now),” Sierra said. “Instead of thinking the worst thing, they say, ‘Oh, officer Darryl is here or my friend is here.’ They truly love him and respect him.”

All activities are made possible through donations from businesses, individuals and area public officials who are members of the Action for Community Enrichment Project coalition.

Professional artist and Silverado High School art teacher Tony Flanagan, 30, shared a story of the legend of origami and how it became the basis for the four-week workshop that culminated in the art fair block party.

According to an old Japanese tradition, anyone with the patience and commitment to fold 1,000 paper cranes will be granted their most desired wish.

Working with children ages 8 to 15 in the police department’s Enterprise Area Command jurisdiction, a low-income, higher-crime area, Flanagan and co-artist Mark Brandvik began an art workshop with origami.

“The first workshop we did with the kids was paper folding,” said Flanagan. “It didn’t require them to know how to draw well or paint well, just come and fold.”

Inspired by the patterns on the origami paper, the children then made stencils for spray paint.

“Showing them that spray paint is not something that we just tag with” was a secondary benefit, said Flanagan. “Once you have created that art work, you eliminate the desire to go graffiti on a wall.”

The Summer Business Institute was founded in 1996 as a collaborative program of the county Human Resources Department, Clark County School District, UNLV and the local business community.

To be considered for the program, students must complete an online application, provide a recent high school transcript with a minimum 2.0 grade point average and two letters of recommendation.

Participants 16 or older are required to work Monday through Thursday, eight hours a day, at participating businesses. They earn $ 8.25 per hour for the eight-week internship that focuses on business mentoring, life skills training and financial management. The interns must also complete a four-week voluntary civic engagement project in their career area of interest.

Nine of the 109 Summer Business Institute interns who enrolled in this year’s program chose to fulfill their civic engagement requirement by volunteering to assist professional artists, Flanagan and Brandvik, and mentoring the fledgling art workshop participants.

One of the interns asked Flanagan when he first considered himself an artist.

“I ran into art very accidentally in life,” said Flanagan.

He wasn’t particularly talented as a kid, he said.

“Whether it was the (workshop) participants or the (Summer Business Institute) interns, (the workshop has) been that accidental run-in with art that hopefully becomes more of their life vocabulary,” Flanagan said.

For more information about the Summer Business Institute, visit tinyurl.com/clarkcountysbi or call 702-455-2426.