Artboles: Youth, Art, and the Environment
engages local youth volunteers in land and river stewardship projects while facilitating the expression of nature through art.
The vision is to empower youth to express themselves and the outdoors through large-scale mural projects following numerous guided field adventures into the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Back home, the mural process is led by experts in mural design and painting. Guest artists include Victor Cervantes, a College of the Sequoias art instructor whose art reflects social causes and has been recognized by numerous project grants and awards, as well as Erik Gonzales, founder of the Urbanists Collective, an art group with a focus on promoting the education and positive expansion of urban art within the community.
Erik Gonzalez leads aerosol art workshop with students from Vine St. Community Day School. The recycling container is located off of highway 190 as one enters the Sequoia National Forest boundary.
The youth who are invited to this program commit 4 – 6 hours each week for several months both in the studio and out in the field, learning through experience that art, nature, and youth power are each powerful tools, and together they are able to inspire and insitgate change in habitats, wild or urban, and a reverance of Nature.
Youth from Vine Community Day School, Burton Pathways, and a growing list of youth organizations have participated. Current murals can be found at Burton Horizon Academy High School, the Porterville Public Library, and Comision Honorifica Mexicana Y Americana Cultural Center, all located in Porterville, CA.
Victor Cervantes facilitates a mural project on the local community center in Porterville, CA: Comisión Honorífica Mexicana Americana (CHMA)
Partners
Special thanks to financial partners Tulare County Youth Commission and the Rose Foundation and to program partner Academia Jovenil de Arte y Cultura (AJAC). The Youth Commission has supported Artboles since 2013 and continues to foster our vision as they forward their mission of providing gang prevention activities throughout the county. AJAC provides artistic expertise and a dynamic art studio from which we are able to work.
Participate
Do you have or know of a building or wall in your Tulare County District 5 town that can support a mural? Come tour our murals and see if something can be done in your town.