Passport to Texas

It’s Your World — let’s make it beautiful.

Trash to Treasure Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

A project in El Paso, has HS students and the local art community turning roadside trash to treasure.

It’s called It’s Your World, and it’s a really, really cool project.

Nicole Roque, an AmeriCorps volunteer with Texas Parks and Wildlife, based in El Paso, heard about El Dorado HS art teacher, Candace Printz who, with her students, created the project to improve their community.

She started It’s Your World, and what they do is they go into the community and they do cleanups. They adopted a portion of highway and they went out a few months and cleaned it completely. And they kept statistic on what they found, and then they took all this trash back to their school, they cleaned it up, they separated it, and then used it as art supplies.

It’s Your World compliments AmeriCorps’ mission of improving the human condition. Nicole partnered with the project to develop art workshops.

And they’ve created some of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. They recently had an art exhibition; I went to go see it, and it floors you to look at some of these really amazing things [made from trash]. And one of my favorite things that Candace told me is they opened their portable where they had all the supplies, and local artists were coming in to collect supplies for their art, and people were fighting over the trash.

One man’s trash…. Learn more about It’s Your World…we have a link to their website at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

—————————————————————————————————–

Some of the students working on art projects made from trash collected along a two-mile stretch of road in El Paso.

It’s Your World workshop.

A drummer keeps the beat during a musical performance at McKinney Falls State Park.

Art in the Parks Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Texas State Parks can inspire artistic pursuits.

07-Our state parks are such amazing places–for lots of reasons–but one of the reasons is how creative they can make us feel.

Chris Holmes is Director of Interpretation for State Parks, and writes about the Arts in the Parks initiative in the May issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine. The idea for the program came to him after a family art activity.

21- We took an art workshop down at one of the strip malls, and we learned how to make a painting with the whole family–and it was so much fun–but the irony was, we were all doing a picture of the forest, but we were in the middle of Austin. And I thought: ‘Wow. Couldn’t we make this workshop be at a state park and let the family look at the outdoors versus being inside?’

The answer was: of course! While making art in parks is not new; the focus has often been painting and drawing.

14- We’ve really expanded it to writing, poetry, songs and dances, and film-making and blogging–and anything that goes under that whole creative artistic umbrella is what we’re encouraging to happen in our parks.

Find an art program near you in the calendar section of the Texas Parks and Wildlife website. And learn more about the Arts in the Parks initiative in the May issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

That’s our show…Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.