We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Candace Printz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Candace, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
In 2016 my students and I received the honor of being the sole winners in the nation for a community service project that promoted environmentalism and art. This project, later called the It’s Your World Project, had community members collecting trash from the highway, cleaning/sorting it, then turning it into artwork. Local recycled art workshops were hosted in
order to educate the public on environmental issues. A recycled art contest was also hosted,
called Metamorphosis: Trash to Treasure. Chelsea Clinton visited El Paso twice in order to help
my students and I raise awareness about this project. The cleanups, workshops, and art contest
have continued to grow and receive community support. As a result, I pulled together with
community members and decided to start a non-profit, Green Hope Project, to continue these
endeavors. I believe that large-scale, positive change is possible when like-minded individuals
come together and take action.
We are now in year 8 of the Trash to Treasure art contest. The culmination of this journey with
my students was when, after courting world-renowned Portuguese artist Bordalo II for 5 years,
we finally raised enough money for him and his team to come to our city and create a 64’
trash/plastic mural of a mountain lion. We specifically chose to depict a mountain lion, as it is a
species of greatest conservation need, and use a material that calls for people to focus on the
current state of our planet and the pollution that is smothering it. We know that there is power in
art and hope that it will create positive change.
Bordalo II and his two assistants, João (Terrible Kid) & Félix worked for six days with us on this 64-foot recycled material masterpiece. After nearly 100 hours, 7 truckloads of plastics and 10,000 screws, we completed it on August 20th, 2022.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I couldn’t help but admire my mother as she sketched family portraits with ease. I would often sit with her, eager to express myself in the creative ways that she did. From sketching to creating macramé and crafts, my mom was my first art teacher who paved the way to who I would ultimately become. Once I entered middle school, everything changed. The pencils were put away, the yarn was left on the shelf, and the scissors stayed in the drawer. What was worse is my creative energies were stifled as I attempted to survive the disintegration of my family and everything I once knew. All my attention then went towards raising myself. During those unstable years as an adolescent I was overwhelmed with trying to maintain my grades, handle insensitive remarks from teachers, survive on what little money we had, and discover who I was. Eventually, everything came to a head and I could no longer handle the problems- so I dropped out of school at thirteen. Suddenly my world was turned upside down when I came home one night to find my mother lying on the floor, clutching torn curtains. Mom incoherently repeated that my father had abandoned our family for another woman. The next three years were a blur, as I tried to support my divorced mother and homeschool myself. By sixteen, I found myself working two jobs to put food on the table and pay bills. Life finally turned around when my aunt came down from El Paso, Texas during Christmas. An educator for thirty years, Aunt Janet took stock of the situation and realized I needed an education. She offered me a way out by asking me to move in with her and get my G.E.D. Hesitant to leave my mom, I declined. The next morning when I prepared for work, I realized I was stuck unless I made a change. My aunt purchased a plane ticket for me and I arrived to my new life that same week. After months of rigorous studying, I passed my G.E.D. and enrolled in community college. When asked what I could see myself doing, the idea of art and helping people came to mind. My course was set.
Here I am now, with fifteen years of teaching high school art under my belt, and a recent promotion to Assistant Director of Fine Arts for Socorro ISD. I do not claim to be unique in that I have encountered hardships in my life, but I am proud to say that I did not get swallowed by the life of poverty, lack of education, and addiction that I saw all around me while growing up.
All that I have experienced has amounted to who I am now and I acknowledge that it has made me more capable to handle the goals I have set for my community and I. One such goal has consumed my life for the past six years. I have a very precious project that my students and I started and there is no end in sight.
In 2015 we took a seed of an idea and planted it. The art club students and I were discussing how unsightly and disturbing it was to see the trash collecting near our school and in our pristine desert. We decided to unite for a greater cause by adopting a two mile stretch of highway in the desert, where debris had accumulated as a result of illegal dumping, poor recycling habits, and an overabundance of major chains developing closer and closer to neighborhoods and natural habitats for wildlife. Our goal was to clean up our desert while educating the public about recycling through the arts. We did this by collecting over 800 bags of trash and making it readily available as art supplies. Several art workshops were given by my students and I to educate the community about recycling.
The community and local non-profits were invited to assist in this endeavor. We had over 100 volunteers and worked very closely with the Humane Society, Make-A-Wish, and the Chihuahuan Desert Education Coalition. For every hour they logged helping us at our cleanups or workshops, we donated money to their organizations. Soldiers, girl scouts, students, artists, environmentalists, New Mexico, Mexico, & Texas were all united to do something that created the most rewarding happiness- thoughtlessly giving to help others and the world they live in.
The culmination of this project was when we had an art contest, Metamorphosis: Trash to Treasure. The only stipulation was that they had to have some element of recycled materials within their artwork. Any proceeds that we raised from the sales of the artworks were split between the artists and the non-profits. We were proud that our exhibit offered more than just “pretty artwork” made from discarded items, but that we also addressed what the environmental problems were, along with how people could be a part of the solution, with information boards hung intermittently throughout the gallery space. My fear of no one participating was squashed when we had over 600 submissions. Over 1,000 people attended the opening reception, sending a clear message that we were on to something. We are on year five of this exhibition now, with entries coming in from Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
Of no surprise, the momentum of this soon caught more attention from graduates, parents, businesses, and community members. There seemed to be a lot of people that wanted to help with these issues, but they just didn’t know where to start. When they saw the efforts we were making, they wanted to be a part of it. Because of this, what was once a small high school club turned into a full-fledged non-profit. Green Hope Project was created, with board members that were former students, parents, educators, and environmentalists. The three pillars of our non-profit are ART, EDUCATION, & ENVIRONMENTALISM.
This status blew open so many doors for us that it ultimately led to my students and I meeting with city representatives, state senators, and our United States Congresswoman. Our non-profit is now working closely with said individuals to improve upon environmental policy and education.
At our desert cleanups, we were discovering more than trash. Oftentimes, we found animals that were dumped in the outskirts of our community, much like trash thrown out of a window. We now work with animal rescue groups that accompany us at our cleanups, to help them with medical treatment and rehoming.
There was also an overwhelming amount of contractor waste, alongside business pollution. We noticed this was taking place more in the county, where the lower income population lived, affecting some of our most vulnerable. As a result of this, we are creating a task force with businesses in these areas, along with homeowners and the Sherriff’s Department, to get to the root of these problems. Our community impact is seen in how we are helping the land, animals, AND people. What we began to realize while doing our events is that all parts are affected by the others, much like an ecosystem. If you help one, you help the other.
The more we got involved with the environmental pillar of our non-profit, the more we noticed that other groups with a similar mission were fractured throughout our region. They all had the same goals, yet were working harder separately, rather than more effectively, together. This is when we realized we needed a platform for everyone to come together to be stronger united and to share ideas. Green Hope Project has since collaborated with our United States Senator and Congresswoman to start an Environmental Summit. At this event, we can collaborate, check the pulse on what is going on in our world, and inspire others by offering scholarships in line with our mission and educational booths for all ages.
We have done numerous workshops at universities, public schools, museums, parks, and libraries. We are currently a subgrant recipient from the Environmental Protection Agency, allowing for us to teach classes in the public high schools addressing environmental justice and green infrastructure. We also take these services into our Juvenile Detention Centers to do art therapy with the children that feel forgotten and are attempting to cope with things that we can only imagine. Some workshop events have our participants attending nature walks, while hosting photography contests. Our reasoning behind this is that if you can get people to experience nature and pay attention to the details of it more closely through the eye of a lens, you can get them to fall in love with it. If you can get them to fall in love with it, they will fight to preserve it.
The beauty of our model is that it can be replicated anywhere. Our desire is to teach other communities what we have done, so that Green Hope Project can live on long beyond our lifetime. Trash is in every community at no cost! Our aim is to have Green Hope Project chapters pop up all over the world. The workshops, outdoor activities, curriculum infused with project-based lessons and environmentalism can be offered anywhere, for free. Even during times of COVID, we have been able to pivot and do all these things virtually. The summit, workshops, exhibitions, awards ceremonies, curriculum building, and environmental classes have all been done online or socially distanced. We already have branched out to other schools and districts throughout our region. With my new position of Assistant Director of Fine Arts, my ability to reach more teachers and institutions to spread our ideas is greater.
BRIEF BIO:
Candace Printz taught art at El Dorado High School for fifteen years and is now the
Assistant Director of Fine Arts for Socorro ISD in El Paso, Texas. She has won
recognition for her efforts in promoting environmental awareness through the Arts,
including receiving the Texas Environmental Educator of the Year Award by the Texas
Commission on Environmental Quality. She was the recipient of the $10,000 Be More
Grant from the National Society of High School Scholars, founded by the Nobel
family, was the sole winner of the It’s Your World contest, which resulted in Chelsea
Clinton personally flying in to recognize her for the honor. She was the Socorro ISD
Teacher of the Year, was a finalist for the H.E.B. Excellence in Education Awards two
years in a row, and was the first-ever inductee into the Socorro ISD Wall of Honor.
Candace received a BA in art education from the University of Texas at El Paso and a
MAE from Texas Tech, University in Lubbock.
In 2019, Candace and other community members created the non-profit, Green
Hope Project, which focuses on art, education, and environmentalism. In 2022, Printz
spearheaded the creation of a 64′ recycled plastic mural, depicting a mountain lion in
downtown El Paso, built by world-renowned Porteguese artist, Bordalo II. With
Candace and the talents and commitment of her amazing board members, she aims
to bring inspiration, art education, innovation, and positive change to the world.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
In a time when information is instantaneously at our fingertips it can be overwhelming. When we’re bombarded with all the problems and despair of the world it can be debilitating, causing us to freeze up. One may feel like they can’t make much of a difference. This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. Our hope is to encourage artists and non- artists alike to know their purchasing habits, choice of creative materials, and actions can make all the difference in their own backyard. By starting there, they are, in fact, helping to make the world a better place.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
When attempting to start our nonprofit, we had no idea where to begin. Ultimately, we found total guidance and support from a location foundation. Once you become a 501c3, so many great opportunities open up to you. There are databases of grants that your can pay a small fee to access, helping you to hunt for funding.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.greenhopeproject.org.
- Instagram: Thegreenhopeproject
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/thegreenhopeproject
- Twitter: GHopeProject
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@greenhopeproject4421?feature=shared
Image Credits
Candace Printz, Patrick Craig, and Jeanette Nevarez