Large canvases honoring ballerina Misty Copeland and performer Prince will soon join the CSN galleries in the student unions, thanks to a new partnership between College of Southern Nevada’s student government and the local Guerrilla Artz Foundation.
CSN students Gustavo Rico and Rachel Elkins earned the honor to create the street-style artwork after submitting ideas to student government and CSN’s Black Student Union.
“That was really important we choose two current students,” said Jeff Fulmer, a coordinator in the Fine Arts Department at CSN.
The new pieces will be rotated in among pieces already on display in the student unions on CSN’s three campuses. The pieces already in the unions were also created in partnership with Guerilla Artz Foundation and were installed when the unions opened in August 2019.
The pieces were specifically commissioned as Black History Month pieces. Rico, 23, and Elkins, 22, created the pieces over four sessions in public in the Tyrone Thompson Student Union on CSN’s North Las Vegas Campus.
Rico, who is studying engineering at CSN and is transferring to UNLV in the fall, chose to honor Copeland, the first African-American dancer promoted to principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre. Painting in public was nerve-wracking for Rico, but he’s enjoyed being able to share Copeland’s story with other students.
“She’s always been a great role model to me,” he said. “A lot of people are curious as to who she is, so it’s cool to let them know who she is and that it’s for Black History Month.”
Elkins, an art student at CSN, will also graduate and transfer to UNLV. She’s been a fan of Guerrilla Artz for a while and found out about the opportunity that way.
“I’ve been following them for a while and I wanted to get involved,” she said.
She was deciding between images of Jimmy Hendrix, Maya Angelou and Prince, but found that student government and the Black Student Union seemed to connect the most with Prince.
“Once I get started, I get so immersed in it. It’s been really nice actually,” she said.