Sculpt ‘n’ skate

A giant granite peanut sits atop a concrete rise at the Rattlesnake Mountain Skate Park. One of its sides is scored so that it looks like shattered glass or an imitation of the stained-glass windows you’d find inside a church. Cemented to the concrete, the piece has clearly already felt the fish belly underside of many a skateboard, even though it was only installed just over a week ago. The top of the peanut is already wearing smooth.

“The piece was [going] in a skate park and was going to get skated on anyway,” Cindy Chheav, 18, said of the piece that some of her Youth Artworks project-mates created, “so they thought it was important to make it useful.”

The oversized legume-evoking piece and a turntable sculpture made by Chheav and her partner are the only two of six pieces installed at the park that are skate-able. The other four pieces are placed at the corner areas of the undulating cement slab located on South McCarran.

Sierra Arts Youth Artworks program is now in its seventh year, focused on “helping to educate, mentor and train youths age 15 to 21 in job skills through the arts.” This is the first year there has been a sculpture project. Every student who was part of the project was chosen on the basis of an application. Once selected, it became their job to design, collaborate upon and create an art installation—and they got paid for it.

Chheav was doing ceramics at McQueen when she learned that she would be part of the group. Kate Nielsen, 17, was doing ceramic sculpture at Reno High.

Nielsen’s piece has a Planet of the Apes monolith vibe. Its long rectangular form reaches six feet high. There’s an upside-down simple humanoid image on one side that is similar to the universal symbol for femaleness. The other side is an organized mess of diagonal, vertical and horizontal etches, punctuated here and there by perfectly symmetrical circular gouges.

“I think for most kids, a summer job means you’re working somewhere you don’t want to,” Nielsen said, “but with this program, you get paid to do something you love.”

The students were advised by lead sculpture artist Chris Atcheson, who’d worked with granite before. Shanan Fisher, 17, from Manogue High, acted as senior apprentice; she was part of the mural project the year before.

“I wasn’t supposed to give any ideas,” Fisher said. “I just needed to make sure everything we were doing was feasible and that we were going to be able to finish it in our time limit.”

Given that eight of the Artworks participants were girls and that none of them had ever sculpted with stone, let alone used power tools, the project was an educational challenge. Atcheson taught the students most of what they needed to know.

“I showed them the basics, how to use the tools and work with the material, and they supplied all the creative juice and energy and found their way.”

The Artworks participants hope that when people see the sculptures at the skate park, it will occur to them that artistic kids are often the same kids who hang out at skate parks.

“Some of the [artists] were skaters,” Nielsen said. “Maybe older people walking by on the path will look at the sculptures and see that skaters can do this kind of thing.”

“This project demonstrates what can be done by intelligent young people when they’re given the tools," Atcheson said. "I hope through this project people will see how intelligent these young kids are and what they can do."