Candace Printz ’05

Candace Printz ’05 inspired a massive mountain lion mural in downtown El Paso.

The 64-foot mural is the result of Candace turning her high school art students’ complaints about litter into action. With her guidance, the students cleaned up the trash, held free community workshops on how to make art out of litter, and organized a “Trash to Treasure” art exhibition. The project earned national recognition from Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton.

Candace built on the success of “Trash to Treasure” by creating a student club that became a nonprofit organization. Students in the Green Hope Project, as it is now known, wrote to Portuguese sculptor Bordalo II and raised money to invite him to El Paso to create the mountain lion mural at the corner of Mesa Street and Franklin Avenue.

The mural made out of seven truckloads of recycled plastics is the only Bordalo II piece in Texas, and one of the largest of his sculptures around the world.

Candace is now the assistant director of fine arts for the Socorro Independent School District. She continues to lead the Green Hope Project, and is pursuing other initiatives such as creating and distributing free project-based environmental art lessons for science and fine arts teachers, and recycling plastics into pellets that can be melted and injected into molds to make new products and art pieces.

“If I didn’t have the confidence or the skillset from UTEP, I would never have been able to do what I was able to do,” she said, adding that her UTEP professors were great mentors. “They made me realize that the stuff you do can change your community. You can’t save the world, but you can really make a difference in your own backyard.”