Silas is one our our youth employees this season. We asked him a few questions about art and life:

Can you tell us a little about yourself? What are your hobbies?
Alright, so I like to read a lot and I’ve been skateboarding a lot recently. I do a lot of drawing– a lot of it in class which my teachers aren’t happy about, haha. Annnnd I play drums and video games and read.

What is your art experience? How has it helped with your job at Urban ArtWorks?
Like, in life in general? A lot of my family are artists. My aunt does stuff with wax. And my grandpa is a painter.

What new tricks have you learned for painting? What’s the coolest?
Well, here I learned I should probably wipe up a brush on the bucket before I get to painting. Also, how to mix paint, How to use larger quantities of paint on boards and the coolest is I learned how to do larger scale stuff than what I was doing before.

What was your favorite project?
I really liked the one with Angel, that one was super fun. It was fun taking all these steps for it. Like ripping the tape off and seeing it all come off and how cool it looked.

How was the design process?
We taped up the boards in different designs and shapes and once the tape was down we painted the shapes different colors and then Angel went in and painted over it with her designs and artworks and style and then we removed the tape and saw all the different layers we did together.

If you could be any crayon color, what color would you be?
Baby blue.

How do you like working with the team?
It’s good. I like it! It’s super to cool to paint with other people and talk to other people about painting and it’s a different setting to do that all in.

Has working here changed your mindset on anything?
I don’t know if it changed my mindset. This is the first job setting I’ve ever had. WAIT! Actually, no it has! When we were brainstorming and thinking of ideas for Angel’s mural, I I could never think of anything to draw when I was at home, and then we just listed stuff off and kept going and creating stuff. It was cool seeing all the work behind the art on the streets; now knowing there’s teams of people behind this stuff is so cool!

What’s the most fun part of working at Urban ArtWorks? What challenges you?
I think working with the artists and talking about the art and seeing it happen is cool. It’s a new environment for me. What challenges me? Hmm, well, I lose focus so keeping focused when its a lot of painting the same shades of things… But I’m learning to keep track of stuff and seeing it through to the end.

Any advice to future ArtWorks youth?
If a project seems hard stick with it because the end product is worth it. Like, even the smallest part of the project is important and… all that jazz.