Student Art Crew Brightens The Shack

With the help of four high school students who found a fun way to spend part of their Christmas break, the late New Haven rapper known as Stēzo has been brought back to life on his home turf of West Rock/West Hills. 

The four students, three from Hillhouse and one from Amistad, brightened up the Shack, the revived West Hills community center on Valley Street, with an honorary mural of Stēzo, one of New Haven’s hip hop pioneers, this past week. (Click here for a full story about Stēzo’s life and career.)

The art team also decorated the center’s game room with paintings of classic arcade games like Mario, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and Tetris. 

To tunes by Michael Jackson and Adele and the saxophone of Vandell Andrew, the group worked on the project this past Wednesday in the community center’s game room. 

The room’s four wall pillars became the permanent homes of painted arcade games selected by the students.

Hillhouse art teacher Rebecca LeQuire partnered with West Hills Alder Honda Smith for the project to honor a community legend. 

LeQuire, who lives in West Hills, has painted several murals and worked on other public art projects throughout New Haven over the years. 

Smith and the art team held meetings about about the project at the start of December. They raised funds for materials through GoFundMe. 

LeQuire and students Nijaya Brown, 14, Rhieanna Rubertone, 14, Nashali Nieves, 17, and Barbara Hawke-Lopez, 15, put the mural together.

They began with a layering of bricks. Rubertone used to red paint-infused sponge to create individual bricks.

“I want them to be a part of something and to meet community partners like Honda,” LeQuire said.

First-year Hillhouse student Rubertone got a call from LeQuire at the last minute Tuesday asking for her help with the project. 

Rubertone, who grew up in Dixwell, is currently displaced in Hamden with her mother and two younger siblings. She agreed to join the mural project to get out the house for a few hours before having to babysit her siblings while her mother worked.

“Art is calming and makes me feel free,” Rubertone said. 

The game center’s two back doors were also spraypainted and tagged by the art team and Shack workers.

As the crew worked, Smith captured the process on Facebook Live. As LeQuire began painting the purple letters spelling out Stēzo’s name, Smith asked the virtual audience trivia about the late local artist. 

“Can you guys guess whose name is going to be up there?” she asked as LeQuire painted a purple S on the wall.

​”Yes. Sharon Reed you got it: Stēzo! Come on down here and put your name on our doors.” 

For two more questions, Smith raffled off $20 gift cards to neighbors who answered questions about Stēzo, who grew up in Brookside and was a rapper, producer, and DJ. 

Tekaile Davis drove to the center less than five minutes away after his mom, Sharon Reed, woke him up with a phone call. She told him she’d won the trivia contest. She asked him to tag her name on the center’s game room doors.

“I was half asleep, so I thought she was asking me to tag the police station next door,” he said after arriving to pick up his mom’s gift cards.

Davis, who is used to painting cars, chose green and purple paint to tag his and his mom’s names on the doors.

Brown, a Hillhouse freshman, was asked by LeQuire to join the project’s team during her school art class.

Brown said she has a love for drawing. 

Brown, a Newhallville native, said that if she had not been helping with the art project Wednesday, she would have been home in charge of watching her five younger siblings. 

“I love how calming art is. Here I’m not in my loud art class getting bothered by my friends who want to talk or my siblings who need help,” she said. 

Brown used her gloved thumb to size the white eyes of a red and blue Pac Man ghost, which she finished with black pupils on one of the room’s four pillars.

Then Brown made an attempt at his first-ever game of Tetris on a pillar wall. 

Nieves, a Hillhouse senior, expressed interest in the mural project because of her love for painting and need for community service hours. 

During the crew’s organizing meetings, she claimed dibs on making the Donkey Kong-themed pillar. The team was shown pictures of the game room during the planning meetings to give suggestions for the project. 

Nieves, a Westville native, used her home skills of painting anime characters to first sketch, then paint, the ​’80s platform game with Donkey Kong, his barrels, and ladders. 

After a lunch break provided by Smith, the crew finished the mural off with a silhouette painting of Stēzo, using a projector as a stencil

Hawke-Lopez, a sophomore at Achievement First Amistad High School, also was asked Tuesday to join the project by LeQuire, whom she described as her art mentor and family friend. 

She has helped LeQuire with community projects in the past, including hand painting a mural in her bedroom. 

Hawke-Lopez has recently worked with LeQuire on community projects because of her school’s current lack of art courses, she said. 

“This is as close as I can get to art, because we don’t have classes at my school,” she said. 

Hawke-Lopez, who lives in Morris Cove, worked on a 3D Mario-themed pillar Wednesday after spending the previous two days of her winter break playing video games all day.