After years of battling graffiti artists with buckets of paint and wishful thinking, city anti-gang workers and the owners of a much-vandalized Heights-area gymnasium are breaking out the big guns: Jasmine Sanchez's smiley faces.
Jasmine, an 8-year-old Stovall Academy third-grader, will be among about a dozen junior artists -- students in a Boys and Girls Club of Greater Houston art program -- who this week will begin replacing spray-painted scrawls on the Sokol Houston gym with a colorful mural celebrating athletics, friendship, healthy living and the Czech, Mexican and Texan cultures.
For the project's partners -- the mayor's Anti-Gang Task Force, the Boys and Girls Club and the Orange Show -- the project is a win-win situation. The youngest children, most of them Hispanic and African-American, are getting a close-up look at seemingly exotic Czech culture. Older teens, recruited through the anti-gang program, are getting a dose of responsibility and a chance to rub shoulders with exemplary role models.
And the biggest winner is Sokol, which teaches gymnastics and Czech-language courses at its headquarters at 1314 W. Patton. It's getting a possible solution to a problem that so far has defied solution.
For years, vandals have targeted the gym's back wall facing Monte Beach Park, said Sokol treasurer Pat Silhan.
"We've called the mayor's office many, many times," she said. "What happens is the city will paint the wall and it will stay clean for several months. And then (graffitists) will come `tag' it every weekend for a while. And then we'll call the city to paint."
Just days before the young artists were to start the mural, vandals struck again, leaving crude black designs in three places on the building. At least one appeared gang-related.
Sokol, an international Czech social and gymnastic club, opened its doors in Houston in 1917, when Czech immigrants made up the third-largest ethnic group in Texas. For decades, club spokeswoman Louise Keyes said, the Houston Heights was a magnet for Czechs.
At its height, the organization had about 150 members and offered a variety of plays and other Czech-language entertainment. The present gym was built just east of the Heights in the early 1950s.
Today, the club has about 130 members and the neighborhood around its headquarters has become largely Hispanic.
Flanking the park in a working-class neighborhood just blocks from the commercial frenzy of North Main Street, Sokol still serves as a cultural anchor to the city's Czech-American residents.
But in a concession to modernity, the gym's program now includes karate instruction. And to its residential neighbors, who may relate more easily to Mexico City than to Prague, Sokol may be best known as a host of bingo games.
Last week, Jasmine and her friends worked at perfecting their designs while adult artists endeavored to cover graffiti with gallons of almost-school-bus-yellow latex. The children chose the color as the backdrop for their creativity.
"We originally planned to use earthy colors," said the project's supervisor, Houston artist Brian Zievert, "but the kids wanted something livelier."
The grade-school artists are scheduled to launch the project, which will take weeks and consume 97 gallons of paint, on Tuesday. Their designs will make up the lowest level of the 110-by-22-foot mural.
A second level will consist of stylized renderings of the mural's theme: a healthy mind in a healthy body. The top level -- painted by older youths recruited through the anti-gang task force -- will feature Zievert's composition of athletic icons, flags and a Czech falcon.
Before the young artists even put pen to paper, Keyes and other Sokol staff members gave a crash course in Czech culture. The youngsters were shown videos of traditional Czech dances, one of which entails dancing around strategically placed beer bottles.
They were introduced to a few words of the melodic Czech language and encouraged to peruse exhibits in the center's tiny Czech museum.
"They'd bring in traditional Czech items for the kids -- jewelry, decorated Easter eggs, books with folk art images," said the Orange Show's Kimberly Soilis. "The kids spent one day drawing and coloring their own images, reappropriating colors and themes. ... We passed out color handouts of the Mexican and Czech flags and had discussions on why the Czechs would pick a falcon and the Mexicans would pick an eagle.
"This was all about exploring Czech background and their own ethnicity and how all this ties together."
The project is a departure from Zievert's usual work as a designer and painter of movie sets.
"This will be more permanent," he said. "I'm used to building stuff and having it disappear. Build it tonight and tear it down tomorrow."
His other artwork includes a statue of a sailor in East Port, Maine, and a recent series of 46 Van Gogh-inspired paintings of power tools.
The mural, which will include the Czech and Mexican flags as well as other aspects of those cultures, should survive for 15 to 20 years, Zievert said.
And while the incandescent yellow of the background has roots in both Czech and Mexican art, it will be only a point of departure for the Sokol muralists.
"Red, white, blue, pink, green, purple, black -- those are my favorite colors," Jasmine said about the essence of her art. Her design calls for an allusion to the healthy mind-body theme as well as smiley faces and cartoon characters.
"I think that it will be pretty, fantastic and cool," she said.
That's what the task force's Victor Gonzalez is counting on.
On six other occasions, Gonzalez has used murals to discourage vandals. Even if the vandals persist, he said the project can succeed because it is giving the older youths, the ones at risk for gang involvement, a chance to be with good role models.
"We wanted them to learn what it means to work as a team on a big scale -- what it takes to be successful," he said. "We wanted to keep them out of trouble for the meantime and maybe show them some possible alternatives."
The Boys and Girls Club artists share his optimism.
"This will be something good to look at," said Jason Gunsauley. "It will be a sign of peace, family, love. For kids, it could be a motivation. They'll say, `Hey, I could do that.' "