LBCC held a sip and paint event to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month, inviting students and faculty to paint Aztec masks, enjoy traditional Mexican cuisine, and listen to a playlist of all types of Latinx music.
Participants were given three options of different Aztecs masks to sketch out and paint to their own satisfaction.
Freshman Steven Coco attended the sip and paint to get involved with all the activities that LBCC has to offer.
“I’m Mexican, so this really resonates with me and this is something new to me, because it’s not something you really learn about everyday,” Coco said.
Coco recommends students to take advantage of all of the events that LBCC offers, because they’re a great way to connect with your peers and learn more about yourself and the world around you.
Administration assistant for Transfer, Counseling, and Student Support Services Department, Bri Pinkerton, partnered up with Student Equity, the group in charge of LBCC’s Cultural Heritage Month Planning and Programming to put on this event.
Pinkerton’s love of painting alongside her previous attendance of sip and paint events outside of campus inspired her to implement them at LBCC for the past two years.
LBCC student, Victoria Beltran, paints over an outline and canvas which were provided by the organizers of the Latinx Sip ‘N Paint event. This year the event focused on painting Aztec masks. (Nick Eismann)
“Last year we did the Sugar Skulls, so I wanted to do something slightly different,” Pinkerton said. “So for this year I decided to go the indigenous route and do Aztec masks.”
At the beginning of this event, Pinkerton gave a brief history lesson on the Latinx culture and the Aztec masks that participants sketched out and painted, which made this event both informative and fun.
This event was pushed back a week, so a lot of people who originally RSVP’d weren’t able to make it, but those who did seemed to really enjoy the event.
Student Gabriel Marquez attended the sip and paint because he is really interested in Latinx culture and has done a lot of research on it, including reading the Mayan historical fantasy novel, “Gods of Jade and Shadow” in one of his classes at LBCC.
“No one really knows what it’s supposed to depict, some say it’s a personification of the sun, some say it’s a deification of a ruler, so i’m just sort of drawing to that sort of mystique,” Marques said in regards to the Aztec mask he chose to paint.
Although the event was delayed, multiple students came out to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month, and Pinkerton announced that she will be holding another sip and paint event on Oct. 30 to celebrate Filipino American History Month and urges anyone interested to join.