By Be Sargent
Mock-up of the proposed Work in Beauty Murals approved by the County Commission in 2003.
Three large murals, Work of Mind, Work of Heart and Work of Strength were painted on the McKinley County Detention Center, at no charge, by Be Sargent over a five-year period from 2005 through 2009.
The murals were painted to promote green jobs and inspire young career seekers by showing that people in the Gallup Area and on the Navajo Nation are already doing them.
All 200 people in the mural are real.
This series will present many different scenes from the three murals.
#1 The Plateau Sciences Society
Top right panel of Work of Heart.
This section of the mural highlights the Plateau Sciences Society.
This mural features people who voluntarily do work to protect our environment.
The Plateau Sciences Society was founded in 1955.The Society received one of the first national grants to develop an environmental studies program for local schools. They were the first to promote Earth Day in our area. The mission of the Plateau Sciences Society is to promote a better understanding and appreciation of the physical and social sciences as they pertain to the Colorado Plateau, where we live. And they take great pride in monitoring our local environment with frequent trips to wilderness sites.
In the mural, Society members are shown on an outing to Los Gigantes. Left to right, examining a piece of sandstone are Deb Misra, a former mining engineer with the Navajo Nation who worked to identify and supervise the cleanup of uranium mines, Sheila Brewer, president of the Society, a retired science teacher and a current volunteer for the BLM at El Malpais Visitor Center and Martha Byrd, a retired science teacher from St. Bonaventure School in Thoreau.
Nancy Wade and her husband Chuck are checking the map. Nancy is an employee at the Natural Resource Conservation Service, a branch of the USDA. Chuck Wade is a retired engineer and contractor and an enthusiastic researcher of alternative energies.
Rachel Misra, Deb’s wife, is reading from the guidebook. She is a renowned educator in the Departments of Education of the Navajo and Pima Tribes.
Jackie Weeks, taking a picture, is a retired college professor of computer sciences at UNM Gallup. She and her husband are avid outdoorsmen.
This is the first of a series that will identify everyone in the three murals so that Gallupians can congratulate their friends and neighbors for helping to care for our home in the universe.
