Some Green Sports of Gallup

Top right panel Work of Heart

By Be Sargent

Skateboarding

Skateboarding is a difficult sport requiring courage, agility, imagination, practice, creativity and grace (like dance).  Often skateboarders are not given the space or respect they deserve.  I, for one, would rather see skateboards than cars in downtown Gallup.

The skateboarder pictured here is Shantysa Joe.  She graduated from Gallup High in 2007 and is now in her third year at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe.  She still uses a skateboard to get around.

Her majors are printmaking and photography.  Her art is directed toward young people growing up on the reservation. Through art she “encourages young people to go where they want to go and not let anything hold them back.”

Biking

Everyone who reads the Gallup Journey knows more about biking that I do.  But there’s no question that biking is the greenest sport there is because it is actually replacing cars on the road.  For more information on biking in and around Gallup, check out the following:

www.gallupwaypoints.com

www.dawntilduskrace.com

www.squashblossomclassic.com

Ballooning

The balloon in the mural is Nizhoni.  Designed in 1984 by Sharon Wallace, it now belongs to the Red Rock Balloon Rally.  And it does use quite a lot of gas to get up and away.  But as Peter Procopio says, “It adds to the quality of people’s lives when you look up and see something like that.”  Maybe it’s yellow, not green, but I thought it was too beautiful not to paint.

For more info go to www.redrockballoonrally.com and volunteer to help December 2, 3 and 4. You may very well get a ride!

Back to the Process of Mural Making

All three murals have central panels depicting the environment flanked by panels full of activity.

Work of Heart is special in that all activity is voluntary or from the heart.

I wanted to convey that in the structure of the mural. A spiral starting from the heart, Shantysa Joe, skateboarder, widens to encompass everything. The heart is on the right side as though the mural itself were a person looking out.

An idea so subjective can be torture to express but after many sketches I felt I could go ahead with it.

Finished mural with spiral starting at skateboarder.