Navajo Gallup:
Sounds like a good name for a town, but that’s not what we are talking about
By Be Sargent
My male models shall be nameless but the woman pipe worker is Donna Goodrich, top left corner of photo.
Even though the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project (NGWSP) hasn’t come to town yet, I wanted to put it in the murals. (I also included High Speed Rail) I’m sure some would call jobs involved with water scarcity, environmental, if not green.
The Obama Administration has approved $900 million for the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project. The Bureau of Reclamation will decide what percentage Gallup will have to pay. Meanwhile the City is trying to figure out how to raise those funds.
My original sketch.
I wanted to portray the laying of the NGSWP pipeline with muscular shirtless men like those in the WPA mural in the courthouse. Those were the days! Now shirtless men are few and far between. And so like Paul Newman, not the actor, who painted the Great Gallup Mural on the East Wall of the City Hall Courtyard I eventually had to seek out a model.
I love this portrait, which I repainted at least twelve times.
I waited over the winter to put in the final pipe worker. I finally decided on Donna Goodrich, who was director of the jail during the five years that I was hanging around on six stories of scaffolding and was kind to me every day. In fact we both have a lot in common, being passionate dog lovers.
I will take this opportunity as a muralist to thank god for scaffolding and those who put it up. Handsome Lupe Valles, owner of Southwest Yardwork, and his fabulous crew, picked up, put up, took down, and put back the Red Rock Park scaffolding, which the City so generously loaned me for five consecutive summers.
One’s scaffolding becomes a home away from home.
Afixing braces on Work of Strength
I worked from 7 to 1. Six hours were the longest I could stay engaged, but usually it was more like five. Afterwards there was always at least an hour of mixing paints.
Five summers at the jail followed nine summers painting murals in the Somerville/Cambridge area of Boston, including one on the Navajo Code Talker mural and two years organizing the Gallup Downtown Mural project. See more at besargent.com.
I enjoyed the life.
Now I just paint.
