If you didn’t get to attend the fifth annual celebration of the McKinley Citizens’ Recycling Council’s “Recycling Jamboree Arts and Crafts Fair” at Gallup’s Community Service Center on Oct. 30, you missed out on a fairly unique event that allowed local residents to display their recycled art crafts to the public.
Live entertainment was provided from the local group the “Desert Highlanders,” whom specializes in playing Irish, Scottish, waltzes, and American folk tunes, as curious spectators enjoyed browsing the aisles. They also enjoyed the pleasing and smoothing sounds to Scott Halliday’s cigar-box guitar.
Halliday, a local vendor who showcased his well-known cigar-box guitars, is going on his third year at this year’s event.
“I sell these as functional art, so they look good hanging on the wall but you could still play it. I thought that a lot of cigar smokers would like them, but people get hung up on the idea that it is a guitar,” Halliday said.
He explained that each handmade guitar has its own distinct smell, depending on what kind of cigar brand it is. It is during his traveling time that he is on a quest to find used cigar boxes and he says a recent trip to Florida rewarded him with a variety of cigar boxes for future projects.
“Different areas have different cigars. I think a few years ago there was a real resurgence of cigar smoking and a lot of cigar stores and smoke shops opened up,” he said.
For this year’s event, not only were local vendors called upon, but it held for the first time, a kids recycling art contest. About 80 entries were submitted from Gallup-McKinley district schools and Rehoboth Christian schools. Teachers from all over the Gallup area welcomed students and parents to participate. But since the event was on Halloween day, student participation was low.
“It is fun doing it around Halloween. It gives it a different feel because we always do this event in November. But I don’t think we have a crowd because all the kids are at the library or mall and participating in their events,” said Betsy Windisch, a board member for the MCRC.
According to Windisch, a total of 25 vendors participated and more than 15 students showed up to hear local artisans explain their recycled craftsmanship skills to interested bystanders.
Elizabeth Foutenot, a former English teacher, and a self-proclaimed bookworm, says it is her love for the written word that she decided to put together thrifty creations from old boxes and signs only to cover them up with inspiration quotes from the Bible or from her favorite authors.
“I have old boxes that I cover with dictionary pages and make into decorative boxes. I hit up clearance racks from Goodwill for a lot of my crafts supplies,” she said.
She also enjoys making handmade bookmarkers and stain-glassed jewelry. Her mom taught her how to do stain-glassed art projects since she was in preschool. This will be her second year participating at the recycling arts and crafts event.
Cancer survivor, Marcia Heifner, another vendor who displayed her work at this year’s event, designs an array of recycled arts and crafts by using used bottle caps, broken china, antique china, broken dishes, trash from the desert, barbed wire, and old keys.
“I had cancer twice so I have a lot of medical bills, so I just do what I can and sell what I can,” she said.
Heifner has been a Gallup resident for more than 8 years and is originally from Illnois. She takes pride in recycling everything and anything.
“We actually drive our recycling to Farmington because we lived there for ten years. Since we are so limited in what they accept here, we save everything. When we were in Tennessee, there was curbside pickup. We got used to washing everything and taking off labels, and saving,” she said. “But, do you know what gripes me? The citizens of this town have been paying a little additional amount of money since the nineties for curbside recycling. And do you think that we have it now? No.”
Board Secretary, Shafiq Chaudhary, who has been with the MCRC for more than two years, advocates that curbside recycling is essential for Gallup residents.
“I would hope that the city goes in favor of curbside recycling because it would make recycling so much easier for a lot of people who live in the city,” he said. “You have a bin right there, where you could put all your recyclables in one place. If we do get curbside, it not only would it make it easier but it would also expand what we can recycle.”
Even though the student turnout was low, the overall message is spreading the awareness about recycling and meeting new people each year that can share their artistic abilities using recycled materials, says Windisch.
“We have such talent here that needs to be shared, so every year we are hoping to be introduced to few more people that recycle. We get a lot people that tell us, ‘oh, I didn’t know those kind of things were happening in Gallup.’” she said. “But, we’ve been doing it long enough that we built a community. We always wish for more people.”
For more information on upcoming recycling events with the McKinley Citizens’ Recycling Council, please visit their website at: www.recyclegallup.org
