A new mural unveiled earlier this month at the West Hill Skate Park encourages boarders, bladers and bikers to “Look Forward To Their Future,” offering inspiration at each of the three levels in the park’s bowl.
“I wanted to do something special,” said artist Lisa H. Park, 18, whose design won a mural contest hosted by the city.
Park, a 2009 Thomas Jefferson High School graduate, said she heard about the contest from her art teacher and decided to enter her design, a colorful, thee-tiered image urging “serenity,” “passion,” and “adventure,” each represented by different colors surrounding an eyeball.
Park said each of the park’s three connected bowls represents a different element, with colors and ideas to match the difficulty and skill necessary to drop in to each section.
In the shallowest section of the park, the imagery is a cool blue, filled with water to create a more relaxing feel, Park said.
The next section is a fiery mix of oranges and purples, creating a “crazy mood” with “hot colors” to represent a new level of skating skill.
“Fire is passion,” Park said of the middle section.
In the deepest, steepest section of the park’s course, the image switches to one of abstract, stylized mountains, surrounding the eye with greens, yellows and blues, as well as the gray part of the bowl, which park said she used to create a more rocky look.
“I think it portrays adventures,” the artist said of that section.
Park said she enjoys drawing and enjoyed her art classes in school, but had never attempted anything on the scale of the West Hill mural.
“It was a little bit hard, but it was fun at the same time,” she said.
Park was one of two finalists for the mural, which was sponsored by the Kent Parks, Recreation and Community Services department. The other finalist was Rico Torres.
According to Jeff Watling, director of Parks and Recreation, the city is hoping the mural will cut down on graffiti and “tagging” at the park.
“Skate parks tend to attract graffiti,” Watling said.
Watling said the plan is to host a new contest and repaint the mural every year.
This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the West Hill Skate Park, one of three skate parks within the city, and part of a conscious effort by the city to reduce graffiti.
A new street light was also installed at the park earlier this year and the hope is that the mural will be a deterrent to taggers, something that has proven the case around the country.
“Murals tend to reduce tagging and graffiti,” Watling said. “We hope that’s the case with this program.”
Watling said the murals also help to create depth perception for the skaters, breaking up the plain, gray of the pool bottom.
Watling said adding the murals also help create a sense of ownership among the skaters and other kids in the neighborhood and they hope to expand the program to the city’s other parks.
“We’d love to emulate this downtown,” Watling added.
Preparations for the mural, as well as the actual painting of the park, were done by the Thomas Jefferson Key Club (of which Park was a member) and the Kent Police Department Youth Group.
“It was a really fun time,” Park said of painting the mural. “It was a cool experiment.”
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