A nonprofit started by a 51-year-old skateboard enthusiast is partnering with incarcerated artists in a venture that turns retired skateboards into one-of-a-kind art pieces, auctions them off, and uses the proceeds to buy skateboards and helmets for underprivileged children and teens.
Rodney Rodriguez, a Fresno, California native who drives a truck for a living, got the idea about five years ago from a friend who was teaching landscaping and gardening to inmates at Avenal State Prison in Avenal, California. He’s since formed his own nonprofit, Fresno Skateboard Salvage, and has implemented the program there and at four other correctional facilities in California. Officials at some of the prisons even sought him out after hearing about it from colleagues in the California correctional system.
“Going in that first time, I was afraid even to make eye contact,” Rodriguez recalled. “It’s a very tough-looking place with steel and concrete and barbed wire, and everybody looks like a killer. But when they’re involved in this project, everybody’s smiling and in a good mood.”
His nonprofit purchases paint, art supplies, and used skateboards and sands them down. Funds to purchase the skateboards and other supplies come mostly from small donations and proceeds from previously finished art pieces. A few of the pieces are slated to go on exhibit at the Wende Museum in Culver City, California this month. “Often, various law and medical offices will also end up buying the art just because it’s unique and something for them to hang up on the wall,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez’s lifelong love of skateboarding began with his childhood in Fresno. “I grew up in a tough neighborhood where a lot of kids my age were joining gangs,” Rodriguez told The NonProfit Times. “I didn’t get into that kind of trouble and always wanted to play sports, but we were very low-income and couldn’t afford football or soccer equipment or transportation to the games. Then one day I saw a guy do an ollie up a curb and it blew my mind how he was able to fly up the curb like that. I did everything I could to learn how to do that trick, and from there my passion became that skateboard.”
About a decade ago, Rodriguez had a yen to take up skateboarding again and connected with other adults who did as well. “But I saw a lot of kids hanging out in the park who didn’t have a skateboard. And I felt bad for them,” he recalled. What began as a collection of skating equipment among friends soon led him to start the nonprofit. “I thought I was starting a nonprofit to help kids skate. But it’s also become a way of giving a voice to some of the incarcerated population and a way for them to give back,” he said.
Erik Beam, a correction officer at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad, California, told The NonProfit Times the program has forged a new closeness between the staff and inmate population. Some of the incarcerated artists have since taken to recruiting other inmates into the program, and many of the staff willingly pay for paint and art supplies out of their own pockets. “We’re now actively trying to rehabilitate a lot of these guys when before we didn’t even talk to them,” Beam said. “It’s brought some light to the yard (prison) and worked out better than I ever thought.”
Details regarding the organization can be found on the Fresno Skateboard Salvage page on Facebook.
As for Rodriguez, “I’m now a 51-year-old avid skateboarder when I’m not driving a truck,” he joked. “But when I am, it feels like I’m 16 all over again. We’re all at different income levels and occupations. One of my partners in this is an orthodontist who makes significantly more money than I do as a truck driver. But when we skate, none of that matters.”
