Winter 2008

In This Issue:

• 100% Recycled Fashion--from 2008 Campaign Literature
• Transformations
• The Untraditional Milliner
• New Books: Little Green Changes Add Up
• Subscribe to Recycling Rag

100% Recycled Fashion--from 2008 Campaign Literature

A massive number of brochures, direct mail, lawn signs and myriad other types of printed material are produced for every election. Usually they are thrown away and sent to land fills. But this time, the waste was transformed into fashion by a self-taught artist/educator and made its way into the Green pre-Inaugural Ball honoring then President-elect Barack Obama and attended by 1000 environmentalists, which was held at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC on January 17.

Artist Nancy Judd, who previously worked for Santa Fe's trash department, started making eye-catching clothing from shower curtains, aluminum cans and rusty nails to educate people about the potential of trash ten years ago. Recently she volunteered to support Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. The day after the election, she climbed into a dumpster outside the Obama campaign office and harvested bagfuls of paper detritus and went to work creating "trashion" memorabilia.

Among the gems she created: "The Obamanos Coat" a 1950s-style man's winter coat, tailored to Mr. Obama's measurements, made from small strips of stiffly lacquered door hangers that have been sewed to recycled canvas. Printed on the hangers is a picture of the now President standing in a huge crowd of people. The sleeves are hinged to provide any potential wearer a measure of mobility. The work was completed in record time with the help of volunteers who put in 200 hours of time.

Nancy Judd models her cocktail dress made from Obama yard signs.

A paper Swing Vote Coat with paper "lace" which is punched and cut from used voter registration cards.

The Obamanos Coat made from Election Day door hangers.

Detailed close-up of the Obamanos Coat.

Additionally the Judd workshop produced a "Voter Swing Coat," made from voter registration posters which were cut into 1/2" strips and woven together. She also created the "Obama Cocktail Dress" made from Obama yard signs, which the artist wore to the Green Inaugural Ball. Models displayed several of her other garments in the main lobby.

Two years ago, Ms. Judd left her job to ride this emerging green trend and to start a business, Recycle Runway that would develop wearable art from recycled materials. Today, she partners with companies like Toyota, Starbucks and Coca Cola to get funding for her exhibits which are displayed in highly visible locations like airports to raise the public's environmental consciousness.

When Judd started creating her sculpture-like clothing ten years ago, there weren't many environmentally conscious designers. Now this type of artistic reuse of materials is becoming more common and popular -- and that's change we can believe in.

Transformations

Tastes certainly have since Eco-Artware.com and Recycling Rag first appeared in 1999. Back then, "trash" was thought of as a dirty word, and art exhibits incorporating found materials were hard to find--anywhere. But, along with green consciousness, the concept caught on and this year we were surprised at how many such exhibits there were. Each one offers unique ways of considering the environment and the way we live. Here is a brief overview of some of the exhibits that were open during October 2008.

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

After changing its name from the American Craft Museum and moving to a new location on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, this nearly 50 year old museum inaugurated its new space with a large exhibit, "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary." The exhibit contains the work of 50 emerging and established artists from 5 continents who create objects from mass produced everyday items originally designed to fill other functions. Some found their media in wastebaskets and dumpsters around the world, including a draped fabric installation by Al Anatsui, a Ghanian artist living in Nigeria.

The exhibit is open through April 19, 2009. Visit MAD's website to learn more about it.

El Anatsui's creates radiant metal "cloth" made of hundreds of aluminum liquor bottle caps from local Nigerian distilleries and copper wire. In 2003 he said, "Art grows out of each particular situation, and I believe that artists are better off working with whatever their environment throws up."

The Museum of Contemporary Craft One the West Coast, Portland's Museum of Contemporary Craft presented "Manuf®actured : The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects" -- a collection of works by 15 artists who used labor intensive craft techniques to create new work by deconstructing, and then reconfiguring, mass-produced objects. The museum said the exhibit "examines issues such as overabundance, appropriation, reuse and the relationship between the uniquely handmade and the uniformly mass-produced." Although the exhibit closed in January 2009, you can see an online catalog at the museum's site. Chronicle Books has published a catalogue which is available in our bookstore. The exhibit contained a sculpture, "Consuming Conversation," by Harriete Estel Berman which reflects the "consuming conversation of our consumer society." The sculpture consists of 200 "cups" and "saucers" made from recycled tin containers, sterling silver, brass handles, gold rivets, and inserted magnets or brass rod. Each set is unique.

Detail of the sculpture "Consuming Conversation" by Harriette Estel Berman, consisting of stacks of 200 handmade cups and saucers which appear to teeter, but never do. The brightly colored cups and saucers are made from printed commercial containers (Twining's, Milky Way, Stauffers et al.) with hidden magnets which hold everything together.

Anthony Wilson's frog is made from recycled crushed glass, fragmented CDs, salvaged satellite dish, reused copper slag and old rope. This sculpture was commissioned by the zoo to publicize the global Year of the Frog Campaign. 2008.

Recycled Sculpture Show 2008 at the London Zoo Part of the Love London Festival, the Recycled Sculpture Show was held at the London Zoo and displayed throughout the grounds. It consisted of work by 20 sculptors from four countries who create work from "everyday waste materials to interpret issues of species conservation." The Zoo's Sustainability Manager said, "There is no better setting for this than surrounded by some of the most endangered creatures on Earth, many of which are close to extinction because of man's insatiable lust for fresh resources." Although the show closed on October 20, 2008, a slide show is available.

American Folk Art Museum Early twentieth century traditional patchwork quilts, made from recycled materials, are featured in an exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum's Branch at Lincoln Square (2 Lincoln Square at Columbus Avenue between 65 and 66 Streets). "Recycling & Resourcefulness: Quilts of the 1930s" highlights twelve quilts made during the Great Depression. The artists used whatever they had at hand --flour, sugar and feed sacks, old clothes and other recycled fabrics--to create new bedcovers. Use of these materials has been traditional since the Civil War but these materials became more popular when home demonstration agents from the Cooperative Extensions Service encouraged reusing them creatively for clothing and household decorating in their classes. The exhibit also contains a quilt made from woolen stockings and two made from leftover suiting fabrics. On view through March 19, 2009. For further information, visit their website.

Detail of the exhibit's Britchey Quilt, made from old jeans and other work clothes.

The Untraditional Milliner

Having created uniquely stylish hats out of salmon skins, fish scales and even 35mm film, Jane Fryers is no run-of-the-mill milliner. The British artist has a stellar (and a regal) hat-making pedigree: she studied millinery at The London College of Fashion, the Kensington & Chelsea College and with Rose Cory, the late Queen Mother's milliner. And she also has top-rate green credentials: her innovative Rechauffé collection, for which she's won numerous international awards, is made entirely of recycled clothing and other used materials. She uses old jeans, skirts, cardigans (even python skin trousers) that she finds in markets, charity shops, and at the bottom of friends' closets. The result is a quirky, chic and eco-friendly collection of one-of-a-kind chapeaus.

Fryers, who also designs hats for film, cabaret and fashion shoots, was inspired to start using recycled materials after her beloved pair of Levis fell apart. "I couldn't even make them into shorts so I decided to transform them in to a hat," she says. So, how did she come up with the name for her recycled collection? "My Mum found the word 'rechauffe' in a cook book. It means a fresh concoction of old material," she explains. "And that's exactly what I am designing!"

You can see more of her hats at www.janefryers.co.uk. The hats are available at Luna and Curious (www.lunaandcurious.co.uk) and Deuxieme (www.deuxieme.co.uk).

"Soren" is made from an old coat and its lining.	"Denim Stetson" is made from the artist's old jeans.
"Houndstooth Rose" features a rose made from an old skirt.	"Japanese Girl" is made from scraps of a kimono.

New Books: Little Green Changes Add Up

We've added these eco-related books to our bookstore. Click the link for each book to read the full review.

	Green Crafts for Children (Children's Crafts section) Emma Hardy, a stylist and designer who has worked on several interior design magazines, has transferred her savvy for presenting ideas clearly and attractively to her new book Green Crafts for Children. Its 35 projects, which use natural recycled and found materials, are designed to encourage both boys and girls, age 4-9, to forget the computer and play with the same ingredients their parents and grandparents did.
	Celebrate Green: Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations & Traditions for the Whole Family (Non-Fiction section) Stuck for an idea about how to introduce new eco-traditions into your celebrations--official holidays, office parties, Valentine's Day, family reunions, Halloween, for instance? Authors Corey Colwell-Lipson and Lynn Colwell have covered the bases with their well researched and fact-filled yet breezily written 218-page book of facts and suggestions: Celebrate Green: Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations & Traditions for the Whole Family. It may change your life, one new habit at a time.
	Confessions of an Eco-Sinner:Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff (Adult non fiction section) Confessions of an Eco-Sinner:Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff by Fred Pearce, a British author, who traveled the world to learn more about the products he used everyday at home--coffee, cellphone, computer, socks, etc. -- and to see the routes they took to reach him, from raw ingredients to neatly bound finished products. His journeys present the unknown, far-flung people and places that provide the stuff that support his (and our) daily lifestyle.
	Manufractured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects (Art books) Manufractured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects by Steven Skov Holt and his wife, Maria Holt Skov is a companion book to an exhibition of the same name, held at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon in 2008. It contains 40 illustrations, one chapter each about the work of eleven artists who express the age-old human need to comment on their times using materials at hand -- in this case, mass-produced objects.

Until the next issue,
Reena Kazmann
Eco-Artware.com

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