Water cans and wooden pallets usually end up in a landfill once their owners don’t need them anymore. But University seniors Sean Kelly and Nathan Blair recycled these items to make two etherial and fully functional lamps.
“We thought they would be really nice for outdoor parties,” Kelly said.
Kelly and Blair’s lamps are part of this month’s Material Innovations: Functional Products Made from Waste exhibit at Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts. The exhibit features useful pieces made by eight
University product design students and a collection of baskets by the Resurrected Refuse Action Team. MECCA is a nonprofit arts organization that works to make unwanted materials available for use in creative projects.
“We’ve never done an exhibit that is just purely functional pieces,” MECCA Executive Director Mija Andrade said. “We’re trying to inspire people, to give people the opportunity to see functional things that are created with reused materials and to look at everyday materials and their own surroundings.”
University senior Matt Kennedy came up with the idea for Material Innovations after showing his work in MECCA’s 2009 Object Afterlife Art Challenge. Many of the eight students who entered pieces in the exhibit have previous experience working with
recycled materials.
“I have always had a passion for beautiful and interesting objects that are also functional,” senior Madelyn Krevitt said in an April 28 MECCA press release. “In an effort to start designing greener, I began incorporating recycled aluminum cans of all kinds into my work.”
Krevitt’s Material Innovations piece is a picture frame covered with recycled soda cans. Other student entries include a wall lamp with a folded paper shade and a herb garden made from old bottles.
In addition to the lamps, Kelly also made a reversible bench and stool out of recycled wood. He chose pieces of wood with different shades of paint and varnish to create a variegated look. Material Innovations is Kelly’s second public art show.
“I think this is a lot more fun than creating stuff from new materials, because when you’re finding old materials you’re finding interesting ways to reuse them,” Kelly said. “It’s less time consuming and it’s more intuitive. You’re taking waste and you’re giving it new life.”
Andrade said part of MECCA’s mission is to raise environmental awareness through re-use.
“We try to help people become more aware of the garbage we create,” Andrade said. “A lot of it can be reused and can replace a lot of materials and still create functional things.”
Kelly added that reusing materials is an important part of protecting the environment.
“In the world right now, we’re creating new things all the time,” Kelly said. “Designers are creating things that will be obsolete in four or five years. There is so much garbage and disposed objects throughout the world, and if everyone just started reusing everything, it would definitely help some of the problems we have right now.”
Material Innovations also features a line of baskets created by the Resurrected Refuse Action Team, a Eugene business that makes products from waste materials. The Green Strap Urban Basketry Line features baskets, bins and bicycle panniers woven from
discarded industrial pallet straps.
Andrade said University art students often look through MECCA’s shelves of low-priced art supplies, and she hopes to see more students using recycled materials in their artwork.
“Definitely one of the things that we hope to do with this exhibit is to reach out to more students,” she said. “But we also just want to inspire this next generation of young people to attempt to make utilitarian things, or even to create art with reused materials. That will help to continue raising awareness of the need to reduce our waste.”
Admission to Material Innovations is free and will remain at MECCA through June 4. MECCA is open on Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
[email protected]