Stainless steel animals, elaborately painted collages and hand-crafted instruments were on display at every booth set up at the Eugene park blocks on Sunday. It wouldn’t be apparent until one talked to the artists and organizers of NextStep’s second annual ReArt Festival that the majority of art for sale was made almost entirely out of recycled, repurposed materials.
Started by NextStep Recycling in 2009, the ReArt Festival promotes a sustainable lifestyle by promoting artists who created art out of secondhand materials.
“There’s a growing number of artists using reclaimed material,” Lorraine Kerwood, executive director of NextStep, said Sunday. “What we think of waste doesn’t need to be waste.”
Kerwood created NextStep in 1999 under these ideals. The organization aims to repurpose used electronics, making a number of socio-environmental improvements throughout the process.
“Our goal is to take waste out of the waste stream,” said Kerwood, who has received multiple awards for her contributions to the environment. “Through it, we are able to offer jobs and redistribute these products to the community.”
Ruby Colette, who goes by the art name Ruby the Resourceress, takes used CDs, bottle caps and coat hangers and turns them into a uniquely original flower that she calls a Danger Flower.
“I volunteer helping people make trash art,” Colette said while working at her booth on Sunday. “I used materials from the waste stream and tools under $20.”
Shane Schaeffer, another local artist, makes art with similar ideologies. Schaeffer produces reused, recycled, stainless steel art into frogs, flowers and bats.
“I trade my art for raw materials,” said Schaeffer, who learned to make his creations at Lane Community College during the early ’90s.
The festival featured other local organizations committed to sustainable practices. Junk to Funk, an organization that puts on an annual recycled fashion show, featured reused electronics turned into robots, a couch and a dress made entirely out of plastic bags. Hammered Frets turned cigar boxes into musical instruments. The Shelter Animal Resource Alliance featured various reused materials, while another artist made a variety of materials out of completely recycled paper.
One of the secondary missions of the ReArt Festival is to help raise money for NextStep. With more than 300 items donated by artists, the festival’s silent auction helped raise money for future NextStep projects.
Next year’s festival will be expanded to a two-day event in a location bigger than the Eugene park blocks. Set for August 7, 2011, the third annual festival will feature possessions from the past recycled into new, creative works for the current decade.
“Because using it once just isn’t enough,” said Debbie Bennett, a volunteer helping out with the silent auction. “We all need to think about repurposing our goods.”
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