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Repurposing with a purpose: Annual recycled art show aims to educate public about reducing waste

By Dave Kern
Published: June 28, 2010, 12:00am
3 Photos
Dennis Robins of Battle Ground is captivated on Sunday at the Tiffany on a Stick booth at the Fifth Annual Recycled Arts Festival in Esther Short Park.
Dennis Robins of Battle Ground is captivated on Sunday at the Tiffany on a Stick booth at the Fifth Annual Recycled Arts Festival in Esther Short Park. Robins and his wife, Ramona, bought a $35 piece of art that features green glass and a "crackled glass" sphere, he said. Photo Gallery

The Fifth Annual Recycled Arts Festival turned out to a be a fantastic place for the women of Tiffany on a Stick to open shop.

Their garden artwork won praise, and sales were impressive.

“We’ve sold more than half,” Vonda Piersol of Vancouver said, smiling in her booth Sunday in Vancouver’s Esther Short Park. That would mean more than 50 pieces.

“This is our first weekend of being in business together,” she said. And partner Janet McKinley of Vancouver piped in, “And this is a perfect place to start.”

An estimated 15,000 people visited the show over the weekend, said Sally Fisher of the Clark County Department of Environmental Services, sponsor of the show.

Eighty-two booths were spread around the park and it did not cost vendors a dime to show their art made of recycled materials. “Their (the vendors’) job is to education the public,” Fisher noted.

The glasswork of Piersol and McKinley caught the eye of Saundra Andrade of Vancouver. She bought a piece “because they’re beautiful. They just sparkle.”

Andrade said the piece is for her mother, Darlene Garrett of Vancouver.

A close look at the piece revealed this: On top of a 4-foot copper pipe were (from bottom to top) a Jim Beam bottle found in a Dumpster and adorned with 12 red beads; a candy dish with a cranberry-color stripe and clear heart cutouts; a candle holder, a vintage highball glass and a champagne glass. Cost: $30.

Andrade said the candy dish spoke to her; it reminded her of her mother.

Andrade said she now is a fan of Tiffany on a Stick. “I looked them up on Facebook and I’m their first friend,” she said.

She also presented the women with a brown vase and commissioned a work of art.

What did she order?

“See, we’re the artists,” Pierson explained. And McKinley emphasized, “She gave us the freedom.”

The women find their glassware in thrift shops, Goodwill stores and in ”grandmother’s cupboard.”

They plan home parties and say they are in for the long haul. Not a hobby?

“I say, a business,” McKinley announced. “Not a hobby. This is a business.”

And the name? They made a piece for a friend and she dubbed it “Tiffany on a stick.”

Around the show you could buy bowls made of chopsticks, a cigar box guitar, a 10-foo- tall metal peace sign, jewelry, lamps made of bottles brightened by decorative lights, baby clothes and rockfish.

Rockfish?

Artist Pat Wallis of Oregon City, Ore., starts with a stone, uses a diamond blade to grind a mouth and fin openings, and then adds copper and green fins. Marbles make eyes. The fish sits on a quarter-inch copper rod about 24 inches tall. Price: $30.

He has many bigger pieces that sell for $100 to $275.

Can you make money at a recycled art show?

His sales exceeded $3,400 for the weekend, Wallis said.

What do his customers say?

“They say, ‘I just love it.’ With the rockfish, there’s nothing but giggles.”

Each year, the show’s artwork becomes more engaging, the county’s Fisher said. The artwork, she added, “makes (visitors) think, and I hope they’ll keep thinking and they’ll be reducing waste every day.”

And if you’ve got a recycled-art idea, yours could be the hit of next year’s festival, on the last weekend in June.

Dave Kern: dave.kern@columbian.com; 360-735-4534.

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