Michelle Griffin wanted her husband to make her a planter box, but she soon realized he didn’t have the time.
“I little by little learned how to use all his power tools,” the Battle Ground woman said Sunday at Esther Short Park in Vancouver.
After making herself a planter box, she didn’t stop there. She started crafting whimsical bird houses out of recycled materials, painting them with bright colors and decorating them with old household items, including ceiling tiles, drawer handles and door hinges.
Her Dr. Seuss-inspired bird homes were on display in the park during the annual Recycled Arts Festival, an event in its ninth year that attracted an estimated 30,000 visitors over the weekend. More than 120 artists showed off their creativity and tried to sell their pieces, made mostly with recycled materials.
Under the park’s pavilion, a live band played and a woman danced on stilts. Nearby, Harmony Lawrence of Portland sat on a sidewalk, letting the large hoop skirt of her gown fall on the concrete around her. It looked like a dress from another era; Harmony said she made it recently with old fabric, including linens and curtains, and she fashioned the skirt’s hooping with PVC pipe from an old housing project.
As a teen, “I started out doing that just because it was affordable,” she said, but now she enjoys the challenge of creating new clothing from unwanted materials.
Her booth displayed another one of Lawrence’s creations: A dress, made from 13 pairs of torn-out jeans, that weighed more than nine pounds.
Meanwhile, Johnnie Olivan showed park visitors his sculptures and jewelry made from old bicycle parts. Bike gears were turned into earrings, and an old football helmet was covered in metal gears, spokes and other bike parts.
Olivan said he creates a lot of specialty bikes, including those for people with special needs. He was in good spirits at the fair on Sunday, noting that there were “a lot of happy people here.”
As people walked booth to booth, they were met with many ways to use what they’d normally toss in their garbage or recycling bins.
There were wind chimes made from a coffee pot and ceramic mugs, cheese trays crafted from melted glass bottles, discarded snail shells sprouting small plants, baskets and table runners constructed with former chopsticks, Christmas tree decorations fashioned out of old wine corks, vinyl records that had been painted and turned into clocks, and garden art made from unwanted silverware. Old wine and liquor bottles had been turned upside down and fitted with a cork and tube, becoming hummingbird feeders.
Gail Turner of Tacoma and Sara Turner of Vancouver perused the Aunt Adeleine’s Vintage booth, finding a leather bracelet fitted with a dog tag. Sara Turner also sported a shiny ring displaying an old penny.
“We ran into some friends who told us about this” event, Gail Turner said. “We just wish there were more hours in the day.”
Festival organizers hope to do something special next year to mark the event’s 10th year, maybe by collaborating with Vancouver art galleries, businesses and schools, the festival’s project manager, Sally Fisher said. The festival is put on by the county, but about half of the event’s costs are covered by Columbia Credit Union, other sponsors and booth fees.
“I think this might be the happiest group of people I’ve spent a weekend with,” Fisher said Sunday afternoon, as the event wound down. “It was great.”
