meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

If you happen to be in the Boston area today, take a drive up to the harbor near the new Convention Center, and stop by the Boston Design Center. There, until 4pm today, the Boston Sample Drop/Shop event is open to the public. This event is a fantastic way for design firms to recycle their unwanted sample library materials; from fabrics to papers to 3-ring binders. Visitors are welcome to take any of the pre-sorted materials for use in their own creative projects.

"Keep perfectly usable building and finish materials out of the dumpster and give them a good home!"

The event takes place at the Boston Design Center on Drydock Ave. Post "shop", they will be having a barbeque to celebrate their creative and eco-friendly community-mindedness. Cheers!

Also of note in the creative supply realm, I am offering great discounts and special bonus offers in my crostini*VS Vintage & Supply shop. In honor of my upcoming honeymoon, all items will be on sale for the entire month running May 10th-June 10th. Many items are unique and will run out, so get a head start on your creative summer projects with my unique vintage & supply materials before I close shop and head to Italy!

Did you love your earth today? With all of the mass-blasted awareness campaigns, you should have at LEAST worn your organic cotton undies...

Other than harranguing my husband about taking out the recycling, I made a few personal offerings to the miserly annual custom of honoring the earth; although, to be honest, I prefer to employ these steps as often as possible in my status-quo, "un"-Earth Day life.

"un"-Earth Day Offering #1: Leave the car at home, but go out anyway!

Above: "Ceya's Gianni Motta", Oil Painting on panel by Taliah Lempert

Enjoy the weather, wave to your neighbors, watch the trees magically blossom in April (care of global warming), show off those new kicks...or that new bike!

"un"-Earth Day Offering #2: Creative upcycling!

Above: Upcycled Wildlife Fact File Envelopes by me @ crostini*VS

If you can't use it, reinvent it into something new! I receive so much junk mail, it's criminal. While I've gone paperless on every account that gives me the option, it seems that evil direct mail campaigns just won't die. Solution? Create some pretty envelopes for your own use by upcycling catalogs and leaflets, or by turning those pre-addressed security envelopes that come with your bills inside out! (Who knew that there were such a variety of patterns inside). Click here for a cool Design*Sponge tutorial on Inside-Out Security Envelopes by Derek and Lauren of The Curiosity Shoppe.

"un"-Earth Day Offering #3: Explore, educate yourself and share what you learn!

There are many great role models and resources for going green. Keep an eye out for strategies, initiatives and resources that move you, and share them with family, friends and the world! The internet and blogosphere are great sounding boards. Here are a few of my favorites:

Above: Handmade, "Plantable Greeting Cards" on recycled paper with embedded seeds - by retrowhale

TreeHugger.com, Mike Reynolds Earthships, BuyGreen.com, Etsy.com's Vintage Product Category, Public Libraries!, Community Supported Agriculture, freecycle.org, "The Control of Nature" by John McPhee, Green House Framing reclaimed wooden picture frames

It must be in part my starving artist background that has provided me with the drive and enjoyment for finding creative ways to upcycle found materials in my own artwork, as well as fostered a sharp eye for methods with which to keep my own household's footprint as small as possible. Even with the everyday efforts of like-minded citizens, in our emissions-belching, stuff-hungry society, there is always room for improvement; and innovation, risk and creativity are the ingredients for impactful answers.

This is why I was particularly inspired and enraged by UK filmmaker Oliver Hodges' documentary Garbage Warrior; an in-depth piece on the ongoing materials, methods and community-building research by visionary architect and humanitarian aid worker Mike Reynolds, and the struggles he has faced in his quest to innovate sustainable living solutions for our increasingly endangered society.

In engineering his "Earthships", which are fully self-sustaining living solutions suitable for human occupancy in even the most extreme conditions, Reynolds has innovated some seriously forward-thinking construction solutions such as the use of packed-earth tires (as heat conserving core for structural walls) and the use of upcycled glass and plastic bottles as light providers and architectural art. Oh yeah, his housing developments often include built-in agricultural solutions, so that you can save yourself the gasoline you would otherwise spend trucking to and from the grocery store (buying sad, packaged goods that much to the oil companies' delight - have been trucked and flown in from the ends of the earth!)

What infuriated me about the film was the exhaustive struggle that Reynolds faced in obtaining permission to practice the experimental investigations that have paid off in such promising advances. Legal opponents of his work, (which ironically, leaves utility-companies and red-tape-happy contractors pressing their noses up against the glass of his earthships) helped to revoke his state and national architects license for some years in the 1990's.  I'll leave it to you to watch the film, but coming up on tax time (as we are all doing here in the U.S.), it pained me to watch most of the scenes involving legislature holdups and bill management as he worked with due diligence to leave room in New Mexico's state law for experimental sustainable housing sub-divisions.

Ultimately, Garbage Warrior is a film worth watching, however riled up it made me. Earthships may not be your idea of a dream home, but there is insight and inspiration to be gained from watching this film, even if just to remember never to let the *man* throw you down for having your own point of view, or to ever subdue your creative fire.