SO!  We told you that Ruby Re-Usable will join Marita Dingus, Ross P Beecher and Jenny Fillius at the Icicle Arts Recycled Art Fest in Leavenworth, WA, where we will be part of a panel discussion about recycled art, present recycled art workshops, and judge the recycled art show and trash fashion show.  Did we also mention that we are part of a recycled art show at the Wenatchee Museum?  And that we went to the art opening last Friday?  Posted some pics HERE  and reposted the article about the show below (because newspaper links seem to disappear).  Looking forward to a trashy artsy weekend!

Junk reborn as art for show

Exhibit explores the beauty of recycling

By Christine Pratt
The Wenatchee World staff writer

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

WENATCHEE — A small, bright-yellow deep-sea-diver-looking object is suspended by a thread inside a display case at the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center. It’s so vivid, you can spot it from across the lobby.

Walk a little closer and you’ll see what he’s made of — plastic bread ties, the plastic ring that stays around the neck of a plastic milk gallon after removing the cap, hair combs, beads, buttons, small toys — all plastic and repurposed and bright yellow and wrapped in netting shaped like a little man.

It’s “Yellow Plastic Trash Gyre Baby,” by Olympia artist Diane Kurzyna, aka “Ruby Re-Usable.” It’s part of the museum’s new exhibit of recycled art. The show continues through Oct. 1.

Everything in the show is like that — intriguing from afar, ingenious and smile-provoking up close.

“We all have this kind of junk lying around, but we don’t think of putting it together in interesting ways,” Emily Siroky of East Wenatchee said Friday.

She and friend Diane Goody of Wenatchee popped into the museum during the exhibit’s kick-off reception Friday, part of the city’s First Friday’s downtown art walk.

“I like the notion of creating beauty out of what someone else would consider useless,” Goody said.

Both quilters, the women lingered a bit in front of Ross Palmer Beecher’s “7-Up Quilt,” a patchwork of strips of 7-Up cans and rubber arranged around bits of red tail-light covers.

“It’s easy to say, ‘I could do that,’ but would you think of it?” Siroky said.

The exhibit’s seven Seattle-area artists chose their own works for museum display. Next weekend they’ll be in Leavenworth judging the recycled works of other artists competing for the 2011 Icicle Prize.

Many of those works are already on display at Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat and Barn Beach Reserve. More should be installed by next weekend.

Several of the artists were on hand Friday, including Jenny Fillius of Seattle, to talk about her colorful creations of recycled tin, held together by nails or rivets.

She keeps her eyes open for materials to transform, including old kitchen tins from the residents of the retirement community where she works.

In fact, a lot of the material she uses arrives on its own.

“People leave things in my driveway. They leave it hanging on the fence, on the porch. People know I do this,” she said.

The exhibit is a collaboration of the museum, Icicle Arts, Sleeping Lady and the Icicle Fund. For more information on the exhibit and artists, call the museum at 888-6240 or visit wenatcheewa.gov, click on “Departments,” drag down to “Museum.”

Christine Pratt: 665-1173

pratt@wenatcheeworld.com

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