East Lansing resident Hanrui Ma colors with chalk on Abbott Rd. Saturday afternoon during the 48th Annual East Lansing Art Festival. The streets of downtown East Lansing were closed off for the weekend festival which gave local and national artists the opportunity to display and sell their work.
—For printmaker Candra Boggs, there’s more to art than simply creating a masterpiece from scratch.
As an artist from Perrysburg, Ohio, who creates monoprints — one-of-a-kind prints — Boggs looked into the creative options for repurposing her old prints rather than allowing the ones she is less than fond of to collect dust in her studio.
She gathers the prints she doesn’t want to keep, cuts them up into pieces and puts them back together in different collages, which were on display and for sale at the 48th annual East Lansing Art Festival — held in downtown East Lansing on Saturday and Sunday.
“I don’t make any reproductions,” Boggs said. “I feel that having a one-of-a-kind piece is really important. … Every print I make is one of a kind, and every piece with the prints I make is one of a kind. I think there’s something really important about staying original.”
Boggs was an artist at one of the 330 booths set up for the art festival, which took over the heart of the city and the north side of MSU’s campus. The booths featured glass-blown sculptures, handmade clothes, paintings and wood carvings, and many artists featured themes of promoting environmental awareness, reusing and recycling.
Utilizing nature and her children as inspiration, Boggs said she has been collaging with her old prints for about seven years. Continuing to work as a printmaker, she prints throughout the winter and then begins her reconstructing process.
“I make probably close to 1,000 prints (a year),” she said. “Once I finish them, I decide if I like them or not and make them into a new collage if I don’t. … I make prints, then I cut, then I collage (and) then I finally get them together by summer.”
After her fifth appearance at the art festival, Boggs has earned a reputation. East Lansing resident Erin Compton said she purchases a piece from Boggs every year, and as her first stop at the festival, Compton bought her sixth piece from Boggs on Saturday.
“I found her a few years ago, and I just really like her artwork,” Compton said. “I thought it was really unique, and it fit the kind of art that I like. I like that it’s fun and colorful, and she has stories to all her pieces.”
If it ain’t broke
Although many artists purchase metal, clay and other materials in bulk, Whitehall, Mich., resident and MSU alumnus Chester Winowiecki finds household materials and transforms them into musical instruments.
Usually working as a potter making mugs, cups and bowls, Winowiecki combines his love for music with this craft by making percussion instruments, wind instruments and string instruments.
“Most of the stringed instruments are made from used and recycled materials, such as cake pans and cigar boxes,” he said. “For a lot of the wood, I don’t go to the store and buy it; I get scraps from places where I recycle pieces of wood.
“I have a banjo where I used a cabinet door frame and tore it apart and recycled it, and the body of it is made from cake pans I got from Goodwill.”
Winowiecki said his sense of recycling is similar to how older generations viewed reusing materials that still were functional. He also upholds an American tradition of making instruments out of cigar boxes and household items.
“I’m a person that always sees the potential in an object that’s broken — it can either be fixed or reused or repurposed for something else,” Winowiecki said. “It’s environmental, but not in a taking-care-of-the-planet sense, but it’s more of the morality of an object.”
Bowling the distance
Yellow Springs, Ohio, resident Matt Cole has been bowling since he was six years old, and he has accumulated several bowling balls over the years. Rather than letting the old balls rot in a landfill, Cole cuts up the bowling balls and turns them into jewelry as postconsumer recycled products.
“I’m big on recycling, and as a bowler my whole life and knowing lots of bowlers my whole life, (I know) a bowling ball only has a lifespan of about 700 games,” he said. “Then it starts to absorb too much oil — which you can fix — and the ball never really goes back to its original state.”
To make his jewelry — consisting of rings, bracelets and necklaces — Cole attaches a large, circular cutting tool to an electric motor and a table. He then slides the bowling ball through the tool and uses a grinding wheel to make the different shapes.
“I always thought bowling balls looked pretty, and because I’m pretty good at it, I’ve accumulated a lot of bowling balls in a lifetime,” Cole said. “With all my bowling friends with lots of bowling balls, I just decided one day to cut them apart because I had time on my hands.”
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