THE SHOW

The show that Violette worked so hard to get the work of her friends into this year is called Arte de Descartes (art from discards), and is in it's tenth year running. She wanted the artwork of her friends to be exhibited alongside the younger artists who have been inspired by this latter generation of creative recyclers. Melissa Larson from Wholly Rags of Taos organizes the show, and she and Violette share a passion for recycling fabric. She also makes quilts resourced from the freebox, and her website has an interesting manifesto on fabric waste:

"The project Freebox or Caja de Gracias is pushed to its limits. We need to redirect the attention of the Town of Taos and Taos County to the problem. The estimated weight of textile waste generated daily in Taos county is 1.5 tons. This includes freeboxes and second hand stores. That's 547 tons of cloth per year, here! (Taos, 10,000 people=10,000 pairs of underpants!) What if that material were baled into small compact blocks and used like straw bales to form the walls of houses? Another alternative is to make bales that can be sold and transported to a Material Recovery Facility, in the same way that cardboard, paper and aluminum are recycled. Even transporting good material to Mexico is a feasible alternative, compared to dumping. These are things we propose to do in order to use the rags locally and keep it out of the landfills. Many fabrics carry the imprint of different cultures which may never be produced again. The materials are destroyed in dirt and moisture; also throwing away all the energy it took to create them. That is why we are concerned with the textile waste."

the Wholly Rags studio:


My quilt, Violette's quilt, and the sculpture of Carl, Karl, and Ernie are all in the show, along with 50 other artists at the Taos Center for the Arts. The Glam Trash Fashion Show happens at the gallery every year as well, and is co-organized by Upcylced Fashion, a project of Art for the Heart in Penasco that hires seamstresses to work at home and use recycled clothing to make new rad wearables.