Artists

Lula Castillo: I create a collection of Eco-friendly accessories that are made with sustainable materials such nuts, rare beans and some other seeds collected in the Amazon rainforest. Parallel to this I developed a technique to work with recycled pieces of citrus peel, then I combine them with the seeds in order to create wearable pieces of art.

Ellen Cohen Design: I create sculptural art jewelry using ethically sourced and recycled/upcycled materials. All the silver I use is refined or reclaimed from old silver. Many of my stones are from old jewelry and others are ethically sourced. I have always been a “junker” purchasing what I can from second hand shops and collecting objects I have found or that have been gifted to me. I use old buttons, horns, rocks, shells, wood, and pottery shards. My cast silver sea grass cuff, part of my Earthscapes Collection, sends a big message – seagrass is a vital part of the marine ecosystem. My Naturals Collection uses stones and fossils as well as branches and pods cast directly from nature. All my collections pay homage to the Earth and invite the observer to take a closer look at all that they see.

Luana Coonen: Luana Coonen is committed to creating jewelry which is socially responsible and minimizes impact to the earth. She focuses on found natural specimens and when choosing to design with stones, she uses post-consumer diamonds (I.e., reclaimed, antique, recycled, or ‘harmony’ diamonds), traceable gemstones, or fair-mined stones from the USA. No insects or animals are harmed, killed, or injured to create this jewelry. She uses 100% recycled metals and FairTrade gold whenever possible. Green and eco-friendly products and techniques are utilized in the jewelry studio and packaging materials with an emphasis on low environmental impact.

Kate Cusack Zipper Jewelry: By working with a repurposed material, my artwork encourages the wearer to think twice about the world and to see beauty and potential in everything. I start with a zipper and I create innovative, elegant jewelry that celebrates imagination and promotes recycling. The zippers I use are discarded from fashion designers and given a new life in jewelry.

Lisa and Scott Cylinder: Our works center around the use, incorporation and deconstruction of repurposed materials and objects. Often representational and sometimes narrative, we address issues through the use of found objects from the 20th Century to discuss our contemporary world. The pieces that we make are imbued with an ironic sense of nostalgia while addressing issues of the man-made destruction of our environment.

Kate Dannenburg: I aim to bring my values of sustainability and responsibility to every aspect of my life and my art practice. I work almost exclusively with recycled or salvaged materials as well as buying tools and equipment second-hand and reusing packaging and shipping materials. In my studio I work to conserve energy, water, and materials, never letting anything go to waste.

Kristin De Santis Contemporary Jewelry: Most people look at my jewelry and ask “What is it made of? It’s so light!” I tell them “This is an old aluminum tube collected from scrap and surplus yards. I use a chop saw to cut the shapes to size and then fill them with hand-pigmented resins. Each colorful shape is handmade.

Griffith Evans: I create jewelry from trees decimated by drought. I harvest the trees in an orchard in northern New Mexico, the most water stressed state in the U.S. Climate change, in the form of rising temperatures and reduced snowpack, has provided the materials for my artistic practice. By repurposing dying trees, I celebrate their beauty while calling attention to their plight.

Amy Faust Eco-Friendly Fine Jewelry: In my jewelry work I aim for transformation of material, value, boldness and wear-ability. Reclaimed vintage glass bottles and jars, traffic lights, found pebbles and porcelain are cut in to defined shapes replacing the traditional use of gemstones. When I do use gemstones they are repurposed. In the porcelain, I look for imagery of farmland and birds, both fragile and loved parts of our environment . For the settings I use recycled sterling and fine silver that is hand-formed, forged and fabricated. I want each piece to be original, functional and ecologically friendly. No part of my work will damage the environment now or in the future and is made to last.

silverinjun:
I learned traditional Navajo silversmithing at a young age. I started exploring ideas by incorporating recycled and found objects into my work that were not often deemed “traditional” or met Native American juried art market guidelines. I believe that this started to create an awareness of cultural identity first and now hopefully an awareness of climate impact.

Christina Goodman: My miniature paintings to wear and my decorative objects feature birds, bees, plants and animals (some of them threatened or extinct) and are the focal point of my work. In a dangerously anthropocentric world, I hope to foster a connection with the small, beautiful and often vulnerable elements of the natural world.

Xinia Guan: The theme of my jewelry is the power of the cyclic nature of time. Everything in nature is slowly growing and decaying, and then repeating. Each big jolt of our live is a slow accumulation of small, repetitive actions. Time is not passing, we are. And the imprint that we decide to leave in nature should be beautiful and poetic.

Andrea Haffner: My work invites people to embrace the small: to observe, appreciate, and cherish the abundant natural forms that grow in the world around us and might otherwise be overlooked. More than ever we need to honor and protect our environment. As the land surrounding my town was completely burned by fire three years ago, some of my work also addresses fire and regrowth in these times.

marirose: My upscaled pieces of jewelry are sustainable and GREEN while bringing a distinctive touch of beauty to the wearer. Recycling discarded materials such as rubber, plastic, and film through human skill creatively expresses the concern for preserving our environment. Art reflects our ever-changing culture, shapes our perception of the world around us, and even has the ability to alter society’s values.

Devin Johnson: My jewelry has 100% recycled content and my studio uses wind power for electricity. In each piece I strive to tell a story about humanity and and my artistic endeavors are environmentally friendly and sustainable. I use a variety of recycled, salvaged, antique, and found materials from all corners of life. Each material is a unique artifact; beautiful not only for their colors and textures, but also for their historical and technological significance. These characteristics, which are often very mechanical and industrial, are brought to the surface in my work, as I forge each into a finished piece.

Judith Kinghorn Designs: We make botanically inspired jewelry from recycled high karat gold and sterling silver.

Margaux Lange: My art jewelry reimagines and transforms the ubiquitous, mass-produced plastic Barbie doll. The Barbies are acquired secondhand, sourced via flea markets, garage sales, etc. I creatively repurpose these discarded dolls to live on as art. This is a key component of the conceptual basis for my work and my personal ethic to reduce, re-use and recycle.

Keith Lewis Studio: I carve my earrings from blocks of material made of recycled plastic water bottles. While they are just little earrings, they remind the wearer of the choice not to discard, but repurpose. I trust my use of raw minerals reminds us of how much beauty the Earth has to offer. Responsibility and gratitude, thoughtfulness and appreciation. I like those ingredients.

Holly Anne Mitchell: My jewelry consists of handmade recycled newspaper beads. Newspaper is an excellent alternative jewelry material because it reduces waste and encourages people to take a second look at everyday items which can be repurposed. I use a non-toxic adhesive, sealant, organically sourced cotton cord and beeswax which further reduce my jewelry’s impact on the environment.

Carlos Montanaro / Rewind Jewelry: My jewelry is sustainable by utilizing found objects and fabrication to show that sustainability is as much about recycling as it is about innovation. Marrying the two things together, I create narrative jewelry with new applications of old material and show the value of something pre-existing and how it can be transformed into something modern and new.

Sarah Murphy: My work is about challenging the standard of perfection in jewelry making and the value of the materials being used. My process revolves around creating my own “gems” out of recycled plastic material that comes from my family’s steel cable manufacturing plant in Marion, Ohio. The discarded plastic material is dyed and manipulated to create one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry.

Sara Owens: My jewelry, made primarily of used coffee filters, explores ideas around consumption. The term “used coffee filters” conjures images of the kitchen waste bin. By using them in my jewelry, I invite people to consider their waste stream, and to imagine it as a potential resource, a source of beauty and value. This view is the key to sustainability.

Jinbi Park: My pieces are inspired by nature’s organic structures especially those of the ocean, such as coral reefs. When I scuba dive I draw inspiration from the ocean’s beauty. With global warming, pollution, and overfishing reefs are dying all over the world so it’s my passion to create art with reef-like motifs so that I can share that beauty with others, some of whom will never see a living reef. I only use recycled metal and ethically, sustainably-mined gemstones as my work reflects the natural instead of taking away from it.

Buffalo Horn Artforms: Many of my jewelry designs feature Monarch and Swallowtail butterflies. In 2017, the World Wildlife Fund named me as one of six from around the country as “Monarch Heroes” for my work in making the Monarch jewelry and educating the public about the plight of the Monarchs. My art is also recycled, just as my Lakota ancestors used every part of the buffalo. Nothing goes to waste.

Gustav Reyes: I strive to create art with love and understand that this love is not a possession but a gift that must be shared. I try to give back to that love by making art, not by depleting the universe but by reshaping one of its greatest gifts – trees. Through the use of salvaged wood, all the energy, spirit, and history of the tree is worked to bring out that beauty. Art is a pure expression of a life lived without constraints. Each piece is created in a way that pays respect to that history, whether the use was mundane or sophisticated, whether I am working with a piece of concrete or wood from a musical instrument, a piece of furniture, or a precious family heirloom.

Charity Ridpath: For one year I collected all of the single-use plastic I used in order to better understand my own footprint. I then used this collection to make nature-inspired jewelry. By using plastic instead of traditional gems, I engage with the contradiction of single-use plastic; Though it’s only “useful” once, it has a lasting impact on our environment. 

MPR Jewelry | Meghan Patrice Riley: By sourcing domestically from ballchain suppliers in NY and using upcycled parts from discarded jewelry manufacturing in my woven textile chain pieces, I am addressing waste reduction while also creating a high/low elegant, 1920’s inspired decadent elegance from these humble plumbing chain parts.

Kathleen Nowak Tucci: My jewelry is made with items that would normally be thrown away. I delight in recycling items destined for landfills and elevating those materials into high fashion jewelry and art.

Francesca Vitali: All my work is made using repurposed paper. One of the major ideas behind my work is indeed to give a second life to a humble material such as paper, and carry on its history trough the modification and transformation into a wearable object.

Knotzland designs wearable art using reclaimed materials. To date, Knotzland has diverted 3,427 pounds of fabric and offset 11,994 pounsa of CO2 from landfills. Knotzland trains and pays women with barriers to traditional employment to sew products that serve as a conversation piece about sustainability and the effects of traditional manufacturing on our planet and its role in climate change.

Sharon London Designs began our career in fiber art, recycling and upcycling vintage textiles and clothing in New York City. Our hand drawn vintage inspired designs are made from organic cotton and bamboo, machine knit, dyed, steam blocked, printed and sewn in small batches based in our solar powered studio. Zero waste, sustainable and made to last and enjoy for a lifetime.

Oh Bessie!: Our “U.S Made” model eliminates reliance on fossil fuel-based international transportation. We use natural fibers, or sustainable fabrics made from post-consumer plastics for our apparel and printed with only water-based inks. We print our wall art in-house, and on-demand only, thereby reducing waste. A portion of sales of our “Under-the-Sea” growth chart is donated to the Ocean Conservancy.

Hannah Regier: I grow or ethically forage all of my dyes and source raw fiber from local farms. Working with natural, local materials not only reduces the carbon footprint of my pieces, but also strengthens my immediate community and ecosystems. By connecting threads from the forests and fields that I love to your life, I aim to spread good nature and warmth. I see myself as being part of a wider virtuous circle, where your support allows me to continue the slow work of giving back to my surroundings with my attention towards ethical, life sustaining practices.

Lynn & K Meta Reintsema: We strive to make timeless designs with natural fibers that can be worn for many years. Minimal waste is an essential part of our creative process. Our goal is to utilize all of our materials for our designs and at times the cutaways have been our inspiration. For years we have been able to source most of our fibers from designer over runs. Occasionally we have had unusable remnants that we donate to a community craft organization for children.

Christina Boy: Though my work may not always portray it, all my wood waste gets recycled- sawdust goes into our garden, small scraps get used for kindling, and once a year usable scrap gets turned into small household items. My sole water source in the studio are rain barrels. My paints are organic and water based, and the finishes for wood are ecologically conscious.

Phil Gautreau Wood Design: My specialty is in hand-turned wood vessels and wooden serveware often made from locally-sourced, repurposed wood from locations including Brooklyn Botanic Garden, BUILD IT GREEN (repurposed materials store) and public and private venues near my Brooklyn-based studio. Substantial amounts of excess wood from local furniture builders also used. I create contemporary wood accessories made with highly figured, visually unique wood draped over clean designs.

A Good Catch: I create linen towels and beeswax wraps to reduce plastic usage and encourage the reduction of paper waste. Printing is locally sourced, using eco-friendly pigment inks free of chemicals and conserves water. I print my art onto ethically sourced fabric making it functional.

Arlie Glass: My hope is that my glass straws inspire people to reduce single use plastic in their lives. I live and work in my home glass studio on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Pieces of plastic from all over the world make their way on to our beaches. We do our best to coordinate clean ups and keep the waste from being pulled back into the water with the next tide – but it is a small fraction of the amount of trash found all throughout the ocean. In the grand scheme of things, plastic straws are a small part of the problem but eliminating them is one of the simple first steps many people can take.

Blue Skies Workroom/Alyssa Salomon: I screen print with eco-friendly, water-based inks and utilize non-toxic cyanotype photographic printing on plant-fiber materials. All fabrication is planned to minimize waste; offcuts are collected for use by a papermaker. Two series of totebags – Joy and Spinner – are made by printing on antique linen yardage and lined with vintage fabric leftovers donated by fellow textile workers.

malagueta: Since 2015, the fabric remnants that would otherwise be thrown out are being pieced together to make tops, skirts, accessories, and home goods. The intention behind this new line of items is to keep my fabric waste to an absolute minimum as to not contribute to the already increased fabric waste being created by the global fashion industry.

Topaz M. Terry: There is no away. Trash does not magically disappear from the face of the Earth when we discard it. My work makes bicycle waste (the parts that wear with normal use) a raw material. Instead of sending those parts to landfill, I make them valuable again, turning them into durable and wearable accessories for everyday use.

Jennifer Wilfong: As a ceramicist, having a private study seems ideal. However, the energy that it takes to fire kilns and run an independent studio, when there was a collective studio near me, did not seem like an environmentally sound choice for me. Instead of firing half empty kilns and duplicating the resources, I’ve chosen to work in a collective/shared space with 50 studio mates. The clay I use comes from Pittsburgh and is delivered locally to Baltimore Clayworks Supplies, which I love, because that means the clay is shipped in large quantities versus many small deliveries. All of the clay I use gets recycled and reclaimed, either by me or my studio mates. I use recycled packing materials whenever possible and have a supply of previously used packing materials that my neighbors supply me with regularly.