News Treasures from trash are possible
The Times-Picayune
SECTION B
Friday, March 14, 2008
Article by Lolis Eric Elie
The chair is sleek and curved and clean.
The wooden slats seem crafted to conform to the gentle lines of a runway model’s body. You can imagine it in the background of an advertisement in a high-end decorator magazine — the stylish couple in the foreground, slightly out of focus, the flowing outline of the chair in sharp focus, attracting all of the attention.
In the caption, or perhaps beneath the caption in a footnote, it would say that the chair was constructed from discarded oak flooring salvaged from New Orleans-area homes after the federal levees failed, leaving the city a waterlogged mess. The chair, designed by Joe Doherty, Seth Welty and Emilie Taylor, would stand as proof of what can be done with the millions of pounds of discarded building materials the storm has left us.
The other major option is to dump it all in landfills.
Lots of possibilities
The chair is one of twenty-six pieces in SALVATIONS — A Juried Furniture Exhibition and Auction. The main event, which will take place tonight, was created as a benefit for the Green Project, one of the local outlets where renovators can buy salvaged materials to repair or improve their homes.
“We just want to let people know that there is kind of a wealth of possibility out there in reusing items,” said Angie Green, the director of the not-for-profit.
The designers who entered this show have created pieces that, even at their weirdest, look like high-end works of great imagination rather than Sanford and Son-esque salvage.
“We have a six-foot-long dining room table made from four pieces of barge board pulled out of a house,” Green said of Chip Martinson’s entry in the competition.
“We have a coffee table made entirely from the contents of one gutted home,” she said. “Tulane students inventoried every single item that was in this trash pile and using just those materials they designed this piece.”
Saving landfill space
For 14 years, the Green Project has been the go-to place for homeowners looking to donate leftover building supplies or to discard computers and other electronic devices that should not be put in landfills. It’s also the place where renovators could go to buy small quantities of those same materials to complete a project.
These days, as the trash piles continue to grow around us, we’d be wise to make our entire region a green project, a statement to the world about what good can come from the flooded refuse of our city.
● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Lolis Eric Elie can be reached at
lelie@timespicayune.com or
(504) 826-3330.
link to article on nola.com
© 2008 The Times-Picayune, L.L.C All rights reserved
Used with permission of The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com.
03.28.08
