Upcycle Parts Shop Crafts a Creative Concept for St. Clair

The Idea: It's a cozy little space, but the Upcycle Parts Shop has a big mission. A crowd stood outside the St. Clair Avenue storefront on Friday evening to celebrate the grand opening of the creative reuse center that's a part of the Upcycle St. Clair initiative, which aims to bring economic impact to the St. Clair Superior neighborhood through existing resources and manpower. Artistic director Nicole McGee finds all of the store's who's-it's and what's-it's galore through donations of bits and pieces that local businesses don't need anymore: plastic cookie cutters, swatches of wallpaper, bathroom tiles, old neckties, laminate sample tags, tiny glass bottles. The shop prods local artists to consider using leftover supplies instead of buying new ones and it's numerous neighborhood partnerships including student internships create fresh opportunities for the community.

The Experience: Friday's event kicked off with a community open studio, a freestyle reuse crafting session which will be held at the store once a month. As two musicians played guitars out front, I held a colored marker to a paper plate as it spun on an old record player, making a pattern of concentric circles. A woman cut some of the colored plates into spirals and hung them like silent wind chimes outside the shop window. At a table nearby, people tied strings together to play cat's cradle.

Our Take: As I ran my fingers through bins of wooden beads and played with a quiver of arrows, I realized I'm nearly as excited as McGee about the bimonthly themed artist workshops (the first one on July 24 is on paper bag art). Attendees pay $20 for instruction and materials, and bring their own booze — they take place at the reclaimed in-store Art Bar, after all. I look forward to watching the parts shop help the Upcycle St. Clair movement — as McGee's storefront sign says— thrive.

Salvaging Art

All of the items in Collective Upcycle were intended for a recycling center or, worse, a landfill. But thanks to crafty local artists, materials such as plastic bags, bicycle gears and seat belts have been salvaged and transformed into trendy purses, wind chimes and belts.

The shop, located at 6710 Detroit Avenue in the Gordon Square Arts District, is open for a limited time, from June 11 to July 3. Late last year, to promote “reuse artists,” local artist Nicole McGee launched a pilot store, The Pop-up Gift Shop, in Trinity Commons for the holidays. It proved popular, so she’s back at it with the new name Collective Upcycle and 30 artists. Although the store is new, the name has been on her mind for 2 1/2 years. It represents the idea of coming together, she says, and “taking something else and giving it a new, creative life.”

McGee, who markets her own art under the name Plenty Underfoot, says the store represents Cleveland’s up-and-coming reuse economy.

“There’s this creative force of people who are not buying something new at the craft store,” she says. “For me, and I know for other people, there is something inherently creative about taking something leftover and saying ‘What do you want to be?’ and ‘I’m going to turn you into it.’”

One artist featured in the store converts wedding dresses into christening gowns. Another makes furniture out of wood from deconstructed Cleveland buildings. Anita Tucker of Wine2Wick repurposes wine, beer and liquor bottles into candleholders.

“It's extraordinary how many bottles go into a landfill that aren't recycled,” Tucker says.

She says the store has provided her with a community of artists. They help each other out by saving items others use for art. Friends say her art gives them a motive to drink wine so they can give her the bottle. She even sees customers bring in items for artists to use.

McGee doesn’t plan to operate the shop full time, but she assures customers that Collective Upcycle will pop up again somewhere in the city in time for the holidays. Stay tuned.

Photo courtesy of Collective Upcycle