Hi folks,

This is Taylor blogging from the Ekone arts and crafts table to share with you a bit about my work and how I have been involving camp kids this summer.  Before landing back at Ekone this July, I cleaned out my Portland studio, which is something of an urban waste transfer station.  So the Ekone craft shelves have been graced with old misprinted stickers, styrofoam trays, plastic sacks, fabric samples, bottle caps, bike inner tube, can tabs, magazines and other miscellaneous stuff that some people call garbage.  I have been making art and fashion with discards for about 6 years now and have recently begun curating exhibits of international art and design with reused materials in places like Beirut, Lebanon, Rio de Janeiro and, in September, Portland, Oregon.  I became interested in curation while working with the homeless in Portland, and noticed how garbage and humans can be rejected, ignored and stigmatized in similar ways.  I wondered if the repetitive disposal of single-use materials in hyper-consumer societies like ours has any influence on the way that we treat other people.  Thus I began creating and exhibiting art with reused materials as a symbolic call to also help reintegrate those people who are sometimes rejected by society: punk street kids squatting doorways downtown; garbage scavengers around the world; the awkward kid at school, the crazy cat ladies, minorities of all kind, estranged family members, dark-eyed drug abusers, the sick and dying.  These people may not want help and they may not to be our friends.  But we can accept people for who they are, and also remember that the fine line between acceptance and rejection may not always lie in our favor.  

In an attempt to demonstrate the similarities between people who live in vastly different realities, the exhibits that I have curated generally include artists and art-makers from diverse backgrounds: homeless and housed artists, artists with a past in survival-based recycling, creative engineers, graffiti artists, street-based artisans, clowns and dancers, awkward school drop-outs, therapists, crafty DIYers, friends and self-proclaimed freaks--all individuals who are dedicated to creating a more loving and accepting society through their work.  These artists, and the projects that we have collaboratively created, can be found on my website: www.redsemillaroja.org.  

I am now back at Ekone as a summer camp staff, where I have worked off and on over the years.  I was also once an Ekone camper for many years.  Working here now, I realize daily the countless ways that Ekone has helped shape who I am today.  Ekone taught me to be wild and fearless.  It also taught, and continues teaching, me to be unyieldingly accepting of every person and creature who sets foot here, or anywhere in the world.  It is this practice of wild generosity and acceptance that hope to share with others and, especially, instill in Ekone campers while we make art together around the craft table.  It inspires me to see them overcome their prejudices and it gives me hope for the rest of the world.  

My work: http://www.redsemillaroja.org/Recycled/USARecycled/recycledNW/myart.html
My current project: http://www.redsemillaroja.org/Projects/Live%20Debris/LiveDebris2009.html