capst-winter-2021-Proof1-52REV - Flipbook - Page 34
By Mary carole mccauley
Photos by Barbara haddock taylor
Capital Style
A
t Local by Design, you may find
an elegant sideboard with a
gleaming maple and walnut top
that the artist Tarin Polucha has
converted from an antique baker’s table
with tin bins that once held flour. Above the
sideboard hangs a chandelier made from the
rings of a wooden wine barrel.
Down the hall, a sculptural piece of
driftwood that resembles a whale has
become the base for one of Lisa Gillespie’s
handcrafted lamps. In the adjoining shop, an
old rubber tire has been transformed into
a supple handbag shaped like the prow of
a ship. Artist Leslie B. Nesbitt has decorated
the rubber surface with paint and crystals so
that every angle catches the light. In another
stall, Renee Houston Zemanski has repurposed a former grain scoop as a planter.
Local by Design is a cooperative of more
than a dozen local artists who specialize in
transforming trash into treasured pieces of
home decor and wearable art, a movement
known as “upcycling.”
Almost every object for sale in the
3,400-square-foot building was once something else, something that had fallen into
disrepair and was discarded. But the artists
who found each piece sensed that these
objects had not exhausted their capacity for
usefulness or for giving pleasure.
“My talent is finding something and turning it into something different and new,”
said Zemanski, the artist who founded The
Periwinkle Door, one of the 14 studios in Local by Design.
“I love taking this grain scoop and making
it into a planter or taking a drawer from a
library card catalog and using it as a vase
holder. The best thing is finding a dusty, old
estate sale that’s full of junk where you have
to be careful not to fall through the floor.
I have found so many treasures buried in
places that people will just walk past.”
Artist Page Winter, who specializes in repainting furniture that she sometimes finds
on sidewalks, puts it like this: “To me, there’s
a soul in these pieces. We take something
that no one wants and transform it and give
it a second life.”
The concept of upcycling isn’t new. Board
34 | fall 2021 | capitalstylemag.com
Renee Houston Zemanski repurposed an old library card catalog drawer into a shelf. “My talent is
finding something and turning it into something
different and new,” she says.
and brick bookshelves and orange crate
coffee tables were ubiquitous in the 1970s.
Nearly two decades later, the designer Rachel
Ashwell set off a craze when she coined the
term “shabby chic.”
But the Annapolis designers said that
upcycling has become more popular than
ever in the past few years, fueled by forces as
varied as the COVID-19 pandemic — which
brought about a renewed focus on home
improvements, the DIY movement and environmental concerns.
“My husband calls me a ‘tree
hugger,’ ”Polucha said, and cited statistics
from a U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency report: About 12.1 million tons of
furniture were thrown away in 2018, the
report found. More than 80% ended up in
landfills, while about one-third of 1% of the
“To me, there’s a
soul in these
pieces. We take
something that no
one wants and
transform it and
give it a second life.”
— Page Winter,
owner of Page Winter
Studio