When I attended UVIC I walked across campus from residence to my studio space taking along with me a brown bag lunch.  All my lunch bags (67) have been repurposed into this container that is woven on a wire frame.  The pennies are a discontinued coin that I wanted to honour.

When building our retirement house there were several bundles of wood and other supplies delivered, all were held together with plastic strapping.  At my request the contractor kept all the strapping.

‘Either we cage the virus or we become caged’.  We cage the virus when we have a reliable vaccine created, resulting in freedom to move about in society once again. If not, we risk being trapped in our own homes, caged in.

When you no longer make holiday decorations, what do you do with the boxes of craft supplies taking up storage space in your studio? You twist the lengths of different materials into cordage and make art.

Handmade lace and doilies adorned clothing and homes until they went out of fashion; now unused they are relegated to the back of a drawer or donated to a thrift store. These have been ice dyed to camouflage the years of use and staining.

When I was 17 in high school, I took a drafting class, the project plans hand drawn were kept. The main part of this container is made from very old unused vellum, while the decorative part is from my very own drafting project drawings.

Like many National Geographic magazine collections when they are no longer wanted, they end up in a landfill or at a paper recycler. More than 100 National Geographic covers were used for this container; the remainder of the magazines were donated to an art classroom for collage work, extending their use for a little longer.

My UBC undergrad drawing classes produced reems of drawings on a variety of different papers with dissimilar mediums. When the paper was cut into strips, splatters of colour appeared and the original images became unrecognizable.

Macrame making has a long history dating back to the Babylonians, it has fallen in and out of fashion many times over the years. Macrame is a form of textiles made by producing square knots or half hitches. Having no interest in tying knots this container has been knitted with cord remnants.

Emailing notes, letters or messages are replacing the cherished form of handwritten communication delivered by mail in a envelop with a stamp. As a result, will stamps become redundant?

The wedding dress so carefully selected for that special event is often used only once. It may be reused if it was saved for a daughter's wedding, donated or sold in a consignment store, but usually it is relegated to the back of a closet in a garment bag or carefully wrapped in blue tissue and boxed up rarely to be seen again.

Two very large oil paintings completed when I was 20 were eventually removed from their stretcher frames, rolled up and stored. Years later I resurrected and repurposed them to enjoy these brightly coloured canvases again without re-stretching and hanging them.

Phones with cameras and digital picture frames have replaced the traditional image taking.  Does anyone print a photo from a developed negative and place it in a plastic sleeved photo album anymore?

Magazines purchased by an individual are often only read once, unless they are passed along to a friend.  This container is made from three quarters of one magazine. I could make hundreds of containers with all the magazines I have acquired.  The button decorations are reused from my grandmothers button collections. 

For homes that could afford them a set of encyclopedias were purchased and proudly displayed.  They have become obsolete now that the internet is so widely available to research topics of interest.  What does the inquiring mind do now, ask Google or AI?

Floppy disks, to floppy diskettes, to compact discs, to USB flash drives, to memory cards, to optical discs and now to cloud storage.  All are ways to save the data produced on your computer. Floppy diskettes are obsolete, thus difficult to find.

Sewing from a paper pattern was the norm before ready to wear became available. Garment sewing has become a lost skill as fewer and fewer people sew by hand or use a sewing machine.

As a child I loved to draw with spirograph. The precision of the line making and the magic of the pattern developing as it neared the end of the design fascinated me. The threads on the inside mirror the mathematical formation of patterns created when drawing with the plastic disks and are a tribute to my play time as a child.

During our house construction I witnessed so many materials that were designated for the waste bin. The metal strapping that bundled the plywood building material was saved to eventually be repurposed. I have always loved working with metal and the rigidity of its form.

There was a time when teachers used overhead projectors and transparency plastic sheets to teach their lessons.  These redundant plastic sheets have been cut to widths and handsewn together, followed by being woven onto a wire frame. Metal aluminum filings from lathe work adorns the indented section.

A businessman would have a large selection of silk ties to accompany his shirt and suit for each day of work. They could range from conservative prints to loud colours or be novelty images to celebrate a holiday.  A man retired would have an abundance of these in his closet.

As we gain the use of GPS in our vehicles, phones, watches or other devices, we find ourselves no longer requiring a paper map to locate our travel destinations. This item approaching redundancy is one more item reducing the need for paper pulp in our world.

With a family of four children who wore jeans daily many pairs were outworn.  These were repurposed into different items throughout the years but there always seemed to be an endless supply. The colour coated wires adorning the top edge are from a friend who has passed, they will make a wonderful remembrance of her.

White collar workers wear shirts to work. These shirts are from my now retired husbands’ collection. They have been recycled into this long slender cylinder, which has been woven on a plastic structure.  The buttons taken from the shirts were resewn to adorn the surface and create the button-down collar.

An old pair of stained corduroy pants destined for the garbage were recycled into this container.  The fabric used was cut from the less worn part of the legs. The extra fabric that usually edges a zipper has been cut away allowing for decorative usage rather than function.