Your trash, her treasure

To most people, cardboard six-pack holders, vinyl records of music few want to listen to anymore and ripped floatation devices are, put simply, trash.

However, to?Sheri McKague they’re the basis for a business that blends recycling and art: upcycling.

It’s a fancy word for a simple concept that takes perfectly good trash and turns it into something entirely different.?That six-pack holder becomes a hand-bound notebook. The vinyl record a bowl.?The floatie a fun shoulder bag.

“Art has always been a passion of mine,” McKague said. “I’m a freshly single mom learning to come into my own artistic self again. What I find I connect most with right now is upcycling.”

Initially, McKague was one of five women who made up the Upcycle?Craft Collective, a joint collaboration between the Pendleton?Center for the Arts, the Blue Mountain Community?College Job Training Program and the Pendleton?Farmers Market.

“We run the fine craft gallery here to encourage artists to make and sell art,” said Roberta Lavadour, the arts center director. “The Upcycle Craft?Collective grew out of our desire to help people think about making things in a different way.”

That includes learning valuable job skills such as running a booth, learning the creative software program Photoshop, developing a product line, marketing, packaging and interacting with customers.

“I find it an extremely valuable opportunity to have access to the arts center.?They have phenomenal resources,”?McKague said.

One by one, they left the collective until it wasn’t a collective but a one-woman show – McKague’s show.

“Sheri has the energy and drive to follow through and make something concrete of it,” Lavadour said. “That’s a rare trait.”

That drive is helping McKague balance a busy school life that includes a full class load every term while working 30 to 40 hours a week on her upcycling projects.

On top of that, she also has to look out for her two children, Makaela, 15, and Marissa, 12. Luckily they are also pitching in with upcycling, which McKague says brings in between $25 and $100 a week.

“Collectively as a family we’ve all gotten on board,” McKague said. “Before Marissa throws something away she asks me if I can use it.”

And McKague said that at this point, the business is small but it’s more about personal growth than pure profit.

“It really doesn’t matter so much to me, the money. It’s more therapy,” she said. “I’m developing my own self.”