Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 12, December 2003
Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
Winter Fest to showcase
local artists, crafts persons
By JAMES BUSH
Fremont artist Ruby Colette is a lifelong collector who has finally found a way to share her collections with everyone.
She uses found objects to create collage items, including meticulously decorated bottle cap jewelry, light switch plates, and decorated matchboxes. Each item is unique and just might include a rhinestone from a piece of costume jewelry she bought at a long-ago yard sale, a button from her grandma's collection, or tiny drawings and bits of colorful foil and mirrors.
Colette is one of 17 North Seattle artists and crafts persons who will bring their wares to the Winter Festival Crafts Fair on Saturday, Dec. 6 and Sunday, Dec. 7. The Phinney Neighborhood Association's biggest annual fundraising event, the festival will feature 115 booths offering art, crafts, toys, hats, jewelry, ceramics, and items of all descriptions. Also included are two entertainment stages, with performers ranging from fiddlers to bagpipers to Middle Eastern dancers. The spotlight performer is folk singer Ginny Reilly, of the popular folk duo Reilly and Maloney (Dec. 6 at 3:30 p.m. on the festival main stage).
This event is the PNA's major fundraiser and benefits programs including the Ballard Family Center, the tool lending library, the art gallery, and child care programs. Admission to the festival is $4/$2 for PNA members, plus a can of food for the local food bank. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days.
Colette says that the inspiration for her recycled art business, Secondhand Saints, came this summer while she and other artists were running a make-your-own-art booth at a Fourth of July Fair in Eugene, Ore. Creating collages on bottlecaps, juice lids, and discarded pin-on buttons, Colette was having the time of her life. "It was the greatest thing in the world and stand there in the sun all day and make art and have people come up and make it with you," she says.
When she relocated to Seattle a few weeks later, Colette decided to keep working in this collage style. "I could never think of anything I could make in quantity that would still be fun," she says. With her recycled art pieces, "every single one is different and fun, so I never get bored with it."
Colette wasted no time in becoming a part of the Fremont neighborhood. She works at Marketime Foods on Fremont Avenue N. and has enlisted the help of bartenders at the nearby Buckaroo Tavern and The Dubliner Irish pub in saving bottle caps to be used in her work. She's even managed to get permission to use the image of the Fremont Troll in a few pieces, perhaps on future charm bracelets also featuring other wonders of the world such as the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids.
Besides the decorations, her bottle cap jewelry usually includes a single word. "The thing I love most is that I still get to use words in my work," says Colette, an award-winning essayist, who has worked as a writer and editor. Her earrings and charm bracelets allow her to combine words that work well together, such as a pair of earrings with "music" and "dancing," or a charm bracelet featuring pin-up girls and the "fresh," "flirt," "best pal," "vibrant," and "beauty."
There are rules to the game, Colette notes. "I always use positive words and words that I think will be uplifting." Although she does admit, the sayings on her decorated matchboxes can get downright sarcastic.
An adherent of getting around by foot or on her bicycle, Colette admits an additional motive: her transportation situation limits the amount of junk she can collect. With hundreds of completed pieces spread throughout her home, plus the makings for thousands more, she admits that "sometimes I look around at all these bottlecaps and I get overwhelmed."
Entertainment Sat. Dec. 6
Blue Building
10:15 a.m. Hammered Dulcimer Band
11 a.m. A Cappella Joy
11:45 a.m. Chris Welch (piano)
12:30 p.m. North by Northwest Morris Dancers
1:15 p.m. Misty City Morris Dancers
2 p.m. Free Radicals (American roots music)
2:45 p.m. Sabura (Middle Eastern dance)
3:30 p.m. Ginny Reilly (folk singer)
Brick Building
11:30 a.m. Woodland Consort (recorder ensemble)
12:30 p.m. The Weavels (fiddlers)
1:30 p.m. Folk Voice Band
3:30 p.m. Kumbata (youth marimba band)
Entertainment Sun. Dec. 7
Blue Building
11 a.m. Palindrome (dulcimer duet)
11:45 a.m. Batacada (Brazilian samba)
12:30 p.m. Fraser Havens (pedal steel guitar)
1:15 p.m. Mr. Piper (Highland bagpipes)
2 p.m. Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band
2:45 p.m. Eclectic Cloggers (Appalachian dance)
3:30 p.m. Anzanga (Marimba band)
Brick Building
12:30 p.m. Shaharazad (Middle Eastern ensemble)
1:30 p.m. Seattle Guitar Circle
2:30 p.m. Zaphara's Middle Eastern Dancers
3:30 p.m. Phinney Community Chorus