As anyone who makes art knows, “art supplies are expensive,” said Lexi Cuddeback, store manager at MECCA — Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts — a nonprofit second-hand art supplies store in downtown Eugene.
MECCA’s mission is to decrease materials entering the waste stream while delivering them to people at affordable prices. Its 7,000-square-foot building is large enough to house a community area, a private studio, a volunteer space, and an art gallery, not to mention the warehouse room where donations are delivered.
“We have almost more than we can handle,” Executive Director Heather Campbell said about donations. MECCA is a grassroots operation, she said, with a small crew of three full-time employees and four part-time staff for processing materials.
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You can also find about 20 volunteers helping at any given time, some of them student interns and others who are retired with specialized interests and knowledge. Cliff Martin, for example, volunteers twice a week. For two decades, he had his own brand of recycled and wearable art called ARTO’CYCLE that he sold at Eugene’s Saturday Market. The income he earned from ARTO’CYCLE supplemented his regular jobs in publishing and bookstores.
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When he retired, Martin sold the business, including bins of used materials and his booth, to MECCA. ARTO’CYCLE is now the store’s in-house brand. The purchase was unusual, said Campbell, but Martin’s collection fit right in with the organization’s mission to promote recycling into art.
Another artwork display, The Museum of Techno Art, runs along a windowed wall on the Sixth Avenue side of the store. It features artists who work large, such as Steve La Riccia, who was gallery coordinator at the art collective New Zone gallery in Eugene for 28 years. His sculptures have a Steampunk vibe and are constructed out of antique found objects, including old sewing machines and telephones, which makes them a perfect fit for MECCA.
With handmade signs marking the varied inventory of materials, MECCA feels like a cross between a garage sale and an arts-and-crafts thrift shop. You’re sure to find regular art supplies like pencils, pens, markers, and paper, but also old dress patterns, cardboard tubes that come inside paper towel and toilet paper rolls, wine corks, wood scraps, old magazines, and “naturals” such as dried flowers.
Bob Keefer, a journalist and artist who works with hand-tinted photography on art paper, said, “I should probably shop more at MECCA. It’s always fun to be inspired by new and weird art supplies.”
MECCA began in 1999 in the garage of Lizzie Hughes, who wanted to gather supplies to give to art educators. Martin was there, as he was one of the co-founders. That legacy is present in the section of the store marked “Free 4 Teachers,” where a variety of supplies are free to art educators, including markers, pencils, bubble wrap, glass jars, and small yarn balls. The store’s website also offers a Recycled Art Curriculum with step-by-step tutorials for how to make everything from paper-roll lovebugs to fabric-scrap lion stuffies.
For a long while, the store catered its free supplies to K-12 educators, but that pivoted during the pandemic, when education shifted to home schooling. Today, the definition of art educator is more open-ended. It can include parents who teach at home or artists with no degrees who teach at community centers such as the Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene.
The important thing, said Campbell, “is to get materials into the hands of people who need them.”
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The store has been in its current location at 555 High Street since 2022. Before that, it was in a space about half the size. The increase in room, as well as the creation of the new part-time position of community engagement coordinator, filled by Mitra Gruwell, has turned the place into more of an art center than ever before.
MECCA acts as a host campus for Network Charter School students and offers a changing schedule of classes, workshops, and events that cost from $10 to $50, depending on the materials supplied. Workshops take place in the closed studio. The community area in the store, with a table and supplies, is free and open to the public, although it is suggested users pay $3 to $5 per hour.
All the materials in the store are gently used, and the resulting art is called by different names: recycled, found, repurposed. Gruwell, who prefers the term “upcycled,” specializes in upcycled fashion design. She worked seven years at St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, before she was laid off during the pandemic, where she created an in-store brand of fashion called ENVIA. She’d like to do the same at MECCA, incorporating the store’s colorful logo.
Gruwell is a Master Recycler who went through the Waste Wise program run by Lane County. She also has a history of event planning, including as founder of Eugene Fashion Week. She puts her background in design to use at MECCA teaching workshops and has created the Artist Professional Development series now in session.
Gruwell’s experience as a producer comes in handy, too, as she is partnering with other local agencies to create events such as the upcoming Re-Imagine Earth Day, which will take place from 2 to 6 p.m. April 13 in the Eugene’s Farmers Market Pavillion. Other sponsors of the Earth Day celebration include BRING, Shift Community Cycles, and the city of Eugene.
Workshops are the most popular events, Gruwell said, when participants create a work of art they can take home after just two hours in the studio. I saw what she meant when I sat in on a stained-glass workshop, which was sold out. The dozen group members left with colorful stained-glass snails that looked good enough, I thought, for display at home or even in a gift shop or gallery.
The workshop was taught by April Reign, who leads stained-glass events like these, always with a different theme, about once a month. She was accompanied by her friend and assistant Angie Bono. Bono is not a glass artist but she’s learning the craft, she said, by assisting her friend.
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Reign asked participants to introduce themselves, say how long they’d been coming to MECCA, and share their most recent creative endeavor. Workshop attendee Jennifer Jordan said she’d been coming to the store for 18 years, while Brian Donnelly, sitting beside her, was visiting from Portland. Alexandra Cookson knew about the used art supply store because her mother’s church donated items once a month.
She said about her last creative project, “I don’t know if puzzles count.”
“Yes,” Reign told her. “They do.”
Reign then demonstrated how to use the soldering iron they were provided. “Don’t burn yourselves,” she said before showing them. “This is where the magic happens.”
When he was making art using recycled materials for ARTO’CYCLE, Cliff Martin said he was always on the lookout for ways old objects could be repurposed. Once he came upon a collection of Barbie dolls. The seller said, unfortunately, some were missing arms or legs. “That’s OK,” he told her, “I only want the heads.” The woman gave him a funny look, but the earrings he made using the Barbie heads sold out immediately.
MECCA is not tied to any religious organization, but participants convey a sense of devotion to the work. Gruwell, who has degrees in cultural anthropology and religious studies, said about art in general, “It is my religion….”
Campbell said she “felt honored to steward such an organization.”
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Repurposing everyday objects into art isn’t new. In art history, “found art” is often referenced when speaking about the art done by Dadaists or Surrealists at the start of the last century.
In those days, however, the idea behind using a large glass or a bicycle wheel as a medium for artwork wasn’t connected to the well-being of the planet. It’s no wonder, then, that some artists, and some art stores like MECCA, see upcycled art as important. Yes, it is fun to wear Barbie heads dangling from your ears. But turning old materials into art just might help sustain a livable environment, too.