Miniblinds, 'found' stuff become jewelry, art

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Ann Knox was green before being green was the thing to be.

For the past three decades or so, Knox has mined garage sales (and made the occasional curb-side haul) to give old objects new purpose.

About 15 years ago, she began recycling some of her "found" objects into objects of art -- beautiful necklaces and pins, collaged pictures, bookmarks and decorated bamboo poles.

"It started with hardware," said Knox, sitting in her small, light-filled studio on the second floor of the modern-style Garden District home she shares with husband Tony. "I really like hardware, and I started collecting it, but I had no idea what I was going to do with it."

When Knox says "hardware," she means the gears and mechanisms that go into things like old watches and clocks.

"So, I made pins of the hardware," she said, pointing out two pins whose components include the metal compass from the top of an old globe.

She added old miniblinds six or seven years ago. "I often look at garage sales for things that are plentiful and cheap," she said. "And everyone has old miniblinds, and you can get them for about a nickel."

In Knox's hands, what most might consider a worthless piece of plastic became stunningly gorgeous necklaces.

She drips inks or dyes onto tissue paper (nabbed at garage sales) or paper towels.

"With the ink, you get bright, transparent colors. On the white blinds, it really almost glows," she said.

Knox cuts the mini-blind slats into shapes and then glues on the paper. Or she glues the paper on, then cuts the shapes. Either way, varnish adds a glossy finish.

Knox will also clip magazine art -- a photo of a black tennis shoe or the scruffy face of an attractive man -- and glue it to mini-blind pieces.

She attaches the pieces to a necklace wire with small rings or, in some cases, the hook parts of hook-and-eye sets. Knox snips clear vinyl tubing she gets at the hardware store into small pieces and uses them as spacers between the medallions.

In addition to her mini-blind necklaces, Knox takes apart old costume jewelry dropped off in bags full by friends and reworks it into necklaces.

Some of the beads and baubles, with the addition of other garage-sale finds, become bookmarks. Hung by the dozens on bamboo rods in her studio, these, too, become art.

Her studio is completely furnished with garage sale pieces. Tables and bookcases line the walls so perfectly they look like they were custom-fitted. In one corner is a wooden chair that looks interesting but, Knox admitted, is too uncomfortable to sit in. But, she sheepishly confessed, it was too good a find to toss.

Bamboo is another green material that has become Knox's canvas.

"My neighbor had cut down her bamboo," she said. "And I loved it because it was a big surface I could put a big burst of color on. ... I am glad it's a green material, though."

She cuts dyed tissue into leaf shapes which she glues to the painted black bamboo, which she calls wands.

The poles run up one wall of the Knox den, a vertical burst of color and pattern.

Knox also has applied her tissue-paper technique to collage. She cuts and tears the paper into images, often people, sometimes more abstract. There's no drawing to follow. "I can't draw," Knox said.

It's more about following your eye than a conceived image, she said.

"But I do love doing the shoes," she said, pointing to the feet of each character.

Knox has sold some of her pieces through local stores and donated other pieces to local nonprofits for auctions, but hasn't really pushed to make it a business, though she is planning an online sales site.

She's a little concerned about losing the "want to" to the "have to."

"I don't want it to become a job," she said.