Artist debuts 'trashion' collection in 'Rubbish 2 Runway' exhibit

Mark Elliott, an artist and member of FRANK Gallery in Chapel Hill, thinks creativity can take many forms.

In the spirit of this idea, he said he conceived a show and exhibition at FRANK Gallery that asked artists — professional and amateur — to make something beautiful out of trash.

Rubbish 2 Runway, FRANK Gallery’s latest exhibit, shows off dresses made from recycled materials. It opened May 7 and runs through July 7.

It also featured a runway show on May 10.

Elliott said he and other members of the gallery first thought of the idea about 10 months ago.

“We were trying to think of shows that would involve the broader community, and we wanted to reach out to high school and college students and involve them in a creative way,” he said.

“We thought that fashion and recycling are both very interesting and exciting to a lot of people and decided on that.”

He said he thought the show would be interesting to people beyond those who are interested in the gallery’s usual paintings, pottery and sculptures.

“We wanted to reach out further,” he said.

Elliott said the gallery began soliciting entries to the exhibit four months ago.

Torey Mishoe, the gallery manager, said the show presented new and unique challenges.

“We had no idea what we were doing — we hang artwork, we don’t really know much about fashion,” she said.

“This whole idea of planning a runway show, we had never done before, and fortunately we had some very wonderful professional help.”

She said the short time frame for the design and exhibition of the dresses presented challenges.

“We did an open call, which was a little bit scary because we didn’t know if we were going to get five people or 500 people,” she said. “It was two weeks before the show before we even saw what they had been working on.”

Elliott said another challenge was finding mannequins because the gallery did not have any of its own.

“I reached out to several businesses and was turned down,” he said.

He said he had to network and reach out to a number of individuals to procure enough for the show’s entries.

“It was really wonderful in that it was a pain in the ass, but it spread the word about the exhibition and got more people interested,” he said.

Elliott said the show started as a symbolic idea, but he saw the potential for some dresses made out of recycled material to actually be worn.

“I was really just trying to raise consciousness and inspire creativity by working with unusual materials,” he said.

Emmy Starr, the artist who won “Best in Show” for her entries, said she had participated in shows like this before, so she had an idea of what she wanted to accomplish.

“I seek out events that do ‘trashion,’ and my main goal is always to make things wearable — that someone can look at the dresses and say, ‘Hey, I could actually wear this out somewhere,’” she said.

Contact the desk editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.