Worried your outfit looks like trash? Try one that looks like recycling instead. This year is the 25th anniversary of the Annual Recycle Santa Fe Art Festival, held at the Santa Fe Convention Center, bringing together local artisans and nationwide talent to showcase their pieces in an art exhibition and fashion show. There's just one criteria — everything must be made of at least 75% recycled material.
The festival is also home to the largest and oldest recycled art market in the country, drawing both nationwide and local talent to sell a variety of artwork like furniture, garments, and jewelry — and a student exhibition, in which the art festival partnered with schools to make projects based around recycling. Piñon Elementary School students, for example, were charged with designing new products that can be made of recycled materials, while other students made ofrendas out of recycled paper. “Some things in our culture were just made for the landfill,” said the festival’s director, Sarah Pierpont — also director of the New Mexico Coalition for Recycling.
“No one's pretending that by making art out of discarded material, we're going to keep our landfills less full, but it does help remind folks that reduce and reuse really do trump recycle." That’s where the Creative Reuse Center comes in, Pierpont said. It’s a warehouse started by Recycle Santa Fe in 2020 for local creatives to make use of discarded materials for art.
Around half of the festival’s artis.
