By Elana Seifert
Schuessler’s knit scraps and plastic yarn cones now fill containers alongside stacks of slightly damaged paper, used books, odd-lot items, and bins of various manufacturing remnants. Some items are priced–vinyl runners are 25 cents a yard, a ream of paper is $3, cabinet doors run from $1 to $3 apiece. Everything that’s not marked–various rubber, ceramic, and metal items–is $3 per bagful.
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Today the warehouse holds everything from old National Geographic magazines to what Dunn calls “random, unintelligible pieces which when in context with others can be made into a design.” Between 200 and 250 schoolteachers (in addition to artists, art therapists, parents, and thrift shoppers) visit the warehouse in an average week. Finished projects, from detailed mosaics to science projects, are kept in a display case.
“About 80 percent of our time is spent organizing items–moving, sorting, stacking, shelving,” says Kordiuk. “There are some areas where we still are figuring out our philosophy. Ken and I are always going back and forth on how we should be doing things. People drop things on our door or just decide we could use them and show up with the truck to unload. What can you say at that point? Do we reject them because they don’t fit our mission? Or do we handle them? It’s frustrating because it can take my focus away from making the space for and bringing in materials for educational purposes. But then again, I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility for materials that show up here. So if a couch or a refrigerator–things we absolutely do not take–shows up, we’re responsible for it.”
