When most people finish using products like laundry detergent containers, tin cans, pie tins and greeting cards, they throw them in the garbage or in a recycling bin.
But a group of eight local women covet trash that they can make into treasures.
"I love the idea of taking something society had thrown out," said Sue Eyet, 54, who is one of the eight women. "It's nice to be able to bring out the beautiful, from what society thinks is ugly."
They use garbage for the art they make as part of a group that formed about three years ago, called the Trashy Women. The name refers to their materials, and was part of a marketing ploy to get people to take notice, Eyet said. Eight of the original 10 Trashy Women will open a show at the Liriodendron Aug. 24.
Although they all use garbage to create their art, each member of the group, as well as the artistic creations, is distinct.
As an 8-year-old, Maggie Creshkoff, founder of the Trashy Women, made sculptures out of clay. Although she said she wasn't artistically driven, she enrolled in a pottery class as an adult. Later, after spending a year traveling in South America and Central America, she attended the Instituto Allende, in San Miguel, Mexico, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in crafts and ceramics, said Creshkoff, now 53.
Creshkoff started the Trashy Women to fulfill an obligation to fill space at a satellite gallery, she said. When she came up short of exhibits for one month, she contacted some women she knew and asked them if they wanted to join her in an exhibit of a group she was going to call the Trashy Women. The women agreed, and they opened the first Trashy Women show in 2005.
"We were a group of women using refuse to make beauty," Creshkoff said. "We use all sorts of things to make our art."
Although she works with mixed media, she said she primarily creates pottery. She digs the clay she uses from a quarry owned by Stancills Inc., a Perryville sand and gravel company. She also does pottery-making demonstrations for schoolchildren. She shows the children how a pottery wheel changes the shape of things, she said.
"The kids know me at some of the schools, and that's very gratifying for me," said Creshkoff, who resides in Port Deposit. "It's the gift that keeps on giving back."
She dubbed her most popular "trashy" concoctions "rusty angels," she said.
