About Cracked Pots
Founded in 1999, Cracked Pots is a group of artists and community members dedicated to using art to encourage our community to reduce waste by taking a creative approach to “trash.” Creative reuse has always been at the heart of all we do.
Cracked Pots has engaged the community in many ways, including:
Dreaming up events to inspire people to creatively use reclaimed material.
Diverting materials headed for local landfills to local residents and artists who make them into decorative and functional art.
Linking artists, businesses, the public, and environmental, educational, and arts groups.
History
Cracked Pots sprang from the fertile minds of gardener Tess Beistel and artist MaryLou Abeln. Passionate about recycling, they invited local artists to show and sell their art (made from recycled materials, of course!) in select gardens around Portland. That garden art tour quickly evolved into the enormously successful two-day Cracked Pots Reuse Art Show held at Edgefield since 1998, which ultimately featured recycled art of over 100 artists.
Cracked Pots has always believed in the creative brilliance of children and has fostered that creativity through working with kids in school and encouraging them to see waste in new ways We’ve brought artists together with businesses to create art from the business detritus; sponsored neighborhood curbside “giveaways”; developed a public/private/nonprofit collaboration that invites artists to create art from materials gleaned from the “dump”; and paired artists with students to create recycled metal benches from student designs.
And we’re not done yet! We’ve got some new ideas brewing. And we’re always on the lookout for other amazing things we can do to help reduce the waste stream.
Our Programs
