LOVELOCK - The next time you're about to throw something away, consider converting the trash into something useful.
Upcycling is the upgrading of old or obsolete items into practical, attractive or amusing products and is a small but profitable business for some.
For example, Winnemucca teacher Joleen Bessey Neilsen crochets disposable plastic shopping bags into reusable shopping bags and her students assist by saving their bags instead of trashing them. She converts old jeans into braided rugs and unique containers.
Neilsen's products were on sale along with clothing, jewelry, yard art and other unique products at last week's Upcycled Art Show at the Lovelock Depot Visitor Center. Painted hub caps and ceramic plate "flowers," pine needle baskets, mirrors framed with stamps and a glittering bowling ball covered with costume jewelry rounded out the crafts exhibit.
Janice Young of Grass Valley upcycles old wood, bottles, insulators and other debris she finds in the desert or in small antique stores. She's been crafting for 35 years and her products have sold in the "Handmade Treasures" store in Winnemucca.
Young says there's a market for unique furniture and decorative items composed of salvaged junk. Before it was outlawed, Young scavenged for arts and crafts materials at the landfills.
"I used to go to the dumps," she said. "Now I have to look out in the desert because you can't go to the dumps anymore. It's an adventure and now I'm getting into recycled or upcycled furniture. I made a shelf unit like a bookcase out of an old screen door and it sold right off the bat to a couple in their twenties."
Young's sister Susan Harker of South Jordan, Utah, creates unique shirts and jackets from old blankets, sweaters and other discarded clothing.
Mike Burke created appealing metal birds out of old shovels and Krista Souza brought in her painted hub cap flowers. Darlene Vonsild of Lovelock displayed unique, upcycled jewelry, mirrors and basketry.
Crafting and upcycling are common traditions in Utah, according to Young.
"Utah is the craft state," she said. "Everybody does crafts - there's a service station, a bank, a Mormon church and a crafts store on every block."
Young's creative drive was inherited by her daughter, Jennifer Osborn, who organized the event to promote the art of upcycling and to support a proposed recycling center at the city's former public works facility.
The proposal includes an artist-in-residence program for the creation of art from trash which Osborn already practices. The Lovelock resident displayed an elaborate clock and the decorative bicycle she'll be riding at Burning Man.
Saturday's Upcycled Art Show drew a stream of curious residents to the historic Lovelock Depot. Pershing County Chamber of Commerce Director Jennifer Hill said her group may organize other weekend events to attract more people to downtown Lovelock.
"I just love all the creative ideas that I would never think of," Hill said. "The more of these events we do, the better we are and the more people will get inspired."
The Lovelock Depot will be open during the upcoming Frontier Days on Aug. 2, 3 and 4. The annual celebration is held in the park outside the Pershing County Courthouse.
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