BAC showcases wearable art through reused materials
Published 1:30 am Monday, April 20, 2026
This month, Bainbridge Islanders were told not to throw out their recyclables, but instead, bring them to a community art engagement event on Winslow Way to create an art piece.
On April 12, Bainbridge Arts & Crafts presented the creation of a wearable art project with these materials, led by Port Townsend artist Margie McDonald. Community members were encouraged to drop off clean, hard plastic lids, yogurt containers, bottle and jar caps, yokes, and mesh plastic produce bag netting at BAC.
“When the gallery asked me to do an activity, I looked around my studio for inspiration and saw a bag of plastic lids. The colors alone are inspirational. We will be stringing these lids on a wire, creating a wearable art piece, or two, depending how much material gets collected,” said McDonald before the event on April 12. “I am looking forward to the collection of materials that will be presented to us. It’s going to be interactive fun.”
McDonald grew up in rural Newfoundland in Canada, as one of seven children. “Being the oldest girl, I learned to sew and knit out of interest and necessity to help my mother make mittens and socks…and making quilts from the worn-out clothing and blankets,” she said. “I grew up in a time when nothing was thrown away if it had any useful purpose. It was not a disposable society yet.”
The artist arrived in Port Townsend in 1998 and began work as an apprentice yacht rigger with Brion Toss, where she began to learn how to splice stainless steel wire. While there, McDonald invented a type of splice for a modern line named the McDonald Brummel, now used worldwide.
“I started to take the recycle box home to play because wire responds in wonderful ways to all the fiber techniques I was familiar with, and also allowed breaking of all the precise measuring rules that wire required in my day job,” she said. “I started to make sculptures using wire and the multitude of objects found at the boat yard, scrap yards and yard sales. My husband Alan Katz keeps me supplied with so many interesting objects from his work as a shipwright.”
McDonald is now the lead on the Port Townsend Student Wearable Art Show, where she supplies materials from her large recycling collection for students to use.
This April is McDonald’s first time working with BAC for Earth Month. “I have always been interested in using materials that are essentially scrap primarily because many things are so interesting as objects and I like diverting some amount of materials from the landfill,” said McDonald.
McDonald has, however, worked with the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art before and is currently in collaboration with friend Rikki Ducornet for a BIMA show opening October 2027. Ducornet is painting surreal images, which provide McDonald with inspiration to create art that reflects nature, she shared. McDonald is creating trees from paper drinking cups from the 1970s, as well as other trees made from sailcloth scraps. Large bird-like creatures will be made from foam scraps from McDonald’s marine upholstery friends.
The artist’s work, including wearable art and sculptures have been exhibited in the New Zealand World of Wearable Art Exhibition, BIMA, Museum of Northwest Art, Northwind Arts Center, and Simon Mace Gallery.
