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Our 5th Annual Green Gift Fair starts this weekend!

Forklift's Green Gift Fair an Eco-Outlet for Artists Who See the Beauty of Reuse

Charmaine Jones transformed a drab chair purchased at Community Forklift into a garden spot. This and pieces dressed up by artists at from Art Enables are part of the Forklift's Green Gift Fair beginning Nov. 1.

 

By Elizabeth McGowan

 

Where others saw a dull and dormant chair,  Charmaine Jones imagined a four-legged garden. That verdant vision prompted the 28-year-old artist to cover every square inch of its exposed wood with a botanical bounty of roses, tulips, sunflowers and vines.

 

"It just kind of popped into my head," Jones says about her garden chair idea while seated at her studio space at Art Enables in Northeast Washington, D.C. "Painting with all of those colors makes me happy." 

 

Charmaine Jones painted "Night Blossoms" on a cabinet door salvaged by Art Enables at Community Forklift. (PHOTO CREDIT: Art Enables)

The resurrected chair will be returning "home" as one of hundreds of handmade items that local crafters and artists will be selling from Nov. 1 through Dec. 29 at Community Forklift's fifth annual Green Gift Fair.  

 

Art Enables, a studio and gallery for emerging artists with developmental disabilities, is one of 35 organizations and individuals exhibiting in the Fair.

 

In addition to green-themed paintings, the fair will feature an assortment of eco-friendly and affordable clothing, metalwork, woodcrafts, toys, baby gear, beauty care products, candles, greeting cards, housewares and stained glass mosaics. Prices start as low as $1.  

 

Staffers at Art Enables often comb the Forklift's aisles for finds that encourage their cadre of 33 artists to experiment with new media. Chairs, cabinet doors, scrap wood, ceramic tiles and glass light shades are among the Forklift finds that allow the artists to transform the forlorn to the fanciful-and make some money selling their repurposed results.  

 

"For art folks, there are only so many times you can paint on canvas or draw on a piece of paper," says Beth Baldwin, arts coordinator at Art Enables, who discovered the Forklift years ago as a props specialist for the Shakespeare Theatre Company. "Like any artist, you can fall into a rut, so working with something different is a good way to open up creativity."

 

Mary Liniger, executive director at Art Enables, is used to fielding calls from Baldwin and other staffers seeking permission to "buy something really cool they just found at the Forklift." She always gives them the green light, she says, because everything is so reasonably priced and nothing they carry back to the art studio at 2204 Rhode Island Ave. NE ever seems to go to waste.

 

Maurice "Mo" Higgs's creates his signature "hairy eyeball motif" on salvaged cabinet doors and pretty much any other surface available.

"What I like about Community Forklift is that it's so random," Baldwin says. "It can be a challenge to find what I need but it keeps me constantly problem solving."

 

Aley Hasson, gallery and outreach assistant for Art Enables, is thrilled that the Forklift selected her organization to participate in this year's Green Gift Fair. It's the first year Art Enables submitted an application.

 

"We're always looking for new venues," Hasson says about raising her nonprofit's profile. "It's about getting our name out there so more people know what our artists are doing in here."

 

The Art Enables booth at the Green Gift Fair will showcase art from several artists who use reclaimed materials. For instance, it also will feature flower-themed paintings that Jones has completed on cabinet doors salvaged from the Forklift. Jones, one of the youngest artists at Art Enables, will be joined by the nonprofit's eldest artist, Maurice "Mo" Higgs. The cheerful and prolific 77-year-old wears down dozens of colored pencils daily while drawing renditions of his "hairy eyeball motif" on paper, wood scraps or about any other available surface.

 

This year's call for original artwork incorporating the themes of recycling, sustainable living and environmental awareness attracted more responses than in the previous four years, so it will be the largest Green Gift Fair yet. Forklift staffers selected the top 35 applications from a field of 48.

 

What are some of these artists doing? For starters, they're turning beeswax into candles, transforming leftover metal parts into lamps, creating clothing from thrift-store finds, making painting-like landscapes and cityscapes from fabric scraps, handcrafting soaps and repurposing worn out belts and other leather goods into wearable art.

 

 

Keep reading this article on our blog!

 

Community Forklift Turns 8!

In just 8 years, we've had over 133,000 transactions, and donated approximately $100,000 of materials directly to nonprofits and families in need.  By keeping tons of materials from going to the landfill each year, countless households and small businesses have been able to afford repairs - and we've created 40 green jobs!  Not only that, but the low-cost materials have allowed thousands of tradespeople to attract clients even during tough economic times.

To make a secure online, tax-deductible donation, click the button below to donate through Paypal, major credit card, or directly from your bank account.

 

OR, you can write a check. Please make it out to Sustainable Community Initiatives, and write "Community Forklift" in the memo line.  Checks should be mailed to:  Community Forklift, 4671 Tanglewood Drive, Edmonston MD, 20781.  Please call Nancy Meyer, our Chief Operating Officer, at 301-985-5180 with any questions or concerns.  Thanks so much!

A huge THANK YOU to all of our partners! 

Upcycle Your Life:

A Community Expo 

Linking Food to Health

Priority Partners  

Capital Area Food Bank

End Time Harvest Ministries

DC's Chocolate Bar & Bakery 

Mrs. Tahiti McNair is a certified chef with extensive experience in the culinary field.  She has extensive expertise in natural and organic foods as well as preparation of gluten free and other foods for consumers with food allergies.  All our Forklift Fans were so impressed with Chef McNair's delicious food! 

Opening Soon:  

2028 Rhode Island Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20018

Check out this article about their grand opening in NE DC!  

Dr. Larry F. McNair's General Family and Cosmetic Dentistry

provides affordable world class treatment for all your dental needs! 

www.larrymcnairdds.com 

  

 
SHINE Massage and Wellness Studio

provides therapeutic massage services. For more info:  www.shinemassagestudio.com 

 or call  (240) 487-9427

   

 

And thanks to all our additional partners! 

  

  

Check out more photos on our website!

Forklift Shares the Wealth When Businesses Choose to Donate, Not Dump 

By Elizabeth McGowan 

Gary Piscopo, left, and John Gray load a donation from their Frederick, Md.-based company, Wholesalers USA Inc., into a truck headed for the Community Forklift.

Since 2003, Gary Piscopo had insisted on lugging around at least two carefully wrapped pallet loads of unsold artwork. After moving the stacks of colorful and intricate shadowboxes for the fifth time, however, the entrepreneur began to question his sanity and business acumen.

So the 46-year-old felt vindicated-and relieved-when he discovered an outlet for the handmade treasures he feared he'd have to trash. The place? Community Forklift, of course.  

Gary Piscopo holds up a sample of the type of glass mosaic tile that Wholesalers USA Inc. donated to Community Forklift in late September.

"Clearly, this is what I was saving it for," says Piscopo, vice president of Wholesalers USA Inc., a family-owned and operated outfit in Frederick, Md. "We have limited space, so we can't keep everything around. And donating is way better than throwing it away."

He first stumbled upon the Forklift last summer when his fiancée needed building supplies to update her kitchen in Takoma Park. An online search guided them to the Edmonston warehouse, where Piscopo was bedazzled by the expansive inventory an  d the possibility of a long-term, give-and-take relationship. By September, the Forklift had arranged to send a truck to Frederick to pick up not only the artwork but also 1,000 pounds of glass tiles and 1,500 pounds of glass gems.

Nancy Meyer, Community Forklift's chief executive officer, makes sure John Gray receives the right paperwork for a donation made by Wholesalers USA Inc.

"It's good for us, it's good for them, it's good for everybody," Nancy Meyer, the Forklift's chief executive officer, says about the new link with Wholesalers USA. "It's great for our customers when we can make higher-end products available at discounted prices."

Connecting Piscopo and his ilk with the Forklift isn't just a haphazard occurrence, Meyer emphasizes. Instead of waiting for deliveries from donors already in the pipeline, the eight-year-old nonprofit is now ramping up its efforts to cultivate and maintain bonds with targeted industries unaware of the Forklift's existence. These contractors, property managers, retailers and small businesses often see the landfill as the only option because they don't have the time, space or energy for excess inventory.  

John Gray shows off samples of the handmade shadowbox artwork that Frederick, Md.-based Wholesalers USA Inc. donated to Community Forklift this autumn. Each piece includes an artist's biography.

Piscopo and his brother, Mark, first invested in the elaborate shadowboxes about a decade ago. They put time and money into an arduous licensing process with artists and traveled to China to pick up the unique creations. Initially, they envisioned making the artwork the centerpiece at kiosks in shopping malls in the mid-Atlantic where they would also sell vases, flowers and glass gems. So they pursued their plan.

Well, the artwork was moving, "but not like hotcakes," Piscopo recalls. "I'm on the road trying to sell these pictures and people are blowing up our phone lines trying to buy the glass gems."

The realization that customers couldn't keep their hands off the gems-the small, shiny, polished pieces of tinted glass used for creating mosaics and murals-was an aha moment for the siblings.

"We listened to what our customers were looking for and went out and got it," Piscopo says about the decision to shelve the shadowboxes, boost their inventory of glass gems and add glass tiles to the mix. "We followed the trail of nuts, and basically it was our customers who led us."

Plenty of their buyers are domestic but they also do a booming business in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.

Glass gems that Frederick, Md.-based Wholesalers USA Inc. donated to Community Forklift come in an array of colors.

Once the brothers lasered in on glass gems and tiles, they made the commitment to move the company headquarters from a basement and shipping container in Rockville to a warehouse in Frederick at the end of 2005. Wholesalers USA now has six employees-and four of them are related. A portion of the 12,000 square feet of space is dedicated to an offspring venture, a limited liability corporation called Giorbello Elegant Tile Products. Gary and Mark's nephew, John Gray, sells that brand of tile to retailers.

Piscopo says the Forklift will continue to be the beneficiary when his company cleans house every six months or so. He is elated to ally with a place that has such an appreciate audience of artists and do-it-yourselfers.

"We have a warehouse full of product," he says. "Why not share the wealth?"

To find out more, contact Jon at 301-985-6011

 Now hiring! 

Experienced Program Coordinator 

Community Forklift is seeking an experienced Program Coordinator to work full-time. The Program Coordinator will be responsible for furthering our mission through the development and coordination of Community Forklift's internal events, workshop series, external festivals and community events. This person will also provide support and structure to the Outreach & Education team, including tracking and reporting. This is not an entry-level position, only qualified applicants will be considered.

Experienced Office Manager

Community Forklift is seeking an experienced Office Manager to work full-time. The Office Manager will be primarily responsible for the general oversight and management of the overall office administration, human relations and bookkeeping functions for an organization with more than 40 full-time, part-time and on-call employees. This is not an entry-level position, only qualified applicants will be considered. 

 

Truck Driver  

Community Forklift is seeking a full-time Truck Driver. This person will represent the organization by picking up used and surplus building materials in the DC area. Responsibilities include driving our 24-foot box truck with manual transmission. A Commercial Driver's License (CDL) is preferred. All applicants must have an excellent driving record, relevant driving experience and a current Maryland Department of Transportation medical card. If you do not have medical card, you will need a physical before you begin. Prior related driving experience is required!   

 

 

Click here to find out how to apply!

   

SCRAP-DC announces new DIY classes!  

Got skills?  

Can you lead a workshop at the 'Lift?

• Do you reuse materials in your work or hobbies?

• Are you willing to spend a couple hours showing other Forkilft Fans the basics of what you do & how you do it?


Please email Outreach(at)CommunityForklift.org if you'd like to lead a workshop, an "Ask the Expert" Q&A session, or a hands-on demonstration at the Forklift!