Reduce, Reuse Create: A Mural Celebration at the Ithaca ReUse Center

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 12:38 AM ET - 12/6/2021

On December 1st, Ithaca Murals and Finger Lakes ReUse joined together to celebrate a major collaboration: a mural art project dedicated to showing the themes and importance of the reuse movement.

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:01 AM ET - 12/6/2021

The project involves 5 different murals painted on walls inside and outside of the Ithaca ReUse Center, in addition to the outside of a box truck.

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:08 AM ET - 12/6/2021

“I’ve been puzzling for the last 13 years about how to talk to the community about the many many impacts of reuse,” Diane Cohen, executive director of Finger Lakes ReUse said. “In order to reuse things and be really resourceful, you have to be creative. You have to use your creative mind.”

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:14 AM ET - 12/6/2021

Cohen said Finger Lakes ReUse was given a grant to pay artists to paint murals that linked reuse to human rights and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Some of these goals include clean water and sanitation, and affordable and clean energy. Cohen said reaching out to Ithaca Murals was the obvious thing to do for this project.

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:21 AM ET - 12/6/2021

“I’m passionate about the intersection of art and justice,” Caleb Thomas from Ithaca Murals said. “Right from the beginning I could tell that at [the] ReUse Center they understood that. For them, it’s about reuse and justice.”

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:29 AM ET - 12/6/2021

Thomas said the project was a two and a half year collaboration with the Finger Lakes ReUse Center. He said they announced they were looking to fund five artists to paint the murals based on the requirements Cohen mentioned in the grant. Thomas said they received a lot of proposals for the project and shared those with Finger Lakes ReUse staff members, customers and community partners so they could vote for the five proposals they wanted to see.

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:46 AM ET - 12/6/2021

Terrance Vann is the artist who painted the mural on the exterior of the Ithaca Reuse Center. He’s been an artist all his life and dreamed of painting murals; something he’s been doing for the past four years. Vann said the sustainable development goals played a part in inspiring his work for this project.

Jordan Broking
Forth - Ithaca / 01:58 AM ET - 12/6/2021

Vann said the mural took about a month and a half to complete. He said he wanted to make it bright and colorful to draw people in and add color to the area. Additionally, he wanted to add substance to the piece in order to get people thinking when looking at his mural.