The Frugal Forest was initiated by One Off Makery in 2013 and soon spawned Frugal Arts, a group of local Pappinbarra women who led the project. Over three years, we worked with more than 1170 participants to build a forest entirely out of materials that were headed for the dump, with input from scientists and a soundscape gleaned from junk by Rae Howell. The Forest toured to seven regional galleries in NSW before being broken into segments and installed in libraries, information centres and schools.
Salvage Spider was One Off Makery’s first participatory project. A group of Pappinbarra locals got together on weekends to build a realistic Orb Spider from industrial offcuts and dismembered teddy bears. The resulting work was suspended on a web hand-spun from teddy innards above the foyer of Glasshouse Regional Gallery in Port Macquarie. It has since found a permanent home at Fitzroy Falls National Park.
Stringdom (an OOM project) first took over a corner of the Sydney Opera House during school holidays, with children knotting a chambered architectural world of twine. It later became a day-long festival of string in Port Maquarie.
This video was screened to explain to kids where the kilometres of salvaged baling twine had come from. Please note, it has no sound! That was a choice at the time to avoid competing with the noise of excited children.