CORNWALL — Cars lined the transfer station parking lot on Saturday morning, April 23, as fans of art and craft swarmed the salt shed to get a look at this year’s Art at the Dump. As quickly as 30 minutes into the first day of the two-day show there were empty spots on the tables where unique pieces had been before getting snapped up by buyers.
Every spring the shed, which typically holds tons of material used by the town’s Public Works Department to keep the roads clear in winter, is transformed into an art gallery with work by about 50 artists. A twist: All the work has to be made of recycled or reclaimed materials.
The show is now in its 16th year and founder Gail Jacobson is proud of the ongoing support from both the town and the show’s attendees.
“It’s amazing,” she said on Saturday morning. “This is the only art show I know where people get out of their cars with wallets in their hands. We sell quite a bit.”
Jacobson was inspired to start Art at the Dump when she first moved to Cornwall. Art Breen ran the transfer station and she would often hear, “Art at the dump said this, Art at the dump said that,” when her husband returned home from dropping off the garbage.
The phrase gave her the idea to use the shed for an art show, the first of which was put on in just six weeks and was the beginning of a true Cornwall tradition. The show is now run by Jacobson and a committee of six others, who help to promote Art at the Dump.
“I always kid that this is the beginning of the social season in Cornwall,” Jacobson said.
The show is open to everyone, not just Cornwall residents and is designed to be fun and low-key for the participants.
“We get everyone: bonafide professional artists and people who say, ‘I’m not a real artist’ and of course, that’s the most exciting stuff.”
Thirty percent of the profits go to the art department at Cornwall Consolidated School (CCS). The show raises about $800 a year and is spent on an item that wouldn’t be covered by the regular budget. The two most recent purchases were a printing press and a kiln.
Every year, Jacobson and the committee figure out a theme as a way to keep the show fresh. This year it was the “ShoeReDo”: two full tables of altered and recycled shoes, one of which was done completely by Cornwall Consolidated students.
Claudia Duhamel is a Connecticut artist with a passion for nature. She makes garden sculpture from oversized plant leaves, pressing them into concrete. As the 2015 first-prize winner, Duhamel was asked to create the prizes for the first-, second- and third-place winners this year.
She made them from poured steel.
Lori Barker has participated in the show for all 16 years and was happy to show off the array of items she’d created for this year’s show, including tops made from recycled caps and marbles, and broken CDs converted into works of art. Barker was proud to mention that her granddaughter had also created several pieces for the show.
In front of the shed, the Little Guild of St. Francis had a table set up to promote adoptions of abandoned cats and dogs. Director Heather Dinneen introduced visitors to a happy puppy currently living at the shelter.
CCS seventh-graders were also on hand with a bake sale; all profits benefit their class trip to Washington, D.C., next spring.
The winners this year:
First place: James Hackett of Salisbury, welded horse
Second place: Gail Jacobson of Cornwall, salt shaker chandeliers
Third place: Marilyn Olsen of Cornwall, papier mâché animals.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller 
