Arts This Week: Sarah Sweet and The Scrappy Elephant
“Arts this Week” airs every Wednesday at 12 & 7 p.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM, hosted and produced by Aaryan Balu
Aaryan Balu: For Arts This Week, we chatted with Sarah Sweet, owner of The Scrappy Elephant, a creative reuse center here in Charlottesville. I’ll let her explain what that means.
Sarah Sweet: The mission is keeping art and craft materials out of the landfill and getting them back to the community as low-cost as possible. So when artists and crafters clean out their studio, rather than throwing the stuff into the landfill, they bring it here and we sort and organize it. People can come use our studio for crafting in-house or fill up bags of supplies to make art at home.
AB: I asked Sarah what classes are coming up at The Scrappy Elephant this month.
SS: Gosh, we have so many classes. We have a crochet class this week, we have some embroidery classes this weekend. We have a new sewing class for adults and kids–a lot of our classes are for beginners. The watercolor classes are for beginners, the crochet classes are for beginners. We have a lot of Mosaic 101 classes, so it’s for people that are looking to get started into things.
And then as people take classes, some of our teachers are offering next-level– like now we have Mosaic 201 Class! Usually it’s for ages 12-15 and up, although we also offer preschool classes, toddler classes, and elementary school after school clubs as well. So we cater to a wide range of students.
AB: I also asked her about their upcoming program late nights at the Scrappy Elephant.
SS: On Wednesday nights, for our late-night sessions, we’re going to do “fiber fanatics”– if you knit or crochet, just bring whatever you’re working on. We’re going to do one for scrapbook and paper collage one Wednesday night, and then the last Wednesday of the month we’re calling it “WIP Wednesdays.” So work-in-progress. Just bring whatever you’re working on, and you can get critiques from the other people in the group. And those are all free to drop in with whatever you’re working on and hopefully make some new friends!
AB: The Scrappy Elephant is down in McIntire Plaza, just a short distance from downtown.
Arts This Week is supported by Piedmont Virginia Community College.
