Park Open Studio: Upcycled Art with Lenore Solmo
Led by a local teaching artist, this drop-in class invites participants to explore creativity through hands-on artmaking under the shade of Scrabble Plaza’s trees. Past mediums have included plein-air drawing, printmaking, cyanotypes, and more. All materials are provided by WSPC.
About the Workshop
Class 1 - Upcycled Handbag Charms
Using pre-cut plastic bottle pieces visitors add color with paint markers, then add mixed beads to create one-of-a-kind handbag charms. Students leave with a wearable, trending accessory made from rescued materials.
Class 2 - Collage Lid Magnets
Participants create miniature works of art by arranging collage elements cut from lifestyle magazines inside a jar lid, finished with a magnet backing for display. Each piece is a tiny window into the maker's eye — and a second life for materials that would otherwise be discarded.
Class 3 - Bottle Bottom Sun-catchers
The bottoms of plastic bottles naturally resemble flowers — this workshop leans into that. Participants enhance the form by decorating with paint pens and adding beads, creating a sun-catcher to hang in a window at home.
About the Artist
Lenore Solmo is a self-taught mixed media artist who, after decades in the fashion industry, committed her practice to making art from found objects. Solmo rescues discarded plastic bottles before they join the tons of plastic flowing into our oceans, transforming them into sea creatures, oysters, and fashion accessories. Plastic bottles and vintage beads from her archives become symbols of coastal opulence — mirroring New York Harbor's history, where waters once filtered through living oyster reefs now circulate plastic debris instead. Her work resurrects a collision between luxury and litter.
Through her residency in Washington Square Park, Solmo brings this practice into the public — teaching hands-on workshops in up-cycled handbag charms, collage lid magnets, and sun- catchers made from plastic bottles. She asks participants to reconsider the plastic bottle's journey, intercepted through artistic intervention. By transforming Brooklyn's trash together, she invites everyone to see possibility in what we discard and leave behind. @lenoresolmolifestyle / IG
This program is free and no registration is required.