A plea from HV Materials Exchange

I received an email today regarding the impending eviction of the Hudson Valley Materials Exchange from its current home at Stewart Airport. Hudson Valley Materials Exchange Community Warehouse is a Non profit resource for used/surplus Arts, Education & Building Materials rescued from the commercial wastestream. They are located at1101 First Street, Stewart Intl Airport, New Windsor, NY 12553 ph: 845 567 1445.
The eviction is scheduled to happen in July. The exchange is seeking help on a variety of fronts, particularly in finding a new space to house the materials. You can visit their website to see in what ways you can help.

As I was packing up my studio a couple of months back, I was faced with a multitude of materials that would seemingly be useless, but to the right person, they could be essential, and given the space and time, I too could find have found a use for them....honestly. It also occurred to me that as concerned for the environment as the artist community tends to be, as a whole, we don't deal with the detritus that results from our creative process in as sound a manner as we should.
I was able to sensibly whittle much of the stuff down without dumping it in the trash, but it still irked me to toss out what I did. The intention of HVME is great, and it can be a source of great and odd finds (although I wonder if some of the construction materials, particularly the clunky lighting fixtures, would be better used by scraping them out for the raw material than reselling them intact.)

I've thought of starting a small material resource/material exchange bulletin board that would be focused more toward the needs of the individual artist... We'll see if that gets off the ground. In the meantime there is Freecycle, which helped me jettison some items that I had difficulty getting rid of. It's a great way to get or get rid of things for free and extend the usefulness of items that are becoming all too disposable nowadays. The Dutchess county chapter of Freecycle exists as a Yahoo group and you need a Yahoo ID to join.