Creative Reuse of Vallejo offers free art supplies, workspace

VALLEJO — In a ground floor shop just below the Legacy at Sonoma apartments in downtown Vallejo, shelves overflow with art supplies in a riot of color, surrounding the large work tables in the center of the room. 

Need to patch those jeans but don’t have the right fabric? Interested in taking up crochet? Perhaps you want to get into painting, but don’t have the funds to invest in canvas, paint and brushes – Creative Reuse of Vallejo, located at 531 Capitol St. is the place to go.

Kristin Woods opened the nonprofit Creative Reuse of Vallejo in September 2022 to provide low cost art supplies, a workspace, and make creativity more accessible to the people of Vallejo. She said there’s no need to go out and buy a glue gun, card stock and a set of colored pencils when you want to make one greeting card. Creative Reuse of Vallejo has it all.

Woods was inspired by the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Oakland, which opened in 1979 to provide space for artists, educators and community members to receive low cost supplies while making their lives simpler and more sustainable. 

Woods said her goal is to provide a place for people to be creative and share things. She’s planning on offering more free workshops and holding future events like an ugly sweater making workshop and an upcycle fashion show. 

One of the workshops held last year was on used canvas resurfacing. “We took those to City Park and we had art in the park,” Woods said. Most of the participants were kids.

But Woods has struggled to raise funds for the project and is now looking for a second job to keep the rent paid. She said she welcomes volunteers to help her keep the space open and promote the project on social media while she focuses on funding, events and workshops. 

While she’s open to art supply donations and especially donations of tools, she said she needs to get the word out to get materials moving.”I've had to turn down so many people that want to donate stuff,” she said. “I have stuff at home I can't bring here because I don't have space for it.”

Woods said she realized it was too time consuming to sort and price all of the supplies, and is now offering the first item for free and a fair donation for additional items. “I'd rather focus on grants and donations than 10 cents for this and 20 cents for that,” Woods said.

She had experimented with making everything free, but changed the policy after some people took more than they needed. 

Creative Reuse of Vallejo is currently open by appointment until more donations or volunteer help can be arranged.

“And if you're going to donate an unfinished [sewing] project, take the pins out of it,” Woods said. “I've been poked so many times!”