Written by Carol Braden | Sandra Kingsbury appeared on Fixer's Night with a mishmash of blown glass, milk glass, and metal pieces. She came home with a beautiful and practical table lamp.
“I was ready to throw it away,” said Kingsbury, a resident of Westbeth Artists Housing at 55 Bethune St. She had no idea what this tiered vintage piece looked like, but she took the trouble of working and repairing it as a retired science teacher. Guru Joe Holder. He instinctively stacked the components around the new center wire, turned the switch, and literally a lightbulb was ignited.
Posters posted on bulletin boards around the West Beth campus read: Please do not throw it in the trash. Please fix this. ” They invited residents to his pop-up tinkering sessions with his collective Fixers, which Mr. Holdner helped found and has been a part of for 14 years. The group, which has been meeting monthly at Hack Manhattan on 37th Street for nearly a decade, has decided to establish a new neighborhood residency here in the West Village's “home of the arts.” The next Repair Salon at West Beth will be held on Wednesday, May 1st from 6pm to 9pm.
That night in early March, Holdner was joined by Fixers Collective artists Vincent Lai and John Murphy as they unpacked their tools and worked at a folding table equipped with a power strip. Expected guests arrived with items for the disabled, and onlookers peered into the bright room, wondering what was going on.
“It smells like fire,” said Charlotte Reist, a seventh-grader who used a soldering iron under Murphy's supervision. She had installed her new condenser in her small makeup refrigerator, and the refrigerator suddenly stopped cooling. Empowered by making plastic appliances with Swiftie stickers cool again, she also learned that planned obsolescence can be avoided.
The renovation event took place in a former nursery space facing Westbeth's courtyard. Across the rainy hallway, the complex's art gallery was buzzing with the opening of an ongoing show called “Women on the Verge.”
“I'd like to invite people here for a little performance art,” Lai said with a smile, looking around the room as the sound of screwguns blared.
Lai, the group's organizer and social media manager, is good at changing smartphone batteries and reupholstering chairs. Lately, he's been creating his quick-release plates and other tripod parts with his 3D printer, and is looking for photographers who need them. Members of this collective appear to have the tools, parts, and know-how to revive what no longer works. Or, in a pinch, he can turn to YouTube videos.
Skilled Westbeth residents also showed up for work. Jenny Lombardo, a former teacher and author who grew up in Westbeth, came in to repair the jewelry. Richard Sanka, animator, documentarian, and former Bloomingdale's art director turned cabinet maker, was another familiar face. He moved to Westbeth 30 years ago and is often involved in designing and building warehouse units. This night he fixed two wobbly chairs and reinstalled an old medicine cabinet door, among other things he did.
“It feels better to breathe new life into something than to throw it away,” Sanka says. He pointed out that despite high rents in the area, not everyone can afford or want to replace broken items with new ones. Westbess Artist Housing he opened in 1970 and continues to provide subsidized rent apartments to talented artists from all walks of life.
Sanka mentioned that just a few weeks ago, the short documentary film “The Last Repair Shop” won an Oscar. Mother and child shops are disappearing. But Repair Night brings hope to broken appliances, household goods, mechanical and electronic products, toys and more, as customers sit down with repairers and participate in the repair process.
Fixers Collective began in 2010 at Proteus Gowanus, an interdisciplinary art gallery and reading space located in an old box factory in Brooklyn. At an exhibit called “Mend,” someone brought in a tattered American flag. People started working on repairing it. A movement, or rather a division of New York City, was born.
Like all New Yorkers, the members of the Fixers Collective went their own way, but they rode the wave. People's willingness and ability to repair things had been waning since at least the 1980s, as manufacturers and importers shipped more and more products that were inherently designed to fail. The parts were plastic and the instructions were difficult to understand. Specialists and their shops disappeared. Invented in the Netherlands in 2009, a concept called the “Repair Café” has become a global phenomenon, bringing to the forefront the ecological importance of fixing rather than tossing.
But as U.S. states and foreign governments began drafting repair laws to allow consumers to repair electrical and other equipment themselves, the coronavirus pandemic slowed the movement. . Modified events, often staffed by senior citizens, have closed and only slowly revived in recent years.
In December, New York state enacted its own long-overdue right-to-repair law. The measures, which have been called “eviscerated” by critics, target electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets, but could prove even sharper. Under the new law, retailers like Apple and Samsung will have to provide parts and release technical manuals to help consumers extend the life of their products. The law also prohibits warranty cancellation and other sales-driven device developer tactics.
The Fixers Night pilot and other neighborhood repair events have the power to reignite a long-burning zeitgeist, raise awareness about climate change and the role consumerism plays in it, and provide a welcome service. We provide. The Westbeth Artist Residency Council (WARC) and its Preservation Committee (which, in full disclosure, is chaired by this reporter) sponsored the three-hour event. In addition to Kingsbury, the visitors brought with them a walker with bad brakes, a CD player that wouldn't spin, and five lamps. Volunteers weighed and tallied 156 pounds of junk that was returned to the workplace rather than sent to the landfill.
Debra Rapoport, an artist of found metal jewelry and recycled textiles, brought in a non-working 1960s Luxo gooseneck lamp. Mr. Holder fixed a broken switch on his chrome light by simply tightening a screw. Rapoport, a proud trash picker, was overjoyed.
“I’m all about the concept of preservation, restoration and reuse,” she said.