By Rita Cook   

Antoinette "Toni" Andrukaitis of McKinney says her art naturally developed an eco-friendly slant because she has always been the kind of person who has recycled and repurposed.  

“Eco-friendly is what we baby-boomers grew up with, but back then we called it frugality,” Andrukaitis says. “As a little girl, my sisters and I made doll clothes from fabric scraps and string. My mother always taught us never to waste, but rather, repurpose.”

When she first began teaching art in the 1970s she says she would buy discontinued or marked down house paint for her students to use, “mostly because any extras came out of my pocket, but from there every bargain became an art medium.”

(Above, Andrukaitis found these wine glasses at a garage sale. Below, old cedar fence boards become a canvas.) 

These days her frugality can be seen in the repurposed objects she uses in her art to make pieces as diverse as painted vases, wine bottles, purses and wooden items that she often finds at garage sales, thrift stores and sometimes even using hand-me-down items from her friends.

“Pretty much anything that isn't moving can be painted,” she says.  “An unusual inspiration came when my neighbor was tearing down an old cedar fence. I hauled several large sections home and painted running horses on them for an outdoor display.”

Recently, she says she found several pieces of discarded furniture and turned the pieces into lovely treasures. For example, an old student desk became a pretty white vanity embellished with pink roses.

Living in McKinney, Andrukaitis says the community there has been her inspiration.

(Left, a desk purchased for $20 at a garage sale refurbished by Andrukaitis.)  

“The art community is so supportive and everyone shares ideas, supplies and their creativity,” she explains. “My ideas come from everywhere. The individual items talk to me and say, ‘I don't want to be an old newspaper, I want to be falling leaves on a tree painted on a canvas.’" 

Her most popular items at the moment are her rose vases. 

“From the smallest bud vase to a huge glass cylinder, placing a real rose or a dozen roses inside one makes the most exquisite gift,” she explains. 

These types of vases she sells anywhere from $5 to $50.  

As an artist who recycles, Andrukaitis says too, that her greatest challenge has always been hoarding. She says she can’t throw anything away because each item has so much potential. 

“I even save dryer lint to use in hand-made paper,” she adds. 

(Above, Andrukaitis paints a vase with her most popular motif.)

While Andrukaitis says many of her repurposed items go to her friends and family, she usually paints about 50 pieces a year in all and also keeps an inventory of recycled items on hand just in case.  When she runs low, she goes “thrifting with the TOTS, which is McKinney's Table of Talent Sisters, our little art group created about five or six years ago.”

Andrukaitis stays eco-friendly in many ways and she says her other main endeavor in that area involves food. For example, at Halloween she chops up leftover Halloween chocolate candy and puts inside her famous brownies. Then the leftover brownies become chocolate dipped truffles balls that are then frozen and shared with friends and the local firemen at McKinney’s Station #5.

“The thing that makes my art special is the love that I put into finding a castaway destined for the landfill and finding a special new home for it,” concludes Andrukaitis.

Andrukaitis' work is available at Sweet Spot Bakery, Art on the Veranda and Snug on the Square in downtown McKinney. Contact the artist at ToniAndrukaitis@sbcglobal.net.


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Rita Cook is an award winning journalist who writes or has written for the Dallas Morning News, Focus Daily News, Waxahachie Daily Light, Dreamscapes Travel Magazine, Porthole, Core Media, Fort Worth Star Telegram and many other publications in Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago.  With five books published, her latest release is “A Brief History of Fort Worth” published by History Press.  You can contact her at rcook13@earthlink.net