REALMS student Rio Beauchamp, 11, assembles a collection of cassettes with string and tape to make something to wear. He estimates that he’ll use 90 tapes in the process.

The box of old cassette tapes had been gathering dust at the back of art teacher Karen Holm’s closet for years.

Mostly comprised of Neil Diamond recordings and ’80s pop vocalists, the tapes were destined for the garbage sooner or later. That is, until Holm realized the old tapes could provide a great learning opportunity for her students.

“It’s important for students to see that it’s not trash,” Holm said. “They can do something with it, and make something creative.”

On a recent Friday, students in the Rimrock Expeditionary Alternative Learning Middle School’s Rubbish Renewed elective spent the session working on fashion items to be displayed at the fourth annual Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show this month. The show, which encourages designers to transform trash into fashion and is a fundraiser for the school, is a community-wide event for local artists. The event is also open to a select number of students, and about 10 designs from students in REALMS’ Rubbish Renewed elective will walk down the runway Jan. 16.

“Kids can’t take just old things and reuse them — they have to be things that are destined for the landfill,” said Genna Dynice, a classroom volunteer involved with the event. “It’s a cool approach to stuff that would usually just end up in the trash.”

Students worked on their garments for several weeks in the elective taught by Holm, who is also one of the founders of the eco fashion show. Since September, about 20 REALMS students met every Friday to work on their designs.

Rio Beauchamp’s garment rocked, thanks to the plethora of Holm’s cassette tapes that he tied together with yarn. The cassette tapes were being woven together to make a plastic suit of armor.

“I learned that gravity is a lot stronger than I thought it was,” Rio, 11, said. “I tried it out, and it pulled the tapes down because it was so heavy, so I had to tie them tighter together.”

Rio said he removed all of the cassette’s plastic tapes from the spool to make the piece lighter, but even then it still weighed a lot. When finished, Rio expected the piece would contain upward of 90 cassette tapes.

“I think it will look pretty cool,” Rio said.

In the corner nearest Rio, Kiani Rose, a seventh-grader, was putting some finishing touches on her dress design, which was constructed of used aluminum trays salvaged from the cafeteria. The dress, modeled by Autumn Weeks, 12, included a scalloped edge hem line and a silver aluminum necklace to match.

“I like shiny things, and I thought it would be creative to use the trays,” Kiani, 13, said. “They’re very moldable.”

Kiani had her share of hiccups when it came to designing the dress, namely that her previous model bailed on her, moving to Portland with her family at the beginning of the term.

“I was really bummed out for a couple of days when that happened,” Kiani said. “I thought it wouldn’t work without a model. Designing is really hard.”

Luckily, Kiani found Autumn, who agreed to be the dress model, in the class.

Kiani said she’s excited, but slightly nervous, about her look walking down the runway in mid-January.

Across the room, Kate Singer, 12, was part of a four-person team making a jacket out of felt speaker covers. Kate layered and glued together the small dots to create a design that had been labeled the “community design” by Holm, meaning anybody in the class could contribute to it.

“It’s fun to do this and play with color variations,” Kate said.

Holm said while it may just look like fashion, students were learning a lot more than design in her class.

“Students are getting confidence by seeing it go from just an idea to an actual piece,” Holm said. “We’re all part of the failure club. That’s just what happens when you try new things. But they’re learning that they just have to keep moving ahead and trying again.”

— Reporter; 541-383-0354,mkehoe@bendbulletin.com