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It Pays to Be Creative: Detroit Teen Interns Turn Trash into Art 

by Amy "frankie" Felegy

People stand around a table with art.
Photo Credit: Vickie Elmer | Mint Artists Guild
Students apply for the creative summer jobs, which is often their first official job application.

Young adults follow a “waste not, want not” principle at Mint Artist Guild's annual six-week long internship in Detroit.

Vickie Elmer will pick up litter on the side of the road. It’s not solely for humanitarian reasons, but for something a bit more creative. 

She turns that trash into summer jobs—summer art jobs. 

Elmer is the co-founder and executive director of Mint Artist Guild based in Detroit, Michigan. She leads the guild’s Summer Creative Jobs program for teens and young adults. 

“Our budget is small, but our aspirations are not,” Elmer says.  

Many people around a table making art outside.
Photo Credit: Vickie Elmer | Mint Artists Guild
“There are definitely artists who don’t have a lot of excess extra money lying around to run and pick up new art supplies all the time. And then trash is also such an available medium. I mean, we create so much trash as Americans every day, every week, that if you can be an artist and come up with ways to use it in your practice . . . you’re going to be ahead of a lot of other folks and have not as high of cost,” says Elmer.

Using donated secondhand material and hand-picked (literally) trash for several summers now, her employees will work for six weeks. The high school and college students are paid to create art, attend artist talks, or run crafting workshops; there’s a growing number of participants (up to 30 this year). Throughout the program, youth are compensated for their art and work—sometimes their pieces end up in galleries and exhibits, or are sold for fundraising. 

“I also realized that I am very interested in thinking about how to make art as sustainable and waste-free as possible.”

RYN BENNING, 2024 INTERN

Ryn Benning was a 2024 intern, leading painting projects and artmaking all summer. A highlight was Trash to Treasure Day, a collaborative, speed-arting competition. The prize? Bragging rights. 

“We used a broken porcelain doll head, an arrow, an old painting and other knick-knacks to create an interactive piece,” Benning says, noting they added haiku and copious amounts of hot glue. 

“[I] got to test my craftsmanship in a set amount of time and learn more about my teammates,” Benning says. “Participating in the event helped me build my collaboration skills. I also realized that I am very interested in thinking about how to make art as sustainable and waste-free as possible.” 

Several people creating art around a table outside.
Photo Credit: Vickie Elmer | Mint Artists Guild
“There’s so many nuanced lessons that they learn about being inventive and adaptive,” Elmer says of the young adults in this program.
Photo Credit: Vickie Elmer | Mint Artists Guild
Teens and young adults spend six to seven weeks creating art and managing programs.
Three people create art outside around a table.
Photo Credit: Vickie Elmer | Mint Artists Guild
“You can find something on the side of the road, and with your creativity and inventiveness, you can turn it into an art piece,” says Vickie Elmer, founder of Mint Artists Guild.
Two people with dark skin smiling and holding trash bags.
Photo Credit: Vickie Elmer | Mint Artists Guild
Students are encouraged to bring their own trash from home. Local artists also donate used materials they have no use for.
A dark skinned hand pointing to a frame with items glued to it next to a poem.
Photo Credit: Ryn Benning
Ryn Benning shows off their winning piece at Trash to Treasure Day in 2024.

Some of the art ends up in nearby exhibits, Elmer says, but it’s not about the end product.

“There’s so many nuanced lessons that they learn about being inventive and adaptive,” Elmer says. “[Repurposed art] frees [artists] from the constraints of having to have enough money to buy a big canvas or the best paint or whatever.”

She sees that scrappiness across Detroit and has for years.

“Recycled and repurposed art . . . existed in Detroit for a long time, alongside fairly high rates of poverty in the city, and people who maybe don’t have an expectation that they’re ever going to spend time in a museum or an art gallery. So it’s sort of egalitarian,” Elmer says.

“It’s available for everyone.”