Discovery Green Flea a great new way to find new/old objects

By Farrah Madanay     9/21/11 7:00pm

Old is new again! Despite the sporadic rain showers, the vendors participating in Discovery Green's first flea market deemed their debut a success. Last Saturday marked the first of a monthly flea market series held on the third Saturday of every month from noon to 6 p.m. this fall. From creative junkyard sculptures to 1950s button rings, most of the vendors repurposed old, garage sale items into new, trendy treasures. Though vendors, such as Nan Stombaugh of NanEdwardsCollection Jewelry, expressed concern about whether the flea market would fit the demands for their commodities, the profits from last Saturday verified our generation's appreciation for the new by maintaining remnants of ?the old.

Nestled between the Grove Restaurant and the George R. Brown Convention Center, the Discovery Green Flea proved unconventional in both size and quality. Unlike the usual conception of flea markets, where illegal wares swiftly trade hands and customers haggle with parsimonious characters, Discovery Green Flea featured eco-friendly collectibles and amiable artists. Business savvy mobile eateries, such as It's a Wrap! and What's up Cupcake? also parked beside the flea market to offer quick fixes for hungry shoppers.

Despite the limited number of vendors, the miscellany of items tendered at the Flea accommodated the eclectic tastes of the Houston community. Competition between tents yielded to communal appreciation of each handmade item. To Chris King, a Corporate America consultant, her soap business (called Pampered Sisters) is a rewarding hobby.

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"My grandmother always said people don't need to smell you to know you took a bath," King said. In spite of her grandmother's insistence on plain soap, though, King blends her own scents to make soaps smelling of lavender, honey and even passion fruit.  "Everyone likes to smell good," King said.

7 Closets Vintage, like many of the merchants at Flea, chiefly sells apparel online, but the owners enjoyed the face-to-face interaction provided by the Discovery Green venue. A fledgling company, only six months in the business, 7 Closets Vintage markets '40s-'80s era designer apparel at reasonable prices. The fedora-hat-donning owners displayed racks of refurbished, vintage pieces, complete with a Neiman Marcus silk suit for $25 and a Christian Dior blazer for $35.

Nan Stombaugh, owner of NanEdwardsCollection Jewelry, also appreciated the upfront customer interaction. Describing her jewelry as "cool, old stuff," she wore a handmade pendant necklace of contemporary glass beads with a re-appropriated WWI medal. Stombaugh's exotic jewelry collection relies on found objects from estate sales across the country.

The Flower Man and Coronado Art, arguably the two most innovative vendors at the Flea, differed from their fellow merchants with their museum-worthy contemporary art pieces. Fermin Coronado, a fiber artist and owner of Coronado Art, explained his craft as, "felting old, non-utilized containers to give them a new face." Coronado invented this felting technique, which combines wet wool and yarn to agitate the surface and bind the fibers when dry, to create colorful sleeves for vases and bowls.  Though still in an experimental stage, Coronado admits his ultimate goal is to create larger-than-life, felt-sleeve sculptures for museums and galleries.

Cleveland Turner, known as The Flower Man, has already found success exhibiting his commissioned work in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Previously homeless for 17 years, Turner claims his sculptures were inspired by a vision he had one night of a "whirlwind going around, picking up junk, looking pretty." Turner now works out of his house, crafting funky sculptures of wood and an assemblage of junk objects, from Barbie limbs to Scooby-Doo heads, which he finds on his bike rides ?around Houston.

By establishing a stage for the sale of eco-friendly merchandise at economical prices, Discovery Green Flea has effectively filled a new niche in retail. The enthusiasm garnered from last Saturday's Flea experience will certainly pique the interests of future shoppers and merchants alike.

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