Artist Cynthia McGrath reuses car paint and resin waste from surfboards.

Cynthia McGrath is always looking for new and unique materials to make her Original Cyn jewelry collection. In the past, she has handled everything from sea glass to old watch linings to Lego bricks. McGrath's latest findings are not so easy to recognize. She started to use two very unusual materials, both of which were similarly recycled. Fordite and Surfite are by-products of car paint and surfboard glass, respectively.

Fordite (also known as Detroit agate or car agate) is a colored marble-like residue of old car paint from a car factory. As McGrath said in her Etsy store article, “In the mid-1900s, cars were painted with sprayers in paint booths. Over time, overspray accumulated on the walls and drains of these facilities. Over time. Later, this overspray needs to be cut and removed. A Fordite stone can have thousands of layers of paint."

Last year McGrath read an article about Fordite in an art magazine and was immediately attracted. She contacted many car dealers until she found a dealer that could provide this material-a Corvette dealer in Kentucky. For the past year or so, she has been ordering various large pieces and tailoring them into pendants, earrings and rings. Each piece is unique, with a swirl of colors that looks like an abstract painting.

Similarly, Surfite is a re-used material made from resin waste left over from surfboard glass processing. McGrath explained the origin of Surfite: "After the surfboard is shaped, it will be'vitrified', which means it will be poured with a thick, uniform resin coating to seal it. Excess resin overflows from the board. And it accumulates on the ground. It piles up layer by layer into a huge flat plate covering the glass floor." McGrath bought her surfboard from a surfboard company in San Diego.

The process from raw materials to finished jewelry is a difficult task, and McGrath needs a lot of experimentation to perfect her technique. It involves many steps, starting with decomposing the layer, then cutting, shaping, sanding and polishing, sometimes multiple times. McGrath uses a variety of different jewelry saws, Dremel (a small jewelry and craft diamond), and several different sharpening files. She sometimes finishes the look by using turtle wax appropriately. Some works are polished and given luster, while others are in a rougher and more natural state.

"I really like working with Fordite," she said. "When you polish, all these different colors will appear." McGrath said that her favorite Fordite was from the 1950s to the 1970s, when cars (especially Corvettes) were painted in bright colors. She added: “Due to the different ways of painting the cars, these works will not exist forever.”

Some of McGrath's clients are car enthusiasts and surfers, but she pointed out that anyone interested in unique jewelry will appreciate these topics, and she likes to talk about unusual materials.

Other items the artist has recently started to recycle include discarded license plates, which she divided into key rings, pendants, bookends, and pencil holders; salvaged car headlights; and old records. She also offers a variety of sea glass, quahog shells, shark teeth and fossil jewelry.

"It's fun to get a piece and figure out what it will be," McGrath said. "That's what interests me-always looking for new materials."

Original Cyn jewelry and gifts can be found online at the Vineyard Artisans Holiday Fair in Grange Hall and the jeweler Etsy store on December 18th, OriginalCynMV, bit.ly/OrigCyn.

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