Salvage Material: Kyla Coburn Designs in Central Falls, RI

By Anya Ventura

When, in 2008, artist Kyla Coburn first purchased a 19th-century mill in Central Falls, Rhode Island, she and her partner Andy Trench carted away dumpsters full of garbage. The accumulated layer of trash on the ground was so thick that it formed a kind of artificial sediment. The mill was without basic heat or plumbing, long abandoned to the urban wilderness, but the couple saw the raw potential. Today the mill has a garden, a hot tub, and a scenic view overlooking the Blackstone River that cuts through the city; it is a Central Falls success story writ small.

While many of the historic buildings in Central Falls, relics from the city’s industrial heyday, are boarded up, the mill represents the much desired prospect of second chances. “It’s kind of like the Brooklyn of Rhode Island,” Coburn says of the town northwest of Providence. With Central Falls’s declaration of bankruptcy three years ago—the first city in the country to do this—a steadfast group of residents such as Coburn are determined to remake the city.

Coburn is no stranger to artist-led revitalization. She grew up in the SoHo of the 1970s, a hotbed for some of the 20th century’s most renowned artists. After attending the Rhode Island School of Design, where both her father and grandfather also went, Coburn was part of Providence’s counter-cultural scene of the 1990s. In using the creative industries as an engine for economic growth, she now hopes to help create something similar in Central Falls.

Coburn and Trench clearly have an eye for spotting the value in the old, the used, and the abandoned. The mill is now home to several artist-occupied studios and businesses, most notably their own Kyla Coburn Designs that utilizes salvaged materials to create original and unique interior design in restaurants, nightclubs, and stores such as Providence’s beloved Loie Fuller’s and The Avery. In their studio, all sorts of rescued treasures abound: a piece of an old ride from an amusement park, or wooden floors leftover from a bowling alley. All these salvaged materials might someday find new life in the artists’ work, the possibilities abound.

Anya Ventura is a writer for Art New England and supporter of Central Falls’ revitalization, led by Leadership Rhode Island.