NORTHAMPTON — What’s the difference between nostalgia and recycling the past? It’s probably a question best answered by college sweethearts Justin Landry and Haley Kean.

For a limited time, looking into the windows of the Available Potential Enterprises (A.P.E.) gallery at 126 Main St., passersby can see the couple playing in piles of recycled fabrics.

On Thursday, Landry and Kean were hard at work making new clothes out of old textiles they collected from various places — old clothes that would have otherwise been tossed aside. After taking the textiles apart, Laundry fed the fabric through his vintage 1924 Singer sewing machine, while Kean prepared dyes, pigments and inks that will be used to print images onto the old, organic fabrics.

Then on Friday, from 6-8 p.m., the couple will put 10 of their finished creations on display as part of A.P.E.’s Arc program, where they will barter or trade a piece of custom clothing with those interested.

The couple are one of a handful of artists to gain access to use the gallery as part of A.P.E.’s summer program, which is in its ninth year. The program welcomes on average five artists who apply to use the space for a week.

Arc’s founding, said Kathy Couch who is both co-director of A.P.E. and an artist, “was inspired by the question of, ‘what role does a gallery play, and what other roles can a gallery play other than simply hosting exhibitions.”

This, she said, “was designed to bring people into the gallery — to engage with things in a different way, beyond simply viewing artwork.”

Next week River Aragon will give a presentation on ritual entitled, “Devotions: a reflective practice.”

The following week, and the final Arc gallery in 2025, will be a two-week display by Meg Foley which will be an interactive gallery on touch entitled “Primordial + Touch Library.”

For Landry and Kean, nostalgia isn’t just looking back — it’s about sustainability, human connection and individuality. Or as their gallery has been called, nostalgia is an act of “Creating Care.”

“There’s a lot about the past not worth carrying on,” said Landry, surrounded by trappings from the past that were collected from area thrift shops. He took the “least favorite” articles of clothing that hadn’t sold in more than two months.

Landry developed a sewing hobby in college as a 2018 Keene State College graduate who majored in environmental studies. Kean attended at the same time, graduating in 2019. Since he started sewing a decade ago, Landry has been obsessed with vintage denim. To make this happen, among the strongest machines out there are vintage cast iron sewing machines — once domestic tools, he noted.

Lamenting the loss of manufacturing and the rise of fast fashion, Landry said, “I am specifically into American and French work wear, and I think the thing that I found really fascinating was that so many — like a lot — were standardized, but you have all these manufacturing companies across the country who would make, say jeans, in slightly different ways.”

But why vintage denim? “Because it looks cool,” he said, “And they also, like fade in a really cool way — like they’re meant to last. And so a lot of the things you see really show their character, and you can kind of tell a little bit about the person who wore them through.”

Landry, who works full time as an assistant property manager with a local nonprofit, has been making clothes for some time as a hobby, but this is his first public gallery. Typically, he said, he enjoys the old-fashioned method of bartering or trading a piece of custom clothing.

After pieces were sewn together on Thursday for Friday’s gallery, they went to Kean, who inks the fabrics with design accents.

“Analog processes,” or processes not requiring digital tools, “are not dead,” said Kean, who couldn’t even find the words to voice her distaste for AI, or artificial intelligence.

After Keene State College, she attended Ohio University for three years and received her master’s in fine arts, with Landry living with her over that period. Now, she works at Zea Mays, a printing shop in Florence.

Kean said her imagery goes onto clothing, “like the printing press,” and makes custom stamps that are cast onto the clothing.

Her stamps, she explained, “are rubber, but you can use wood — that’s kind of traditional — or linoleum. Then you use a carving tool to carve away parts of the block, and a brayer to roll the ink onto the fabric.”

There are other means, such as by using lighting to dye and fade certain fabrics.

The designs, she explained, are, “Inspired by the local culture and local atmosphere.”

Some are based on nature, and other were modeled after the arrangement of bricks on Main Street’s sidewalk.

Landry said that, “Using images that are also coming from the local community I think adds a depth.”

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.