SALT LAKE CITY — An avocado peel, dried onion roots, or even a shoe insert might not look like much to most people.
But to Eleanor Ramirez, each one has the potential to become something new.
“I like to pick up papers and recycle avocado peels, combine that with turmeric, with grass, any kind of thing,” Ramirez explained inside her business, formerly based in Salt Lake City and now located in Park City.
That creativity is at the heart of Ramirez’s work as CEO of Incredible Dwellings and Beyond, an interior design and home staging business.
During Filipino American History Month, Ramirez says her work also honors her Filipino roots.
“You create something out of the ordinary and then you honor where you came from,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez is from the Philippines, where she was a longtime biology professor in Tuguegarao City.
She and her husband came to the United States in 2000.
Their immigration process was delayed for nearly six years following the September 11 attacks, preventing her return to teaching.
While waiting for her green card, Ramirez cleaned homes and tutored children. But while cleaning, clients began noticing she was doing more than tidying their homes.
She was rearranging furniture and transforming their spaces.
Eventually, those pieces started coming together into a new career.
Today, Ramirez runs Incredible Dwellings and Beyond, where she uses recycled materials and objects others might overlook in her designs.
“These are dried onion roots, these are recycled papers, moss, and mushroom,” Ramirez said while showing some of her work. “I’m not ashamed to pick up things from the street and rebuild it in a different way."
And, she’s also using her design skills to give back. Additionally, Ramirez runs a nonprofit that helps single mothers and people with disabilities redesign their homes, while providing furniture and household essentials to people in need.
For Ramirez, those objects are more than materials. They’re a way to create something new while still holding on to where she came from.
“That’s a shoe insert and it becomes artwork, that’s an onion peel and now it becomes art too,” Ramirez said. “Skirts from my mother, beads from other things, that to me is very Filipino."