Connie Powers, 85, has a pioneer’s spirit, the energy of someone 50-years younger, the curiosity of a cat and the artist’s eye for the unusual.

The Chicago native moved Little Torch Key in 1970 from the Ft. Lauderdale area and was the cook at Seacamp on Big Pine for 20 years.

“I bought this lot for $25 down,” she laughed. “Total cost was $1,900 and then it cost me $9,000 to have the two-story house framed.”

And that was all she received for her investment. With the pioneer’s spirit that was required of settlers to the old Keys, Powers went about putting the interior walls, ceiling, bathrooms, kitchen, and floors in herself.

Powers’ house is the quintessencetial unique Keys house. It would not be a stretch of the imagination to call her home a museum. As an artist using recycled materials years before it became fashionable, Powers home serves as her largest work of art.

Two of the living room’s walls are mosaics of glass with light box cutout sections for her other recycled art objects, such as a lava lamp. Sections of the floor on both stories of the home are made from tongue-and-grove wood she rescued from a neighbor. Other sections of the floor are mosaics made of stone tiles she found on her Saturday morning rounds of garage sales or acquired from friends.

The walls of all the rooms hold examples of Powers work that are often mixed with small items her son Austin, an artist in his own right, has made for her or had in his studio and she knew she had a use for.

One mural along a section of wall is made to look like a vine using flower buds that are from Austin’s work and Powers paint the design.

“I make art out of nothing,” she smiled, showing off works that will appear someday at the Big Pine Artists in Paradise Gallery, where she gets the window display once a year.

At the recent Habitat for Humanity’s art auction, she received the Green Goddess award for having sold the most art.

“I was honored,” she said, holding the prize she keeps in her upstairs living room. “But I can sell for less because my materials are not very inexpensive.”

Her glass art sell from $5 - $30, on average.

“I see a piece at a yard sale and I know what it will be before I buy it,” she said.

She receives glass shards from a friend at St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Big Pine and keeps the pieces separated by color. Waste not, want not has long been her philosophy on life and art.

“They would thrown the broken glass away, but I get the pieces and give them a new life when I put them together with something else that would’ve been thrown away,” she said.

Outside her house, she has built a sculpture garden using the old toys of her children and grandchildren and other items she has salvaged. Included in the garden are old bowls she has filled the interior of with mosaics made of small pieces of glass and tile shards.

Large plant life over flows in the yard and helps keep the house cool.

“I’ve never had air-conditioning,” she said. “It was too hot in the kitchen at Seacamp and if I came home to A/C, I never would have gone back to work. I am comfortable here, with the doors and windows open, creating my art and recycling.”