SALVAGE

I loved talking with Reece Brice, whose mushroom sculptures turn plastic waste into something magical. Each piece is a single bottle, transformed by heat and imagination into organic, glowing forms—like a forest of mycelium breaking down the past and growing a new future. His installations, lit from within with fishing line ‘roots’ and dancing light, feel alive, almost breathing. Reece sees plasti...

Theda Sandiford has had a treasure box since she was three years old.  These days it's a series of labeled plastic bins — but the impulse is exactly the same. In this conversation, the fiber artist and activist (whose work is now in the Guggenheim collection, no big deal) talks about salvaging marine debris on the beaches of St. Croix, deconstructing a six-inch tow rope down to individual fib...

🌊 Dive into Currents of Connection : A Tapestry of Art, Water, and Repurposed Magic! 🌊 In this episode of Salvage , we’re wrapping up our three-part series on Currents of Connection — a breathtaking 32-foot collaborative artwork by the Repurposer Collective. Each artist took a piece of the puzzle, weaving ocean current maps with photos of clouds and waves, all crafted from repurposed materials....

In this episode, I'm sharing a recording of a live panel event I hosted at MAPSpace gallery during Repurposer Collective's second annual exhibit.  I'm joined by two incredible artists, Anne Percoco and Cindy Pease Roe, for a conversation about their practices transforming found materials and waste into compelling works of art.  Anne shares projects ranging from a sculpture made of o...

Currents of Connection: How Art, Water, and Community Weave a 32-Foot Tapestry of Unity Dive into the inspiring story behind Currents of Connection —a breathtaking 32-foot collaborative tapestry created by the Repurposer Collective. In this episode of Salvage , artists share their personal journeys of transforming NASA ocean current maps and repurposed materials into a stunning, unified artwork. F...

Please enjoy my conversation with Caledonia Curry aka Swoon. This is a warm, wide-ranging conversation Callie talks about her journey from street art and wheat-paste portraits to massive collaborative installations built from salvaged materials – including the famous floating rafts seen at the Brooklyn Museum. She shares how reuse has been central to her practice from the start, driven by environm...

What do a penny in a nightlight, a suitcase of family mending, and 500+ women named "Unknown" have in common?  Anchorage artist Amy Meissner joins the Salvage podcast to talk about turning inherited textiles into powerful art, teaching repair as self-care, and why the thing spontaneously combusting in her house was her . This conversation will make you want to dig out your mending pile i...

What happens when 24 artists say yes to a shared prompt… and trust the current? 🌊 This episode of Salvage kicks off a special multi-part series about Currents of Connection — a 32-foot collaborative artwork stitched, collaged, painted, and assembled by members of the Repurposer Collective. We talk about:  • receiving a single block and trusting the whole  • working with limits, deadlines, and dou...

Please enjoy my conversation with Aaron Kramer.  By exploring the intersection between the found and fabricated in his sculptural work, Aaron seeks a deeper understanding of the transcendent nature of ordinary objects. His work is often of a woven nature. Street sweeper bristles or reclaimed hardwoods are woven over welded steel armatures creating a skin. Whether skinning an object or new ways, he...

Please enjoy my conversation with Christopher Ender Coryat.  Ender is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in New York. His practice confronts systems of control through deeply personal, material-based investigations. Drawing on his lived experience with epilepsy and disability, Ender creates sculptural installations, performances, and pigment-based paintings that center the body as a site...

Please enjoy my conversation with Sari Nordman.  Sari was born and raised in Finland, and is now a New York - based interdisciplinary artist. She creates public art projects, fiber-art installations, and mixed media and video works. Many of her projects have been informed by climate change and respond to environmental social justice issues. To amplify multilingual voices from around the world, she...

Please enjoy my conversation with Aurora Robson.  Aurora is a visual artist predominantly known for working with plastic waste. She was born in Toronto, grew up in Hawaii, and later lived in New York City, where she studied structural metal welding (she is a NYS Certified Structural Welder!) and worked in film, construction and entertainment.  She studied art history and visual art at Columbia Uni...

Please enjoy my conversation with Jackie Wolf-Schmidt. Jackie Schmidt is a found materials fashion designer and shoe creator from Los Angeles, California. She received her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology, focusing on creating sustainable pieces with materials such as aluminum cans, bottle caps, plastic bags, belts, and many mor...

Please enjoy my conversation with Christina Massey. Christina Massey is an award-winning artist recognized for her innovative use of repurposed materials, particularly aluminum cans, in creating vibrant botanical abstractions. Her multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, painting, and installation, exploring themes of environmental sustainability, consumer waste, and material transformation. Ch...

In this special episode of Salvage , the tables turn - my dear friend Vivien Zepf interviews me. Instead of me asking the questions, Vivien dives into my story: from my early days in fashion and costume design, to discovering repurposed plastics as my medium, and to how my art practice evolved into both a personal expression and an environmental call to action. We talk about curiosity, experimenta...

Please enjoy my conversation with Michelle Vania Beattie.  Michelle is an intuitive artist known for her striking sculptures made from beach-found plastic, inspired by a lifelong connection to the ocean. Growing up in Plettenberg Bay, she collected what she called “mermaids tears”—a childhood fascination that returned years later in Kommetjie, where she discovered these were actually nurdles, raw...

Please enjoy my conversation with Loren Eiferman.  Over many decades Loren has created a unique technique of working with naturally found wood. Her organic wood sculptures take the detritus from nature and turn it into art.  Loren wants the viewer to have a sense of wonder and awe when looking at her work.  We have all at one point or another picked up a stick from the ground—touched the wood, pee...

Please enjoy my conversation with Carli Vergamini.  Just a girl trying to change the world, that’s Carli. What started as a creative outlet eventually turned into a resourceful smorgasbord of repurposing vintage jackets & dilapidated kiddie pools.  It all began when Carli wanted to make stuff with leather but didn’t know where to find any (spoiler: it was thrift stores). Add getting grossed ou...

Please enjoy my conversation with Pauline Galiana.  Pauline engages simultaneously with a wide range of artistic practices, including collages, paintings, drawings, ephemeral installations, small-scale sculptures, performances, and videos. Her work incorporates both noble and mundane materials; regardless of the medium or method, the source materials are typically deconstructed, reconstructed, and...

Please enjoy my conversation with Benjamin Von Wong.  Get ready for a wild, inspiring ride with this artist & activist. From mining engineer to creator of viral installations like Plastic Tap and Plasticphobia , Benjamin shares how he fell (literally!) into a life of purpose, using art to make climate issues unforgettable. Giant faucets, 10,000 plastic bottles, mermaids, phoenixes, and communi...

Please enjoy my conversation with Niki Lederer. Discarded and found objects are Niki’s starting point. She makes sculptures from repurposed umbrellas and post-consumer plastic that she harvests from curbside recycling, garbage cans and the street. Niki finds the colors intoxicating, and can’t resist collecting them. The sheer volume of recyclables and broken umbrellas creates an endless and overwh...

Please enjoy my conversation with Meredith Andrews aka Plastic Mermade.  Contemporary portrait, travel and lifestyle photographer Meredith Andrews has shot for editorial, advertising and private clients all over the world. Based on the sub tropical island of Bermuda, where she finds much of her inspiration.  Her work can be seen in almost every medium including dozens of international exhibitions...

Please enjoy my conversation with Nat Kalbach. Nathalie is a self-taught mixed media artist, writer, and advocate for historic preservation, whose vibrant works explore urban subject matter through a fusion of paint mediums and collage materials. Her unconventional path into the art world began as a sanctuary from her former role as a paralegal, where she discovered the transformative power of art...

Please enjoy my conversation with kHyal. Complex, and unclassifiable, kHyal’s mixed media work riffs off of pop culture icons and performs like a Rorschach Test in a behavioral science lab, tugging at the neurons of each viewer, and born to challenge perceptions. Using ordinary objects snatched from dumpsters, recycle centers, flea markets, tag sales, thrift stores, the ocean and the street — asse...

Please enjoy my conversation with Amy Orr. Amy is a multimedia artist whose work often involves the reinvention of manufactured materials; plastic and plastic cards in particular. The understanding and perception of plastic and ephemera is changing quickly. Where Amy’s work was once a lighthearted narrative about consumerism and culture, it is now overshadowed by the environmental disaster that ou...