SALVAGE

Please enjoy my conversation with Robin Frohardt. ​​ Known for her rich aesthetic and highly detailed constructions, Robin Frohardt is an award-winning theater and film director. Her narrative-based film, puppetry, and sculpture, use recognizable materials, often trash, to create richly detailed worlds that make magic of the mundane and highlight the trivialities of daily life. Her theatrical work...

*Please note two corrections to episode 30:  Kate Dodd referenced the artwork “Tilted Arc” but incorrectly attributed it to Robert Smithson rather than its creator, Richard Serra. She also referenced an exhibit put on by Stand 4 Gallery, which is in Bay Ridge NY, rather than Bayonne, NJ. Please enjoy my conversation with Kate Dodd.  Kate is obsessed with excess, with the unwanted, the discarded, a...

Please enjoy my conversation with Ian Trask. Ian is a sculptor and multimedia artist who transforms waste materials into objects and installations with new purpose and integrity. His immersive works often play with sophisticated patterns, lending unlikely materials exquisite beauty. At other times, he works on an intimate scale with puckish humor. https://www.iantrask.com/   https://www.bonnaroo.c...

Please enjoy my conversation with Lisa Barthelson. Originally a painter, Lisa currently explores and works in many media: printmaking, ceramics, photography, encaustic, site specific environmental installations/sculpture, mixed media, and found object assemblage.  She looks at everything as a potential art medium: a material to be used and transformed. From traditional art making materials: paint,...

Please enjoy my conversation with Elise Vazelakis. Elise, a Los Angeles-based textile artist, creates sculptural textiles and installations that explore themes of consumption mapping and capitalism. Central to Vazelakis' work is the juxtaposition between the resilience of certain materials and the fragility of others, a theme that permeates her artistic exploration. By integrating discarded i...

Please enjoy my conversation with Portia Munson. Portia creates maximal installations, sculptures, paintings, and digital prints, synthesizing environmental and cultural themes from a feminist perspective. Her work has been the subject of over twenty solo exhibitions. Portia calls herself a feminist and environmental artist. For over 30 years she has been creating installations, paintings, and scu...

Please enjoy my conversation with Rebecca McGee Tuck. Rebecca and I had an IG live conversation back in April 2024, which became the impetus for this podcast. I thought it would be appropriate to start season two, and the New Year, with a proper interview with Rebecca. Rebecca is a fiber artist, sculptor and a dedicated ocean activist.  Her artwork serves as a visual narrative, transforming discar...

Please enjoy my conversation with Nyah Estevez. Nyah is an environmental advocate and grassroots organizer. During her time at SUNY New Paltz, where she pursued a bachelor's degree in Political Science, she quickly became an outspoken activist. She worked on a variety of different environmental justice issues through The Farmworker Law Project at the Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York and NYPI...

Please enjoy my conversation with Leticia Bajuyo. Through her large-scale works, Leticia engages audiences and connects with communities through her site-specific installations that involve community collections of media and memories. Leticia’s drawings, sculptures, and installations highlight the impact of desire and the machines that create even more desire. https://www.leticiabajuyo.com/   Arti...

Please enjoy my conversation with Alejandro Durán. Alejandro is an artist who transforms international trash washing ashore on Mexico's Caribbean coast into aesthetic yet unsettling artworks, awakening viewers to the threat of plastic pollution. His long-term project, “Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape,” uses photography and installation to explore the complex intersections of human...

Please enjoy my conversation with Bryan Northup. Bryan’s work responds to human interactions with a uniquely modern material - plastic. Using collected single-use plastic and found objects from the waste stream as art medium, he attempts to blur the lines between appetizing consumables, biological dissection and everyday "waste", to explore layers of meaning in an age where toxic materia...

Please enjoy my conversation with Michelle Lougee. Michelle’s sculpture and other works focus on the delicate balance between nature versus human society and technology. The duality of this relationship is explored in both materials and subject matter. The combination of the two factions produce mysterious yet familiar forms. For example, both feathered helmets and chestnut pods encased in carpet...

Swapna is a plastic sculptor. She’s extremely passionate about contributing greener days for the coming generations. She upcycles plastics to create sculptural artworks. Swapna collects discarded plastics, and individually hand-cuts or carves them to create structures, inspired by the forms and patterns from nature itself. She cherishes this connection and believes in that artistic exchange betwee...

Please enjoy my conversation with Bonny Leibowitz. Here’s Bonny’s statement about her latest installation which I find very exciting. Her work embodies concepts of Post-naturalism — a perspective that questions the objectification of nature as pristine and separate from humans. The installations are simulacra of environmental stories, histories, and concepts of nature, all of which have been const...

Please enjoy my conversation with Judy Villett. Judy’s work combines many techniques, beginning with commercial prints, her own digital photographs printed on fabric, or hand dyed fabrics. She may stencil, paint, embellish, piece, or appliqué these and then finally machine quilt them. Judy says - “The world around us is colorful and filled with texture. I love taking those elements from nature and...

Please enjoy my conversation with Erik Jon Olson. Using quilted plastic waste as his medium, Erik creates works that deal with the effects of consumerism, mass consumption and unfettered capitalism. By layering environmental issues with social justice messaging, his art emphasizes our alienation from the environment and each other, our willingness to waste, and our subsequent need for healing. htt...

Please enjoy my conversation with Kalliopi Monoyios. Kalliopi is an artist and curator dedicated to communicating the wonder of the natural world to a wide and varied audience. Driven by the conviction that science communicators operating in all spheres are a critical part of creating a scientifically literate public, she is developing new avenues of public engagement with science via her own art...

Please enjoy my conversation with Bridget O’Flaherty. Bridget is a passionate textile artist and quilter with over 30 years of experience. Her journey in textiles has been a deeply personal one, influenced by her heritage and love for nature. As a sustainability enthusiast, Bridget believes in the power of shared knowledge and understanding. Together, we can navigate this wild world and create a p...

Please enjoy my conversation with Jessica Thomas McGhee. Jessica is an environmental artist who works in paint, jewelry and marine debris. During the spring, summer, and early fall, you can find her selling her jewelry and art at various markets throughout Central Illinois, working on murals, and having the occasional art show. Garbage is Jessica’s favorite medium and coral reefs and tide pools ar...

Please enjoy my conversation with Lynn Goldstein. Lynn and I have been friends and accountability buddies for a long time. We have monthly conversations on our art practice and art business goals and of course life in general. Lynn is deeply intrigued by history and the gradual passage of time evident in weathered frescoes, worn paint on building walls, and the intricate textures of the natural wo...

Please enjoy my conversation with Kim Thomas. Kim’s works are a visual discussion around climate change, nature, and our insatiable consumer culture. As an intersection between all three issues, found single-use plastics are often used as a key material in her artwork. In manipulating debris through a variety of media — primarily sculpture, installation, and printmaking — Kim presents the viewer w...

Please enjoy my conversation with Chrissanth Gross.  Chrissanth and I chatted about her early start in art as a daughter of artists, her figure drawings and her plein air practice. We dove into how she gives back to her community by picking up roadside trash. Then we talked about her activism of making a 47 foot tidal wave of plastic trash that she collects in her own home and travels with to Alba...

Please enjoy my conversation with Stephanie Hongo. Stephanie and I talked about her start in the art world, how she started making art from trash, her unique way of collecting the trash she prefers to use and so much more! Stephanie is an American artist living in Connecticut. She has been creating art for the majority of her life, but it wasn’t until she began making the trash pieces that she rea...

Please enjoy my conversation with Christine Aaron. We had a very interesting conversation which ranged from the benefits and problems of a studio outside or inside the home, to a conversation about Christine’s art practice and to a discussion about our possible collaboration. https://www.christineaaron.com/   Article about microplastics https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactiv...

Please enjoy my conversation with Carol Paik. Carol discovered her love of art-making relatively late, and is trying hard to catch up. She is interested in many different media, but most enjoys working with repurposed textiles. After years of buying expensive and often toxic materials for her work, her goal now is to create art exclusively out of the unappreciated, overlooked, landfill-destined st...