Conversation with Portia Munson

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 sculptures that reveal and question the meanings embedded in the mass-produced items of our culture. 

https://www.portiamunson.com/ 

BOCES https://www.boces.org/about-boces/ 

Cooper Union https://cooper.edu/

Fluxus Artists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer https://www.robinwallkimmerer.com/books

Valerie Hammond https://www.valeriehammond.com/home

Tanya Marcuse https://tanyamarcuse.com/

Mass MOCA https://massmoca.org/

21C Collection https://www.21cmuseumhotels.com

Oregon Contemporary https://www.oregoncontemporary.org/ 

This podcast was created by Natalya Khorover. It was produced and recorded by Natalya, as well as researched and edited by her. SALVAGE is a product of ECOLOOP.ART.

If you enjoy this show, please rate and review us wherever you’re listening—and be sure to come back for another conversation with a repurposed media artist.

Music theme by RC Guida

Visit Natalya’s website at www.artbynatalya.com

Visit Natalya’s community at www.repurposercollective.com

Visit Natalya’s workshops at https://www.ecoloop.art/

Transcript

Welcome to Salvage, a podcast for conversations with artists about the repurposed materials they use in their art practice. 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 20 solo exhibitions. Portia calls herself a feminist and an environmental artist.

For over 30 years, she has been creating installations, paintings and sculptures that reveal and question the meanings embedded in mass produced items of our culture. Thank you so much, Portia, for joining me here. I, I'm in awe. I bow down to you and you are ours. I am just I mean, I've known about you for a while now.

And then I had the distinct pleasure of visiting the sex museum to see your beautiful pink installation. And you were the only reason I ever wanted to go to the sex museum. So I went and who I went with now. But I just remember wandering around that one room. I think it was upstairs. Yeah. Yeah. And, I was in there for a long time, and I don't, I think I very quickly walked through the rest of the museum.

Yeah. But that room was what I was there for, and it was just mind boggling. And your paintings, too. You know, I, I was familiar with your assemblage, sculpture, whatever. All of that. I didn't realize that you were also a painter, a beautiful painter. So, Thank you. Yeah, that was that was, a memorable day. I, I.

Oh, that's so nice. Thank you. So nice to hear. Yeah. It that. Yeah, it was fun to show there and be able to, show my paintings alongside with other works, you know, as well as some drawings, but sculptural pieces and a big installation. So that was, that was really fun to get to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. To take a look at your installation up close. I mean, you can get lost in there. Yeah. Yeah. That's very layered. Very layered, very. So I, I have a list of questions. Great, wonderful. So my first question is, did you start out as an artist when you were a kid? Yes. Yes. I was a I was new, I was an artist from I don't I'm not sure if it was kindergarten or first grade, but I remember, I had a fabulous art teacher.

Thank God. And I really struggled. I'm dyslexic, and I was really struggling in school, and it felt like art kind of saved me, and I. It was something I was good at. And, you know, you know, whatever that means. That was that was my perception of what I was doing or my peers, respected what I was doing.
lt, often very humiliated because of not being able to read and write what my friends could. But I could. I was able to excel in this, and I from a young age, it felt like, oh, this is a way that I'm going to be able to, express myself. And it was just like, I mean, I have just a clear memory of being a very little kid and sort of saying to myself, I'm an artist.

That's like what I do. Oh, that's amazing. Well, yeah, that is very, very cool. Yeah. Did you, so then did you go to, schools that had good art programs? Yeah, I did, I grew up on Long Island, and my mother was really wonderful and supportive. And so from also a young age, I did extra curricular art classes, you know, like Saturday after school art classes.

And then, I went to, something that was, it's called Boces, which is like sort of an extra curricular or, vocational kind of training. Right at York State. And it's, you know, it has like you can go for, like, Carmack to be a car mechanic or a beautician or like, you know, there's all these different things.

And I happen to live in an area where they had an arts part of Boces. And so for I think maybe 11th and 12th grade, I would go half day to an art to an art program. Oh, I go to like morning regular high school and then half day like art high school. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Which was kind of great.

And then I did, you know, like summer programs, I would do art and and then I remember also on my 18th birthday, it was like a dream come true. It was, the day that I got my acceptance into Cooper Union and I was like, yes, that's where I'm going to go. That's what I'm going to do.

That's amazing. And I bet it was. I mean, it's one of the most esteemed art schools in New York, if not the whole country. And I think it's only recently that I began to be a paid school. Like it was free for decades. Yeah, it was free. And they're working on getting it back to free again. Oh, good.

Good. I think like this. This year or next year, seniors are going to be free. They're kind of working on getting that back. Oh that's wonderful. A friend of mine went a classmate of mine from from high school went there. And I just remember being insanely jealous. I mean, I never even applied, but I was just insanely jealous that she got to go there.

Right, right, right. Yeah. I know it was a wonderful experience for me. And I was introduced to a lot of important artists who had a much more sort of conceptual and broader view of art in relation to a bigger world. Which was important, I think, for my work. And what kind of, art did you concentrate on in Cooper Union?

Well, I was always from the start a painter. So I was doing painting and I, but I, I had a good group of friends and the good, my right kind of impetus to realize that. But to take interesting to take classes from interesting professors. So I wasn't, you know, I wasn't just staying in my lane, like, I wasn't just being a painter.

I was if I if there was an interesting class that was taught by filmmaker or sculptor or whatever. So I took I took lots of different kinds of classes. And they didn't make you they didn't make you, specialize, you know. You didn't. Oh, really? Yeah. You didn't have to proclaim, like, I'm doing an essay. I did the same thing in graduate school, which was wonderful to, like, not have to decide so that I was able to work in lots of different ways and was graduate school through Cooper Union as well?

No, I took a few years off and I went to Rutgers. Okay. Yeah. Which was and part of why I chose that school was because of who was teaching there. And I liked that there were more women instructors, and it has a basis. And, it was started by Fluxus artists. And so it just felt very, open, you know, as opposed to at the time that I was applying, it's a place like.

Yeah, which has always been a very prestigious and important art school. At that time, it felt because I witnessed friends going through that program, it felt much more, kind of restrictive, you know, like you had to be a painter or sculptor. And I also felt that my more sort of feminist leanings might be a little bit more, critiqued.

And I didn't I didn't really want to go into a situation like that. But, so Rutgers was much more, it felt to me, more open, more free. Okay. That's actually quite impressive that you realized that there would be boundaries put upon you that you didn't want to have at such a young age. Yeah, I saw it. I could see because I witnessed friends going there.

And so I could see. I saw like a a woman artist. I think she was in the sculpture department who was, I thought, doing pretty interesting work. And she was kind of made fun of, you know, like a little bit, I mean, I don't know, I shouldn't be putting this out, but, you know, those are all your opinions and they're all valid.

And that that was your finding then it was my it was what I was seeing and it was, oh, no, I don't I don't want that. Yeah. I'm not going to I'm not going to go for that. Oh that's awesome. Painting and trying all sorts of different things and how early did you start even thinking or amassing the objects?

Like what was the catalyst for amassing the objects that you do in your installations and sculptures now? Yeah. So, while I was at Cooper Union, I, you know, being a young person and an artist, young artist, I was perpetually broke. And I was always interested in the color pink and from from a young age and sort of was.

And I was always kind of a collector of things, you know, I'd like collect, like many people are, you know, like collecting those things and, I when I went to Cooper, I started thinking, well, what is it about this color? Pink and white as why am I at that time, as a young woman, being associated with this color?

This was in the early 1980s. And, were you wearing a lot of pink or you just like pink? I liked pink, it wasn't wearing that much paint. It was. It was very it was a very, like, punk time in New York City. And I was very much like, you know, more black and or black. And maybe I remember that time in New York.

I wasn't punk, but I remember. Right, right. So, I started collecting things that I would find pink things that I would find on the street, like basically trash ephemera, stuff that I'd find. And I would use different things as, objects for paintings. They were like things for still lives for painting. These objects. And then and I kept doing that.

And then by the time I was in graduate school a few years later, I was really continuing this collection, collecting of this pink stuff. And halfway through my time there, I realized that the pink was taking up a very a big part of my studio space. And so, I had the idea when you're in graduate school there and in many places, you, you know, you have to put on a thesis exhibition, a show to show what you're what you're doing.

And I was doing, like I said, mostly paintings, but I was like, oh, this pink stuff. It's taking up a big part of my space. I'm going to make something of this. And that's when I made this piece that was then shown in the Batgirl show, at the new museum called pink. I called it Pink Project Table, and it was hundreds of pink plastic objects that I arranged on a large table.

And that was that was kind of how how that started. And so kind of from that time on, I, I worked in different ways, you know, I, I worked in what you would call more sculptural kinds of ways. And, and I experimented with making films and making sculptures and things and photographs. That's. Yeah. So I was looking on your website and I saw the film stills, but I was like, oh, but I want to see the film.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The functional women film. I know I still have to put the final touches on it. Oh, okay. It's pretty much done. I just have to like, I need to get someone who really knows how to do editing, to do, like, the final, like helping me with the final tweaks. Right. Exactly. Wow. Okay. So when I saw on, you also mentioned in your bio that pollution and destruction of the environment are inseparably linked to feminism.

I was wondering if you could expand on that and tell me what you mean by that. Yeah, well, I think what I mean is that, so the way I see it, the Earth is this is our home. This is our mother, our mother Earth. And, I feel like or I know there's a connection between the disrespect that we've been having towards the earth and, how we're treating the earth.

And I feel like that parallels to also a disrespect for, undervalued people, groups of people. And I don't know, I feel like that to me feels very much connected to my understanding of feminine feminism, like wanting there to be more of an equality. And for me, that would even that even includes an equality with nature. Like that nature should have sort of rights and equal rights, and we shouldn't be just free to just rape it.

Abuse it. Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely agree. I was, listening to a new book by, Robin Wall Kimmerer recently. Oh, and what was the book called? It's called The Service Berry. It's brand new. And it's, it was only like, two hours and a few minutes. Listen. So it's a small book.

I haven't gotten a physical book yet, but I definitely will. But what? Really? And I actually, I listened to it twice because it was like, wait, that was too fast. I gotta listen to it again. Oh, wow. But she refers to animals and trees and everything in nature, you know, rivers and everything as more than human.

Like, she doesn't she. There's human and there's more than humans. She's not referring to them as animals or plants or whatever. They're. She's referring to them as more than human. And I thought that was just such a lovely way to speak about nature, because there's so much more intuition in, I think, other living beings than us humans, because we have it.

We just don't listen to it. Yeah. It's. Yes. Yeah. And also, I think that we've chosen to or decided to not respect and acknowledge the intelligence of, you know, trees, animals, plants and whatever. And so yeah, that sounds, that sounds I mean, I wrote down that the service Berry. Yeah. Yeah I agree with that. I highly recommend it.

I love all her books. They're all listen to her books. That takes me back to my childhood when I was, you know, twiddling with grasses and, you know, plucking petals off daisies and, yes, being in nature. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your definition of feminism and it's entwined with the destruction of the environment. Really. It really makes sense that when I read that sentence, that really resonated with me.

That was, that was really beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, I, I feel that pretty strongly that there's a real connection, you know? Yeah. Well, it makes sense when you're when you're taught to disrespect nature, you inevitably will disrespect others as well. Yes. Perhaps women first because so many women are in service or in caretaking roles.

Yes. So I feel like it's so easy to disrespect someone who's in a caretaking role. Yes. I don't understand why, but I feel like that's that have to be the norm. Yes. Okay, back to your. Yeah. I saw that you have, an installation at the airport in Albany, and it's all flowers. How did that come about?

And and that whole series, I think you also have that, on a a subway platform in Brooklyn as well. Yeah. So that's a whole, sort of a whole branch of my work that's, that's different from from my other work. And that started in the early 2000 when someone close to me, an older person passed away and I was walking in my garden.

I had sort of a large flower garden at that time, and I was walking in my garden and thinking about how I could compose a letter or honor this person. But I'm not really a writer. And I started getting images of flower arrays or combinations were just coming into my mind, and I had recently gotten a 3 in 1 scanner, printer, copier, cheap thing, you know, it was it was the early 2000.

And, I just decided to I just started picking flowers and making these images that had come into my mind by laying them out on the scanner bed. And I started making them. And I also leading up to that time, I had been keeping a journal of all the roadkill I was seeing. I was sort of, like, like writing down, like, how many the day and how many squirrels, how many raccoons, how many different deer, how many animals I was seeing on the road that had been hit because, I, I still it's it's something that, you know, I live in a rural area and it's so common to see birds, squirrels, different

things dead on the road. And we just become very, desensitized to it. And you just drive right by, you just see it. So, yeah, it's common here. I live in suburbia, and it's quite common here. Yes. Very common. So, so I ended up combining those two things and making when I would see something on the side of the road that was very fresh and in good condition, I would get it in a plastic bag and bring it home and lay it on my scanner and make, put flowers around it, almost like making a memento mori.

Oh, yeah. Of the of the creatures. And so I was, trying to sort of honor the creature and also make a document of, you know, this bird died on September 5th and, you know, 2014, and when it died, these were the flowers that were growing. You know, this is what was in bloom at that time. So you make, you know, almost like trying to honor and remember this, this creature.

And, I haven't really done it for the. I've been much I haven't been as focused on it in the past couple of years. I've been really busy with other work of mine, and it also at a certain point felt really heavy, like it's very sad. And I am and I'm a fairly empathetic person. So it would kind of hit me like I got like this real sadness, right?

And I would stop everything else I was doing. I find this, this bird or this creature bring it home. And that's all I would do for the rest of the day to honor this creature. Oh, wow. And, Yeah. And it was it. I think it was an important work. And I think I will do more of it.

I just I've just sort of taken a little break from it, but I'm going to do more of it. But, anyway, I ask, what did you, did you bury the creatures in your yard afterwards? Well, a lot of them. I think they've stopped doing this. But at one point there had been a, sort of a research kind of program at a local community college, where they kept all these, what they called bird skins, which are basically just sort of like stuffed birds.

And you would take donations, and it was kind of a place that was like different people from different institutions could come there and look at all these samples. There were like stacks of drawers of different kinds. Wow. Yes. And you know that people had donated basically from roadkill and stuff. And so I donated a lot of the ones that I had.

I kept them in the freezer and then donated them there. And then another thing I've done is I have two different artist friends who work in different ways with, dead creatures. Oh, one friends who does beautiful, Valerie Hammond, who does very beautiful drawings and, prints of, birds. And then another friend, Tanya Marcus, who does these gorgeous photographs, these constructed large photographs that she incorporates, sometimes incorporates, like, dead birds and stuff and so or other creatures, so I, I so those are the three places that I done it.

But otherwise, if I don't do that, then I. Yeah, then I'll bury them. Or sometimes like I had a fox that I did and that one, I just took it way out into the woods and laid it out and, you know, let nature take it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think sense, Wow. That's that's really. That's beautiful.

Yeah. So, so the Albany airport, the curator of that of the airport was familiar with my work, and they do kind of a wonderful thing there where they try to exhibit artists that are within, I forget, 60 miles or something of the airport, and they have a regular exhibition program and commissioned artists to do some things and, and have rotating exhibitions.

And so, that's how that work came about, showing there. And of course, being an airport or also in the subway, they don't want anything sad like birds. Yeah, that's only flowers, right. So, so so those, those for those things. It's just flowers. Yeah. Now they're beautiful and kaleidoscopic. Were you flattening or drying the flowers first or just scanning them fresh.

Yeah. I would just lay them right out on the scanner bed. Just fresh. Yeah. They're beautiful. And I would make the arrangements. I wasn't I was doing very little altering them with the computer. I was, I was you know, I wasn't duplicating them or anything. I was just kind of creating these, these, you know, these arrays. So would you.

So on the scanner bed, you'd use the flowers in one arrangement, take the scan and then rearrange them in a different way and take another scan. Sometimes I would do that, but I would pretty I mean, I'd pretty much have a focus on in one day. Like, these are the flowers. This is the kind of thing I'm going to do on this day, and that's what I would work on.

So there's something very kaleidoscopic about those arrangements. And in in Albany and the subway was that and it's an inspiration anyway, that's more you know, that that probably partly just comes out of my art training, you know, like, in art school, you know, taking color theory or design classes or what is what happens when you put this color next to that color or, you know, so it, I think that that just all that's what that came out of and it really just was,

Oh, so what I would do is, I would choose a flower that I'd want to be the center flower, of the, of the, mandala. And I would put that flower down and then, and then decide to kind of work off of that. But generally I would go and like walk around, see what was blooming, see what what I would think would come together to make something interesting.

And then and then, you know, and then do that. And I also when, like when I was describing the, the first once when someone had passed away and the images came to me, I was really thinking about sort of the I was kind of thinking about the equality of all life, kind of going back to what we were saying before.

And, you know, like that our lives, like each one of us, could be like a flower, but a flower, a flower's life is just faster than our life. I mean, our lives are incredibly fast, too. Our lives are much faster than a rock or than a river, or than the life of a mountain or or even a lot of trees.

And so I was kind of thinking like, well, flowers are incredibly beautiful. May, you know, they start as a bird and then they open up and then they also like, like die. And so I was kind of I was so those mandalas, I was kind of in some way equating with, you know, they could be equated with the human life or, or not.

But yeah, sure. Yeah. You can take that in many directions. Right, right, right. Yeah. Are you a gardener as well? Yeah. Oh, no, I'm kind of I'm a little I am a gardener. And I had a very I kind of went way overboard and had it way too big of a garden. And now I've had to pull back and I've, you know, sadly introduced, introduced, but didn't realize how invasive of certain things that I planted were.

And, you know, I've kind of had to like, you could I mean, I have a garden that could completely be a full time job. Oh, yeah. And I just decided, no, I need to really focus on my and my art and not so much on my garden, but. But my son, lives with that. My husband has a big.

He has a big, blueberry maze, like a double spiral maze that has. Wow, there's thousands of blueberry bushes and blueberry bushes. So that's one garden that we have and that's several acres that he works on. Oh my goodness. Like ongoing artwork. And then my son also lives on our property and he he has multiple gardens. And and so there's lots of gardening going on.

And then I always, I have tubs full of dahlias. So I always have like a lot of dahlias and the spring bulbs and, but part of my garden, I actually this is so non environment at all, but I almost wish it would just go back to like a lawn or field. Field. It's like, so it just feels like such a huge job.

I suppose you can just snow flower seeds and have it go into a meadow right? Exactly. Yeah. Get rid of all the invasives that are taking over. I have a secret wish of one day having a meadow in front of my house instead of a lawn. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be. That would be amazing.

But not the house we're in now, because, yeah, I could stay there long enough for that to happen here. It takes years to achieve a meadow. Yeah. And it's tricky because of the different kinds of invasives and what they do. Yeah, yeah. You know, the wild ones that just show up. Right. All right. Back to the other invasives.

The plastic invasives. Yeah. So you're plastic pink plastic collection has been growing for what sounds like decades now. Yes. But I know you also have other color plastic collections. So how did those start? From the pink one? Yeah, well, the one that's the next one after pink was green. And that started because, I did a residency, on the end of Cape Cod.

I did a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center, and then I did two summers at a residency and a dune shack. And, I was walking the beaches every day and collecting things, and I thought I would be collecting pink stuff, but I was this was like, around 2000 and. But I ended up finding so much green plastic, and I and I made a little collection of it, and I left it in a bag.

I remember I left it in a bag under the kitchen sink there and, I left and I was like, oh, why did I leave that? That's that's really interesting. This green. And I went back, we went back and I went back and got it. And it was just, you know, a small amount of green plastic. And I, I was thinking about how, because I learned from the pink plastic that the pink plastic was the, the color pink was being used to market plastic to women.

And because of the kinds of categories of things that came in pink plastic, they were beauty, beauty products, things for dogs, sex toys, cleaning products, like it was a very, very toys for little girls. Like it was a very specific clothes kind of group of things. And occasionally you might get like, you know, car polish. But there weren't there weren't male things.

Yeah. I remember when my daughters, well, my first daughter was born, there were gifts that would come in and they would be pink Princess gifts, and I would be. Yeah, tried. So I was, I can't say I was appalled, but I was displeased. I don't even know what word like. I was like, no, don't give these to my my kid.

Like, I don't want her to think she's a pink princess. Yeah, I want her to be other things. And I, I would try to squirrel away and like, disappear the Pink princess gifts. Yeah. But not there are so many of them. And they kept coming. Yeah. So that was really so it's really. It was. It's true. It's totally true.

And it's really interesting. And so, so I learned from observing all of this pink stuff when I started this little collection of green plastic, I was like, oh, these things are being you. This color is being used to market things that have a relationship to nature or gardens or lawns or you know, bugs spray, you know, paint green paint like things that would that would do well, like on a lawn, like in a, you know, at an early start at greenwashing.

Exactly. It was greenwashing. And I was, I was, seeing it. And so I, started just collecting green plastic and, my first piece with green, I called lawn, and it was just green plastic that I, I arranged, I kind of arranged it in shades of green, because when you look out on any law and there's going to be dark spots like darker areas, lighter areas kind of did that.

And I filled up a gallery space with the green plastic. So that's how I started that one. And then it went on and I did several other different works with the green plastic, and I still have some smaller green plastic things that could go into passable works like one. I'm kind of these two pieces, one in green, one in blue that I call Future Fossils.

And those are just, a collection of green and blue plastic that I will, that I lay out on a large table and organize, to sort of show the different kinds of, like, ways that it's being greenwash. And then from there it went to to blue, and the blue came about because I was invited to do an exhibition, where the curator wanted me to address, like, pink and blue, like blue being for boys and and pink being for girls.

And I did that. That was at Mass Moca, maybe around 2010, something like that. And then, but I realized collecting the blue. Yes, there's a lot of blue that's for boys, but blue is much broader than pink. And there's blue is often used to sell things that have a relationship to water, like, look, you know, like it's.

And it's sort of means like clean, pure. So there's a lot of blue plastic that are very water related, including water bottles. Like, you know, it's one of the colors that, so I've kind of I'm and I'm still really curious and investigating the color blue. And also there are a lot of women things that are blue, like women that are represented in blue like the Virgin Mary.

Yes. So often in blue. And then there's often like, there's princess like, Cinderella can often be blue, right? Different princesses. That can be. And then there's southern belles with the big skirts, and often those are in blue. And so I'm kind of like thinking about and working on. I'm kind of toying with this possibility of doing another, room not as big as the pink bedroom, but some kind of a room that it would be all blue and it would be very like female water, but also, thinking about pollution, like the floor.

Some aspect of it would be all this just gathered detritus that's in blue, right? And thinking about like, what kind of meaning is coming out of that blue to try this, well, I've done other pieces, like, I did a piece called flood where I covered a very large gallery with all blue again, like organized and shades of blue, and so kind of, kind of combining different ideas of things I've done.

Have you, delved into any other colors and their meanings like that? Not so much. A little. Well, actually, that's not true. I've been doing things with white. But it's more like it's more white figurines and white in relation to. So those are not necessarily plastic. Sometimes they're plastic, but it's more like, representations of women in white.

And so I just did a, a large piece that I exhibited at an Art Basel that meridians. And that's that piece is called bounded Angel, and that's a large table like 14ft long. It's a large like, oval table and that's all white. And the tablecloth is all found, used like thrifted wedding gowns at the tablecloth. And then it's completely covered with lamps and figurines that are all white.

And that that piece kind of came out of when I was, sourcing and finding materials to do the piece for the blue piece that I just mentioned. I did that out at, Oregon Contemporary in Portland, and, I was collecting blue plastic things from thrift shops, transfer stations, whatever, wherever I could find stuff and, you know, use trash.

And I was also seeing all these white figurines, and I started I was like, oh, that's really interesting. All these white angels and white figurines. And so I started thinking about the color white and the kinds of objects and figurines that are represented in this white color. And, what it the kind of like hidden messages, like there's, there's different messaging that goes on in consumer products to us.

And sometimes and sometimes it's very, it's kind of like hidden in plain sight, like it's very it's really there, but it's not super obvious. So I was that bound angel piece. I've been really trying to pull that out, you know, that this meaning that's coming out of these objects that women should be, saintly and virginal, but also sexy and and also also white, Caucasian, like all these different and young and really, you know, all these kind of beauty standards and expectations, that are embedded in these objects that are all white.

Yeah. It's really mind boggling. Yeah. So some of those pieces you've been binding with rope or is it twine or ribbon or. Yeah. So string. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been doing that just to sort of I'm trying to kind of reinforce this notion of, being controlled, you know, that we're that we're being fed something, we're being given something.

And, or, you know, that we're kind of constrained by our by the objects that we as a culture mass produce and what we consume and, and how how it's like all these objects are instructional and binding in terms of their. Yeah. What they. Yeah. What the result. Yeah. It's really it's yeah, it's a it's a fascinating subject to delve into.

But then in your garden installation, you went multicolor. Yeah. Right. That's in that piece I was really thinking about again, I was thinking about women and women's relationship to flowers. This was before I did the flower mandala work. But I was thinking about different products that women are things, clothes, things that women use to be more beautiful, that are associated with flowers.

And so that piece is, it's made up of all this found artificial flowers. And so it's kind of like the death of nature. So it's sort of like both funerary but also celebratory. But it's and I and I was also just thinking about how so much of our ideas around nature these days are seen and realized through a screen.

You know, they're kind of like, almost like manufactured ideas of nature, and just beauty. So, yeah. So that's, that's that's a little bit about what? Yeah. Wow. So all right, so I have to ask some technical questions then. So you mentioned that you pick up trash on your walks. Do you actually do cleanups or is it just kind of whatever happens to be when you're, when you're walking?

I do both. Yeah. Yeah, I do both. I've, I mean, I haven't really focused on doing cleanups. I'm more focused on project Something that an idea that I'm working on and then figuring out how to find stuff in relation to that idea. But, so when, you know, like, as a family, the extended family going to the beach for a week or two in the summer or something, I would always, you know, spend my days like gathering trash, right?

You know, and then seeing what I would find out of that. And it's, you know, it's pretty hard to not it's sort of what I do wherever I'm going, I can't help but notice it, notice it, and pick it up. And, you know, this morning I went for a walk and picked up, you know, it's just and it's kind of everywhere, even in the most pristine, pristine places.

Yeah. And I feel like just looking and gathering and finding things like I very rarely will order things through eBay or something because some of my work, I'm like, you know, like when I did the film that you were referring to, I was looking I was trying to find very specific things. So I would occasionally use something like that, but that's very uninteresting for me.

I'd much rather be like finding stuff on the beach, in the woods, bought at a yard sale, or in a thrift shop, because you never know what other kind of kinds of detritus and stuff you'll see, and what kinds of ideas will come. Right? So it's like the hunt. It's, Yeah. You really like it's like you're learning something about the culture, like, oh, this is what people have and this is what people are getting rid of.

So do you, like, go to specific flea markets throughout the year that you know of or you just, just kind of, on it sometimes I'll do that, but it's I'm, I almost prefer like I just installed the garden again in Lexington, Kentucky, and I went to over to oversee the installation of that piece and they own it.

So they asked me to come and I said, well, I'm going to come, but I need to have a car and I need to have a couple of extra days because I wanted to go and look at, different like thrift stores or, you know, places that were around there because there actually can be a little sort of subtle regional differences and things that you'll see places.

And so that's more interesting when I have to be out somewhere that I've never been before. Yeah. And, and I, I also really prefer going to the like the trash year. How do you say it. Like more like I'm a little more of a bottom feeder. Like, as opposed to going to like a an antique show or something.

Yeah. Like I sometimes go to those. That's interesting too. But I'm, I'm really looking at like, what is the what is this stuff that's I'm seeing right before it goes into the landfill. Yeah. Oh like I'm seeing it the last stop before that. So actually there is a flea market that I do go to a like maybe once or twice a month.

That's, about a 45 minutes from where I live. And it's out in a field and it's like anybody can show up and pay, you know, $25 to put to open their trunk up and people go and oh, wow. So and so that, that that's pretty great because you get a real range of. Yeah. It's not like fancy antiques.

It's very. No, it's very different. Yeah. Yeah I, I enjoy thrifting even though I don't buy anything unless I find something really that really speaks to me. But I'm not I don't do the, the type of installations that you do, but I still enjoy going to those flea markets and thrift stores and just taking it all in. It's yeah, it's fascinating.

It is. And it's also, I mean, sometimes I have to like, I'm sort of on a break from any of that right now because it can also be a little depressing, like, oh my god. Like, look at how massive this thrift store is with all of this. You know, relatively like the clothing thing is just an out of control.

It's just it's like it's a collection of so much unwanted stuff. Yeah. Like you said, just before it goes to the landfill. Yeah. And a lot of and so many of the clothes now are, are, you know, plastic. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. So it's really pretty intense. So let's say you're pink collection. Do you document all of your pink items.

Do you have like a library. So like if you know, you're making a small pink room installation, do you, like, go through your library on your computer or something and pull out specific? I have I've made a, I made a couple of documents that are sort of like, kind of like videos where I've scanned individual pink objects.

I did I did it with blue. The blue one I call the contents of a whale's belly, and I've scanned, like, I don't know, over a thousand different blue objects, like documenting them. And I've done the same thing with pink things, but I don't I don't really use them in the way you described. I just that's just like a document.

It's like it's like another artwork. But, I have my different. It's like all the stuff I collect and find go into specific works. Okay. So they don't go from one work into another. No, not not yet. I mean, occasion, but that's not usually how it goes. Okay. More like it's more like everything. Like what?

The show that the exhibition that we were in together. I had pieces in that, one is called today Will be awesome. That was the pink one. And the blue one is called Blue Vanity. And those are like finished contained pieces. Like, all of that stuff stays, you know, that goes when it's taken apart to travel. It goes into its own container.

Yeah, that's labeled with that, that, that title. Oh, right. Right. Exactly. And so right now in my studio, I have one pile that's all pink stuff that hasn't gone into anything. So those are sort of like those are kind of like the parts for what I might need or want to. So I and I have that with some blue like I have, I kind of always have.

You know, it's almost like having the raw materials. Yeah. Yeah. You know, for the, for the stuff for the are your raw materials organized like by color obviously, but size and type as well sometimes. But they're, it's more, it's a little more random. It's a little more random. And then depending on what I'm making or doing, I'll draw on those, you know, that pile to make that, yeah.

So when we were talking at, the Plastic Culture exhibition, I think I asked you whether you use any adhesives, and you said you don't in your installations, everything is just place. Just so. Yes, yes, yes. Although what I did, what I did do, for example, at the Plastic Culture exhibition because I was afraid of things being knocked over or possibly pocketed or something.

So the things that were felt more vulnerable. I did use, a little museum wax. But then I scraped off and that was just on some of the, like, things on the edges. Right? Right. Yeah. So when a piece like that travels, obviously it can't travel as it is. It has to be broken down. Yeah. You do you have like sketches or photographs like how do you put it back together when it reaches its next destination?

Yeah. I have I have photographs, so I work off of photographs to put it. When you first created in your studio. Yes, extensively photographed. Yeah. And cataloged, I guess. Yeah. Just photographs. And then the piece today will be awesome. That was in the plastic culture show. Like that was sort of photograph like, you know, the right side, the left side, the back.

And that's how they were packed and photographed. And there were lots of shelves. So it would be like this box has the top three shelves of the left side, you know, sort of like like a package like that. So then that means when you ship it somewhere else, someone else can put it together like it has to be there.

That's right. Wow. Little tricky. It gets trickier. I'm sort of a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak. So I like to go and be there when I can, but I don't have to be there. But it's much harder for like the pink bedroom that you saw, like a whole large room installation or the garden, those large room installations.

That's harder for some. That would be thousands and thousands of photographs. Yeah, it's harder or just a lot of photographs. And it's harder because in my experience, it's they're not it's not like every single time it's exhibited, it's a, you know, 18 by 18ft room with a nine foot high ceiling with a door here and a window there, like, every space is different.

So it makes it much more complicated because you have to make decisions like, oh, you know, the last time I installed the garden, just in November in Lexington, Kentucky, that was one of the things I was doing. I was like, okay, so actually, in case I'm not there in the future to do it, I'm like, the bed always has to be in the middle of the, of the right wall, like I started making certain, like they there was someone there working with me who was, like, taking lots of notes on how it needs, you know, how it needs to be set up.

So. And you said that's a they acquired that installation. Yeah. Permanent. Well, it's permanently in their collection. But you one C is an interesting collection because 21 C stands for 21st century. So they only collect art from the 21st century. It's a very sort of contemporary, collection. And they have their 21 C muse hotel museums. So they have, I don't know, approximately ten, museum hotels that are in the center part of the country.

There's one in Chicago, there's one in Bentonville, Arkansas. There's two in Kentucky, one in Lexington, one in Louisville. There's one in the city. I don't remember where they all are, but they're in the center part of the country. And, the lobbies are quite large and are used as galleries to exhibit to exhibit the art the 21 C owns.

Oh, so they're basically like free 24 hour access museums in these so way. People actually stay there. People stay there. Oh, wow. In regular hotel rooms. But then there's very large lobbies that that are like museums. Wow. So and so my piece, the garden is actually part of an exhibition that's called mourning, mending, meaning something like that.

And it's a piece. It's an exhibition that came out of the Covid pandemic, and it has many different artists, and they kind of have they kind of sometimes will shift and switch out different artists, but that has now this is its third iteration being installed in Lexington, and the exhibition will be up for approximately a year. That's third year.

So it's going to be in Lexington for a year. And then it I don't know where it where it will go next, maybe to Saint Louis or so when it goes to wherever it is next, will you go there to, to help install it in the right way, or is it. Well, I'd like to and I think that I think that we sort of have that loose understanding that if I'm available and if everything falls aligns, I'll come, I'll go and do it because I also, like I said, really like going to these, different places.

And, you know, and tweaking it more to the local. Right, exactly. And then also going to their local, like peddler shops or whatever, peddlers in, in Kentucky, they have these places called and maybe in Arkansas, peddlers malls and, and basically what they are, are, former Kmart or Walmarts or former like large box stores that have left. They've, you know, that the buildings have gotten too old or there's, you know, neighborhoods change or whatever.

And then they become these very large sort of antique malls. But in these peddler malls that I've experienced, they're you might have a couple sort of nicer antique little booths, but there are like hundreds of booths, and one of them might just have like plywood or some might have, you know, somebody's homemade jam. And it's like having a whole mall full of different booths of yard sales.

I love that they're they're really incredible. And I find those places to be very inspiring, like because you just see, like this, this really wide range of stuff. Wow. Really, really interesting. So cool. I have another practical question. I assume when it's, a gallery exhibition and it's only for a month or so, there's no cleaning that needs to happen.

Because just for my experience with having sometimes have had lots of tchotchkes, they gather dust. Yeah. Need to be cleaned. Yeah. So what happens to an installation like the garden that's there for a whole year? Do you, like, give them cleaning instructions? No, I mean, it's pretty. Would be pretty hard to get in there and clean.

The rooms are kind of sort of contained. But like the one that you saw at the Museum of Sex in New York, that one did get got quite dusty. And so what I'll do, like when I was installing the pieces, at the SVA gallery, we had, you know, we had rags and we're cleaning and wiping some of the objects that had, I guess, gathered a little dust or dirt the last time.

But I always like it if the objects I don't want everything to be too clean because I feel like part of the thing that's interesting is this collective history of the objects and also knowing that they've been owned before and they've had past lives. And I feel like that collective energy is an important part of the piece. So.

So I'll kind of when I'm reinstalling, I'll definitely have rags around to clean off, like things that seem really dirty, but otherwise it's just part of it, even as I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember my so I don't know if this is real or not, but I remember. So my parents had their own business and they were dental technicians.

So it's not a clean business. There's all sorts of dust particles everywhere. But somebody gave them a little ceramic Buddha, and they were told that you could never clean that Buddha because that would be bad luck. And I thought that was so interesting. So that little Buddha and it was literally like, not even two inches tall was like covered in dust.

Oh, yeah. And I'd be there. And my parents are not Buddhist, that's for sure. But I would be, you know, being there, I'd be like, can I just clean this there? Like, no bad luck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think of it more as like, not in terms of luck or not, but in terms of just the energy of the like I said, like the like the the collective, like loving or experiencing of these objects of where have they have who they belong to in the past.

So it's not like the object itself has the energy. It's the energy of the people who owned it or handled it in the past. Yeah, yeah. And, and then I feel like the objects kind of kind of bring that with them. And then for me, what I love about showing some of the work that I show is that there's all these things that I've gathered and collected, and so the audience I see often finds things like there's something in it that everyone has some kind of memory or can do, you know, it makes it more, yeah.

More inclusive. Yeah. Yeah. It's like not, it's not, it's not something you can easily get away from. You know, it's like for sure. It's like part of part of you. Part of everyone. Yeah. The garden is now with 21 C collection. But in theory you could amass similar objects and recreate garden 2.0. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Have you ever done something like that?

A little I feel like, I'm not actually so interested in doing that because I already did it. Yeah, I'm more interested in, you know, what other ideas I might have as opposed to trying to recreate something I've already done. Yeah, but I could. I, I guess somebody could, you know, commissioned you to do another garden. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, they could, but it's, you know, I think as an artist, the things that drive us are like, you sort of. I mean, if I made another one, it would be different. I mean, it could be similar, but it would be different. But, yeah, it's more like where to where what interests are, like pushing you. You know, what things are pushing you forward.

You want to figure out something new. Yeah. But I do the same. I, you know I, I did architecturally inspired work for years and I would experiment with this version and that version and that subject matter. But they were all architecturally collected. And then one day I was like I'm done. Yeah. I don't want to do any more architecture.

That doesn't mean that I won't get back to it. But like, right. Yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely. Yeah. There for sure. There are things that you just need to sort of take a break from or if. Yeah, you've said, you've said most of what you've felt like you set up, but most of what you said wanted to say.

So yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what are you working on now in your studio? I'm working on paintings. I'm trying to work on paintings and also different bound sculptures and, Yeah, I'm thinking about future installation, and like I mentioned, the blue possible blue installation and, but I'm trying to have it be a little bit of a quiet, like, quiet time to be sort of at a very busy fall.

And I just sort of, now, like kind of just assessing and looking and thinking about what I'm going to make. So are you going to just make things because you feel pulled to make them, or do you have, specific destinations for things that you are you're going to be making? Well, yeah, sometimes, you know, there are different like part of me is working towards, another solo show with my gallery, like, I'm a that's always like something that I'll be thinking about and sort of working on.

So I'm kind of working on that, figuring out what it is that I want. Like, what is the next thing I really want to say or what want that to be about? And how does it relate to what I've done before? But then there are different exhibitions, but, you know, you're invited to be part of, and then that gets you thinking about other projects, you know, that you kind of work on, and then, of course, there are things that that people have expressed interest in or people have purchased.

And so that can that can also, push you to make, you know, some more things that are related to that. Not always, but that's one thing that can happen. Yeah. You know. Well, well, thank you so much for this conversation. Assassinating and yeah. Yeah. And I wish you, a fruitful and calm season in your studio.

Thank you. Yeah. That's why so important it is artists to have different of more down time. Yeah, yeah. Or you can just really focus and think about what you're working on. Yeah, it's really an important thing. But, thank you for your thoughtful questions, and. Oh, it's good to talk with you. Fascinating. I just I'm grateful that you were here to answer all these questions.

Yeah, well, that was such a fascinating, fascinating conversation. I probably could have kept going, but, you know, I have to be respectful. Of course, this time. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. And I hope that you're enjoying season two so far. Please rate and review and share and, yeah, let everybody hear about these conversations. I, I hope you're enjoying them as much as I am.

If you'd like to learn more about my art practice, please go to Art by natalya.com. If you'd like to learn from me, please go to Eco Loop dot Art. And if you'd like to join my Repurposer collective, I would love for you to add your name to the waitlist. The repurposer collective doors are opening up in Earth Month.

That's April 20th, 2025, so if you want to be first in front of those doors in line, put your name on the waitlist. Go to repurposer collective.com. Thank you. This podcast was created, produced and edited by me, Natalya Khorover. Theme music by RC Guida.