Conversation with Kate Dodd

*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, and the underutilized.  In her work, she seeks to repurpose items that no longer have an essential use.  Once they were manufactured in great quantities; then they were abandoned, superfluous, castoff. Kate’s starting point is the materials. She has said, “I have always had a tremendous fascination with materials and making.  So when I see materials being disposed of without much thought … I see both treasure and mistreatment, and feel an immediate need to resurrect the neglected and disrespected.”  

https://www.katedodd.com/ 

https://www.hunterdonartmuseum.org/exhibitions/kate-dodd-new-work/ 

Leticia Bajuyo episode#23 https://www.buzzsprout.com/2355491/episodes/16304746 

Bottled and Sold by Peter Gleick https://islandpress.org/books/bottled-and-sold#desc

https://www.beyondplastics.org/

https://www.aurorarobson.com/

Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc

https://www.janestreetartcenter.com/

https://www.gardenstateartweekend.org/

https://www.montclairartmuseum.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 Kate Dodd. Kate is obsessed with excess, with the unwanted, the discarded, the under utilized in her work. She seeks to repurpose items that no longer have an essential use. Once they were manufactured in great quantities, then they were abandoned. Superfluous castoffs. Kate's starting point is in the materials she has said, I always have a tremendous fascination with materials and make it so when I see materials being disposed of without much thought, I see both treasure and mistreatment and feel an immediate need to resurrect the neglected and the disrespected.

That's awesome. I

can't wait to talk.

Kate, thank you so much for joining me on this adventure. I'm thrilled to be here. That's awesome. And I was on your website yesterday jotting down questions and I have so many questions and you do so much work. It's really I don't know that I really I mean, I have been on your website before and you visited the repurposed or collective and you gave a beautiful presentation last year, which I'm really grateful for.

And we've known each other for a while now. We even tried to figure out how to collaborate. So you would think that I would know quite a bit about you by now. But no, I discovered so much more on your website, which is really quite great. So, yeah, I have a lot of questions. Okay, good. But since I know that you have a BFA and I'm an MFA, I

assume you are an artist as a kid.

Or were you? I not only did I, I didn't think of myself as an artist, but I loved, loved, loved to make things. And that includes baking and cooking and sewing. And, you know, I didn't have it. I didn't think of,

making things as being a particular art form or particular medium. But I do come from a family, a long line of people who have been artists or adjacent to art for, for generations.

So I was one of those lucky people who my parents didn't say, you know, you can't be an artist. Instead, it was like that. Yeah. You know, so which art school are you going to go to? That's awesome. Well, yeah, I I'm very lucky that way. That's that's great. And it also means I had role models of of people who made stuff.

Yeah. That's important. Yeah, yeah. And made a living making stuff. I wouldn't go that far. Not for the, Well, my grandmother was a painter, and she did not make she had, money from other sources. She did not make her living that way. But she did devote her entire life to painting and had a gallery, etc..

My father was an architect, so he did make his living from that. Going further back, my great grandmother was a bookbinder. Oh, wow. Very elaborate. Book bindings with working. You know, she would work with first editions of poets and artists from France in the early 1900s. And she was the one that bound the book, but also designed the book cover.

And often they were, leather with impressed gold, designed and things like that. And she also did not make her living doing that, but it was notable that she was a woman doing that for sure. Yeah. Not well, that kind of explains, I think, why you work with books quite a bit.

Well, it's a nice connection, but, no, I work with books because, I like working with any material.

That there's too much of that no one wants and doesn't know what to do with itself. And that is why you're here today.

All right, so that there are too many books, just, the way we consume them is changing, and so know it's true. It's true. And so many of us listen to books these days. We don't even buy physical books. I'm one of those people, I swear by physical books, but not all the ones, right? Like, yes. Yeah, yes.

For sure. Yeah. So. So what did you get your BFA in? I got my BFA in sculpture, and, it was funny, I before I got, on today, I was starting to listen to the interview you did with, Leticia Bajuyo, but I'm not sure. Yeah. And, I had an experience similar to her in that, I started out thinking that I was going to work 2D, and I certainly love painting and drawing and enjoyed that that first year of art school.

But I found that because I was able to imitate what I saw through drawing, you know, I was able to create illusion. I got stuck in kind of copying what I saw, working from what I saw, and it didn't seem to be just as Leticia said, it didn't seem to really be about ideas or concepts. And yet I found in my sculpture class that, I was always trying to convey an idea by putting materials together, which seemed to be a completely different way of thinking than looking at something and getting it to evoke an expression of some sort.

So, that felt really liberating to me. And so I thought, well, there was also a big fear at the time when I was in school. So it's late 70s, early 80s, there was a big distinction between art and craft. And lots of my sculpture teachers, especially, and especially the male teachers, were really pretty obsessed with that division.

And so I had a fear that if I stayed with two dimensions, I would always do illustration. But then if I went to sculpture, it would be art, it would be fine art, I see. So how did you learn traditional sculpture techniques then? Yeah, yeah, with the woodshop and I had to learn mold making and, bronze casting and all of that kind of thing.

But I gravitated towards clay. And so, ultimately, my kind of minor or area of interest was, was in ceramics, and I didn't do a lot of vessel making, but I did do a lot of sculpture and, coming up with, you know, different clay bodies and glazes and even kiln design.

And then you went on to get an MFA as well, right?

But I was in the work world for quite a while. At least it seemed like quite a while. Then, before I got my MFA. So I worked, primarily for architects because I, since my father was an architect, I'd done some work for him. I learned how to draft. This was pre computer,

drafting. And so I had a number of jobs for architects.

And then finally, I landed at an exhibit design firm and was there for quite a few years. And, that was, that was really, a great job in a lot of ways. But what it did teach me was that I couldn't really work behind a desk full time. And it also taught me that if you are going to go into architecture, which is what I thought I might go to graduate school for, you are not going to see very much of what you design get built.

And when it does get built, it's going to be compromised in many, many ways. So yeah, important lesson to learn, I suppose. Yeah. And so because of all of that, when I decided to go to graduate school, I decided to go for fine arts rather than architecture, just because I thought, I want to make sure that what I want to make, I get to make.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm already used to making money separately from my art work, and I'll continue to do that. Okay. And so what was your concentration for your MFA? It was in sculpture. Oh it is you continue. So yeah, I see and it was, an excellent experience. I went to Columbia. I got to take a lot of architecture classes.

So that was great because they were they were very good. When I was at Columbia was a real low point in terms of, how Columbia's,

visual fine arts department was doing. And so there were problems with lots of different teachers. So its problems with who ran the department. It was not kind of the esteemed program it is today.

Although people think that, of course, when they hear the name Columbia. But I did have, one teacher in particular who was very influential was very hard on me and, but was very supportive. And so I really, you know, credit a lot of my education to her. Yeah. That's wonderful.

and then do I have this right?

You went out to teach art in schools? Yes. Because when I graduated, when I with my MFA, it was in the middle of a recession. And so architecture students were, or graduates. We're all doing things like pumping gas. There were no jobs. And, and luckily, this, this teacher I mentioned had a connection to a former student who was working at a, a private boys school on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.

And they needed a woodshop teacher. And so I became the woodshop teacher. And that was, that was, and a very good job to have for a long time, partly, because of the people I worked with who were great. And, of course, it was fun to be, you know, to surprise all these little boys in their private school uniforms and their wealthy parents that their, you know, woodshop teacher was a woman, and they'd like, you know, make giant stuff and that's awesome.

Yeah. So that that was good.

eventually, because I was living in new Jersey, the and was on my second, child, the commute got too difficult. So I left. Yeah, yeah. But did you, you could of teaching in new Jersey then. Yeah. I went on to find through partly I started through, doing artist residencies in schools, got to know the school system a little bit, and then eventually, new Jersey has a program called alternate Route certification.

So rather than coming with an education degree, if you already have a bachelor's or a master's, you can take this, alternate route course, and that will certify you to be a teacher. Oh, cool. So that worked out. That worked out. Well, you take it while you're teaching, and so it's, you know, trial by fire.

And then I went on to teach for a long, long time, and I finally retired in, 2021, after a year of pandemic teaching. That's impressive. You know, many are retiring anyway. Yeah, so many teachers retired right when the pandemic started, so I'm impressed. Yeah. No, it was, it was. I had been thinking about retiring, and it really was a horrible way to teach art and art history.

I was teaching art history at the time. That was no better. You know, you're you're looking at a screen full of black boxes. I was teaching high school at the time. And, you know, you have no idea if anyone is there. And a lot of my teaching, I really depend on having a sense of humor and, you know, looking at a bunch of black boxes.

I stopped being funny. Yeah. No, there's no. You need interaction for humor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so sad.

but it was it was a great career. I'm very happy that, I had it that I got to interact with all the students that, maybe. Unfortunately for some of them, I turned them on to going into art.

In art history. It. And, and now I finally have, my dream, which is making art full time. Yeah. That's awesome. Grateful. All right, so to just to take you back to school one for one second, what is your favorite grade to teach?

You know, I, I enjoyed all, years of high school. They were all great.

I suppose I might say juniors rather than seniors. Just because seniors start to check out. But I had I had lots of great sophomores, too. So sophomores and juniors, you know, when you're in the heart of it, kind of, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. That's great. Now, I, I went to High School of Art and Design in New York City. So I was fully immersed into art in high school, and I loved every second of it. Yeah. Wonderful. So great. When when, you know, you get what you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really is. And it can happen often. Well.

now I want to ask you, again, so many, many different venues. You've done so much work. All right. So let me ask you about the repurposed single use plastic installations, if you don't mind, because I think that's

that was one of the first things I learned about your practice was the

bottles you were making birds out of plastic water bottles.

You were covering them with mesh, and you were filling them with water. With dye. Yes. I tried a lot of different ways to, impart color to your tumble average plastic water bottle and, I started working with them. Well, I've. I've almost always worked with multiples. I've always loved quantity of material, like multiple pieces. And figuring out ways to put them together.

And I, also have always I'm a miser to some degree with, what I spend. And so I've always liked finding materials. And then there's something about resurrecting materials that, you know, materials that have been overlooked or that people have decided have no worth. And they actually have plenty of worth. It's just that they

you can't make money off them, but that doesn't mean they don't have worth.

I guess I just what I'm saying. So I was attracted to, water bottles a long time ago, but where I really got going on plastic water bottles was I read a book.

bottled and sold was the name of the book, and it was by Peter.

I can't remember his last name, but anyway, he, was writing all about the way that

soda companies and bottled water companies were bottling water and selling it. And the whole idea of making it seem like it was something much more pristine than tap water, was pulling people away from tap water and making this huge proliferation of bottles.

And yet the water in the bottled water was not, it wasn't held to nearly as high standards as tap water in most communities is. And so and now we know that this was this was a while ago. Yeah. Now it's much more of a problem. Yeah, yeah. Because the plastic we now we know that the plastic is leaching into the water that's in the bottles.

There's that and there's, that. Well, just, you know, I, I'm all for the, Biden's Infrastructure Act. But I've seen in towns around where I live there, pulling out all the old pipes, which they need to do, and they're replacing them with PVC pipes, and we don't know, of course, what's going to happen with that.

I think with the person that introduced me to that idea that you could take the plastics class through, Judith Inc and Beyond Plastics at Bennington. And so that's, you know, where I got alerted to problems with things like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there was did. Yeah. There's no question. Since I started working with plastic, the problems have grown exponentially.

Absolutely. Yeah. But,

let's see when I so when I started working with plastic bottles, it was in response to that. They're everywhere. And why don't people drink tap water? And, then from there, as I got used to working with the materials and figuring out ways to, connect them and to build with them, I wanted to impart water.

So I did experiment with, filling bottles with colored water, which was, a lot of fun. I mean, what could be more fun than mixing colors? Yeah. And, but of course, they don't take paint very well. Now, I know, Aurora Robson, the person that organized the exhibit that you were in plastic culture. I know she's figured out how to impart color to plastic and has some method of.

Yeah, it's some kind of a spray painting method. Yeah, yeah. But I was, also, I was working with such huge quantities because my installations, when they are, especially when they're outdoors, tend to be really large because you have to make things big outdoors for them to have any kind of presence. Right. So I discovered that you could use the netting that produce comes in, that plastic netting comes in all different colors, and you could, layer it, you know, you can put one, layer on top of another.

You can. It's it comes as a tube. You can slide it over the bottles. And next thing you know, you have all of these transparent but colorful lengths of material that you can work with and lightweight too. And and lightweight too. Yeah. Now, one thing I did not know until years later, but it's so obvious now, in retrospect, is that if you were going to put that stuff outdoors, which I did many installations outdoors with those materials,

the plastic is not is perfectly sturdy, but it is going to break down due to UV exposure.

And so then you have pieces that are outdoors that are starting to fritter away into tiny, tiny little pieces going right into the soil. And next thing you know, you're you are the cause of microplastics in the neighborhood. So it was seemed like a wonderful material for a while. It's great for temporary work, but clearly not for anything permanent.

Even though it is a permanent material. Right? Yeah. No, you can't leave those out for more than I would say 2 or 3 months at best.

I discovered that the hard way as well.

Yeah. Well I think a lot of us did because we were experimenting with these non art materials. So.

There was one installation on your website that I was really

taken by. I think it's called Window Into Flow and it's. Yes. Factory. Could you tell me about that? Sure. Yeah. That was, there was a curator who was, busy in Newark for a while and then eventually moved up to Paterson. And his name was Rupert Ravens.

And he would take on, vast industrial spaces and, find ways to kind of

get rent for nothing, or very minimal, in exchange for putting artists in these spaces, creating shows, creating buzz around the neighborhood. And eventually that would be good for the developers. Yeah. Which is, you know,

that's how it always goes. I'm glad he was able to provide art opportunities out of that.

But eventually, yeah, they they were not permanent situations anyway. So this was a great building, in Paterson, which has many beautiful industrial buildings. And,

there were these large, large windows, that faced out in all directions, you know, old factory windows. And then it was alongside the, Passaic River. And so which was churning, you know, goes over the big falls in Paterson.

It's a powerful river, and the sides of the river are completely full of washed up trash, especially lots and lots of plastic. And so I was looking at, you know, this fantastic building, this, beautiful landscape and all of this plastic in the landscape. And I decided to do something that would, combine the idea of looking at the landscape and what actually is in the landscape.

And so I created layers of plastic, out of the kind of plastic that I was finding in the river. So lots of layers of bubble wrap, plastic bottles, of course, some of that, that foam wrapping, I don't know what you call it that. Oh, yes. Issues. When you're moving, that kind of thing. So, different opacity sense.

It's not transparent. It's translucent. Kind of white. Right? Yeah, yeah. So all different, plastic materials that have different translucent eyes. And you clean up the river to find those materials? No, no, I mean, I sometimes have gotten them out of the trash, but no, I did not go directly to the. I could even get there very easily.

Well, there's there's that, I mean, that the collection of materials is a whole. And I know you're 

area of expertise in a way. Because I just depart from explaining the piece for a minute.

Once you're working with large quantities, all of a sudden you get into this supply and demand situation and something that was really annoying because you saw ten times by the roadside.

Now you need, you know, a thousand of them, and you scour every place you can and you can't find enough of them. But, you know, then, you know, two years later when you're not doing that anymore, there they are again in the landscape. So it's how you collect materials, becomes,

you know, a it's like like Christo getting his, permission to do his installations.

It becomes in interaction with municipalities and, sometimes even politicians, certainly with public works, organizations. And so I've had lots of interactions like that. I've tried different ways of collecting things. And it's just always a challenge. Yeah, yeah. No, it definitely is. Yeah. So where did you get the materials for this installation. So for that it's for that installation.

They were materials that I had on hand from old packaging that I was reusing, things like that, or bottles I'd collected. But the idea was to create layers of window kind of marching into the space, bringing in translucency into the space from the window, but also filling the window with, the plastic that ultimately saw on the outside of the window and the way that, I was able to keep everything vertical was I used, plastic bottles filled with water as weight.

The whole thing in place kind of that. Oh, of back to the river to. Oh, that's true. And how I couldn't tell from your pictures how everything was attached. It was all fishing line and hot glue. Okay. Look, my favorite materials,

and do you find that the hot glue lasts for quite a while?

It depends what you use it on. I mean, it it does not on film. It might work. On fishing line. It works to some degree. Certainly doesn't work. Holding, say, plastic bottles together just pops right off. Yeah, yeah, you have to bounce. You have to use a physical attachment

for that kind of thing.

yeah. I find that it's it's not very helpful at all.

And then you wind up and it's plastic too, because then you wind up with a little globs of plastic. Well, this is a, a real question about

creating installations out of plastic, creating installations out of any repurposed material. But with plastic, you're going to end up using additional materials unless you're stacking, right, which is a possibility. You're going to use, some kind of attachment and and if it's fishing line, well, that's not the same kind of plastic.

And you can't just take things that are tied together with fishing line and dump them in recycling. Absolutely. If it's able to zip ties, that's not the same kind of plastic wire, obviously is not the same material. So you're going to have to take apart whatever you build. If you're going to recycle it. Now, that's assuming that there are places around you that will recycle.

And so that's a whole nother thing is, you know, you feel like, oh, I've built this thing and I can just recycle it when I'm done. And yet, you know, it's there's a good chance it's just going to be burned and you're going to breathe it because there's a little plastic recycling then anymore. So,

I have taken on kind of

educating the public about what doesn't happen with recycling.

Yeah. As part of what I talk about when I do present work, of course, that's not a very uplifting message, you know, and unfortunately, it's not I mean, there being, you know, people are working on making things better, but it's a very slow process. Yeah. So actually that brings me to another question. Do you reuse materials from one installation to the next?

I do when I can,

and I certainly have saved parts of things and they become parts of other things for sure.

There eventually there's a limit because, and this is a problem all artists have, not just people who repurpose you, have you have to store the stuff. Right? And so are you going to store materials and, and, you know, find a way to earn the money to pay for the space to store the materials?

Or are you going to get rid of the materials?

I know it's the never ending cycle, right? Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so you've also worked with a whole lot of repurposed packaging, right? You've you like, did you find a whole.

was. I think you told me it was a factory that, like, went out of business and left all their packaging behind.

Exactly. It was actually,

a warehouse within the,

compound where my studio is. And so it had been rented out to a beauty products company, and they went out of business all of a sudden and

they left thousands of boxes, cardboard boxes full of packaging materials. So some of it was cardboard, some of it was plastic.

Some of it was mixed. There were, you know, lots and lots of lipstick tubes. There were lots of, boxes to hold perfume. There were lots of little wipes for your face that came in very fancy packages. And, almost all of it was pink and purple. Every shade of pink and purple you could imagine. And so, the first installation I did with that, because I guess I should say, I haven't mentioned yet, but, when I do installations, they're primarily site specific, and I try as much as possible.

And not only am I responding to the architecture and the function of the space, but also to what materials are kind of indigenous to the space. So I didn't have a problem here because here's a warehouse full of packaging materials. They belonged in that space. So I actually took one of the, parts of the warehouse, and I built an installation with the cardboard boxes that the stuff was in, and then I had this stuff coming out of it and, joining together and creating all kinds of different forms that ultimately created a landscape that flowed down over the cardboard boxes and landed at, on the floor where there was a giant lipstick, red

lipstick stain, lipstick had been mixed in. And the floor at that particular place with like, this carmine just glowing. Oh my God. So wait, so this was this was part of the place where you have studios and I'm assuming. Oh, yes. It's, No, it's a whole bunch of different buildings. And so this was a separate building, but yes.

So that was like a temporary, I assume, installation. Most of my installations are temporary because

in general people do not want these things around forever. And of course, if I'm working with, repurposed materials, often they have to be temporary because they can't withstand.

A lot of things that permanent work has to withstand.

I mean, I, I have done that,

public commissions, a number of public commissions. I've sort of made a permanent materials, but to make a public commission out of, repurposed materials is difficult. I'm actually starting to try to think about how to do that. But I think it will probably follow along the lines of

the form or the imagery is inspired by repurposed materials, but, well be able to necessarily make all the components, out of repurposed materials.

So that reminds me, you have a whole bunch of public art, and it's all with new Jersey transit commissions, right? It mostly is with new Jersey transit. I've done, five stations for them in, Newark, in, Perth Amboy, in Baytown and Hoboken. But I also, have done works in, a public library in California.

I did, some temporary but yearlong works for the summit Public Art, which is in new Jersey. And then I just recently did a commission last winter for Rowan University in southern new Jersey. And I'm starting to work on a commission for a new project in Jersey city. So I do permanent work as well as temporary. But generally if I'm working with,

repurposed materials, it's going to be a temporary installation.

Gotcha. So let me stray from repurposed materials, because just my curiosity, your work for all those train stations. Yes. It's metal, right?

Most of it was metal. I used some porcelain enamel. I actually did a piece for the Hoboken Ferry Terminal that, was metal, but it also was, concrete embedded with fiber optics that created imagery.

The fiber optics created, drawings made up of little dots. Oh, wow. Because as the fiber comes through the concrete, that's what it creates. At its tip is a little dot of light. But that's not were you actually physically making those things some of them or parts of them. Oh wow. What am I would find a fabricator who would make the parts.

Usually it's usually a combination. Yeah, that's that's a whole other ball of wax. As they said, it's a whole other ball of wax. That's very cool that you've done that as well though. Wow.

are you still working with the repurposed packaging from the Beauty Factory? You know, I thought that maybe I'd done my last installation and it was my fifth installation this past fall, but I couldn't quite bear to get rid of it because I just thought, what if someone, you know, I now I really know how to work with this material?

What if someone asks me to do something? Maybe I better keep a little. So I did keep a little of it.

How are you attaching those so that the one installation out of those? I've seen pictures online, but the one installation that I saw in person was at the Williamsburg, historical Art center. Is that what it's called in Brooklyn?

Yes. Right. And it was like, I think it's Williamsburg Art center. I think you're right. Yeah. So it was a stacked boxes and sort of an undulating line. Right.

How were they attached? I, I actually sewed them together. What I got elastic cord because I was stacking them. But, and, you know, I would I love the idea of stacking something and kind of daring people to not bump into it, in which case it would fall over.

But I, you know, figured the curator is not going to appreciate that. That would be more of a performance. So, I needed a way to keep them together. And I also needed a way to be able to transport them.

And I don't have a big truck or anything like that. And I didn't have a budget to to rent one, so if I glued them together, they'd be brittle, and then they would break and transport because there was no real structure to them.

So I actually got a long nine inch needle and elastic cord, drilled holes in them and just sewed up through all the layers, that the whole thing could stretch and move because it was sewn with the elastic. But then, you know, wood would stay in place. So if someone hit it, this thing that looked really delicate, it wasn't going to go anywhere.

did you sew the whole thing or was it done in portions? Because that was done in portions. Okay. Because it was like an feet long or something like that. Yeah. No, it was really long.

That's ingenuity. I love that it's solving the problem at hand. How do I figure this out? I find it almost any problem can be solved by sewing.

You know, there's this big,

push right now.

About fiber. Is the new hot? Yes. Art form. Right. And in some ways, that's funny, because so many of us have been using, aspects of that for forever. Yeah. But it really, you know, it's also interesting to think about where do you kind of put the limits of fiber?

To me, fiber can be connecting something with thread that has nothing to do with textiles beyond that. But I don't know that that's the way it's being defined. I don't know, I probably not, but it's true because I use

thread to sew soft plastic together. I certainly sell in some hard plastics as well, but it's the thread is usually not noticeable.

It's but it is there. It's connecting. That's not the thing that's seen. Yeah, well, I did something where I was selling, paper bags together last summer.

You know, I've sewn everything together. No, if it, if you can put a needle through it. Yeah. That's all that matters. Yeah. Right. Very true. Sometimes it's. That's the slow way to go.

Yes, yes it was.

Oh, actually, I think you have sewn some of your book art, the book pages you've sewn that haven't you? Let's see if I can find some stitch lines in there. But maybe I'm wrong. I have done that. I have done some kind of embroidery on books, and that kind of thing. But, with books right now, I've come across this.

I don't even know if you could call it a technique, but for quite a while now I've been,

I've used books by stacking them and building with them and all of that kind of thing. But I also, have used books by, putting all of the text into strips and then joining the strips together in these kind of lacy networks, and that's just done with glue.

But to create things that are fabric or textile like, or really all kinds of forms.

Unknown

those are beautiful. And I, I remember seeing your,

the butterfly piece where you connect to the I think you stapled the wings of that was all stapled. Yeah. Because I wanted kind of the violence of it was made of for people who, you know, haven't seen it, since this is an, in audio, it was, I took a an encyclopedia of butterflies.

I cut out every single butterfly to create a pair of wings. And then, the way that I created the wings was I took all of the butterflies and stapled one to another, to another to another with the idea that, you know, when you collect a butterfly and you pin that butterfly, you've kind of stopped its flight. Forever.

And that this, whole

inclination that humans have to go out and collect things as kind of, trophies that they found,

simply by by by finding them, that that whole inclination at the same time is kind of ending the

ability for that creature to, you know, reproduce, etc., etc.. So I wanted to make wings that couldn't fly, that were the kind of the, the, contradiction of flying in, in that I was thinking about the myth of Icarus, and human pride and, you know, wanting to be able to do things and doing them beyond what is possible and then kind of

things falling apart as a result, because that seems

like it reflects a lot of what's going on in the world right now. Yeah,

I've seen some of your, your book or paper installations that are like,

they look like coins as well. Have you. Well, there are things like, I did take a whole bunch of, yeah. I've worked with circles a lot, and joined circles together.

But also, there's one particular piece you might be thinking of that I had, gone through, books of coin collections. Yes. All the coins to, and sold them together to create kind of, like a papal vestment, like a, that's what that was. Or more kind of collar that you might wear and all of these pieces that I'm describing.

Icarus. That piece, other pieces that I've made in a similar way I call outerwear, and they're all garments that are supposed to be protective of,

and protect us from our fears. But all of them are nonfunctional. They are nonfunctional, dysfunctional. They don't work. They can't protect you. It's kind of inherent in the way they're made that they can't protect you.

a fashion show in your future? Well, maybe I'm going to have a show, next June at, the Jane Street Art center, which is in Saugerties. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I do plan to show kind of all of my pieces of outerwear I've made, so. Oh, that'll be I won't probably have people walking around in them, but I will also be making an installation that people will walk around in, so.

Oh, I can't wait to see this. I love so good. He's going to have to get up there.

All right, so sticking with the paper theme though because there's other questions I still have, but you've also worked with

envelopes photos and magazines. Yes. With that, I really got into collecting envelopes because I love the privacy patterns.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of them. And so I, started just being fascinated by the variety of patterns that you could get, but eventually what I really got interested in with envelopes were the windows. Oh, and that the window as a metaphor for a window, as, metaphor for openings, but also things that you're not allowed access to, you know, the same part of, the mail, but not the whole thing that, then I got interested in the windows as

a way of saying this is going to a place to an address.

So what happens to all of the, people, immigrants that don't have places to go? Started to make works coming. Commented on immigration and on homelessness and that kind of thing. So once I got involved in the envelopes, there were other parts of

of what I, enjoyed about it that

I got in touch with and it opened up all kinds of new ideas.

So I think

when I first met you, my friend Ray and I went to see your exhibition, and I want to say there were all drawings.

I think they were all drawings, but maybe they were a collage as well. And there were pieces of patterns like the inside, the of the envelope, and there were drawings of plastic water bottles as part of that.

And it was a very some of it was very decorative. Right. And then there would be like these gaps and there would be a water bottle appearing somewhere.

And what's that doing there? That that particular show was mostly drawings.

It was, it was one of the rare times when I was working with not repurposed materials. They really actually were watercolors on paper. And they were, based on Islamic tile patterns, which I've always had. Yeah. And so I was working with,

it's still to me is related in that Islamic tile patterns, many small things joined together to create something large.

And the way that they're ordered was really interesting to me. And so I would look for ways to create some new order imposed on them or growing through them or something like that. So these were somewhat abstract. And as you said, in some ways they're decorative, but they also, have a sense of, looking kind of like landscape or of images you might see looking down from an airplane window or something like that.

But, during Covid,

it all of a sudden occurred to me that, you know, everywhere you go, everywhere I go, I see plastic water bottles, in the gutters, in the parks, everywhere. And so, I started to think, well,

why wouldn't they be in my drawings as well? I mean, they're everywhere. So you like the ubiquity of them?

I felt like I wanted to address somehow. So I started to include them in the drawings. And then as Covid got going, I started to see a connection, between the water bottles and people's lungs. And, you know, the idea of seeing these bottles that were kind of squished or broken or ripped or something like that, and what was happening to people in terms of being able to breathe,

that somehow it brought me back to the idea that this is a kind of a maligned material.

There's nothing wrong with this material. The way we handle this material is what's wrong. And so it felt like a kind of a parallel to the way we were handling, people who was getting care, who wasn't getting care, all of those kinds of issues. Fascinating.

it was just such a delicate exhibition.

All of those drawings were really that. Yeah, that's the word I think it was. Everything was very delicate about it. Yeah,

Yeah. And we don't think of water bottles as delicate, you know. But they are. I have a collection of squished water bottles myself.

That's what we do. We collect interests. Even if. Yeah, sometimes we don't know what we're going to do with them. Right.

well, I wanted to ask you about your, outdoor installations. The ones that are on water all the the. I think you called them flotation device series. Oh, yeah. That was that was so cool. That was because,

you know, when we first started to talk,

a lot about climate change, a lot of the focus was on, rising sea levels.

And, so I started to think, well,

I'm a site specific installation artist. If sea levels are going to rise, there's going to be a lot more water. Maybe I need to design sculptures that can be on water. Okay, good. As, as as, you know, just like, I guess during Covid, there were malls that started to.

They were so many empty storefronts and streets to they would turn into windows and art gallery. So I'm just like, I'm always looking for where is the next opportunity to show? I thought, okay, water. But I also one of my favorite things in the world is the way that a body of water creates the illusion of a flat plane cutting into the landscape.

I just find that form endlessly interesting. And, And I've made a lot of works where a plane does a horizontal plane cuts through a series of forms. So,

working on the surface of water right away was really interesting to me. And then,

I found that, you know, working with plastic, you know, that is in some ways the ideal thing to work with on water because it floats.

And so what can you make that floats and relates to that plane of water? And so I came up with a couple different ideas. And I spend time usually every year in the Adirondacks at some point in the summer, on a small lake. And so I created installations on the lake and then, you know, would take them down after I'd photographed them.

They weren't meant to be permanent or anything like that. But I was curious to see what the local fishermen and you know, what the reaction would be,

you know, people often don't react

or they,

look at it puzzled, but, you know, it's it's there was an a big reaction I've gotten,

you know, you get of course, you get much bigger reactions in urban areas.

I did a, piece along the Jersey city boardwalk

Oh, with the glass. It know it actually was plastic again. But it was mirrored plastic. And these pieces were, kind of hovering above the surface of the river, and they were on an adjacent pier, and the whole thing was kind of surrounded by, a railing.

So I was down in kind of in the river where people could see me working.

thousands of people walk by there every day. And one of the things that I loved about that installation is that almost always a kid would say to their parents or whoever they were with, what is that? And the parents would always have to say, you hear this silence.

You know, they just like they could not really define it. And then finally they would say, I think it's art or it's art. And I thought, that's so great that now they're going to have to talk to their kids about what is art, and why is it that art is a word that you use when you don't know, understand what you're looking at?

I love that, so I thought, that's great. That's what I want to be doing.

Now that looked really, really cool. Yeah, I wish I was able to see that in person

because you get the reflections of the clouds on it or the sun, the blue sky. It was really it was really quite interesting. It was it was really fun to do.

I loved doing it. I loved the site. Once again, you know, working outside, you have all kinds of challenges. That was a year. There were a whole series of, pretty severe hurricanes. And while my piece, withstood the force, some of that lumber that my piece was attached to that had been there for, you know, 50 years or more, did not withstand the hurricane.

Well. And so as soon as that started to pull apart, then it started to pull apart the whole thing. So to take it down so that I didn't end up polluting the river. Right. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy.

let me take you back for a second. Those installations you were doing on the lake, they were all really brightly colored.

What kind of plastic was that? That is all neoprene foam.

No, it's the sheets that you can buy that are like construction paper. Yeah, I had a craft store. Yeah, and, a great material, because you can bend it and cut it and, and make pieces interlock, which I did. A lot of you can staple it easily.

is a really wonderful material to work with and and terrible, of course. Right. First. And that looked really, really cool. I was very intrigued by that.

So I have

a question that you may not want to answer, but I couldn't find the answer on your website. There was installation

that you did that was called Brick City or something like that.

That was taken down right before the opening. Yes. Was it and opened. I have had a number of situations where, my work gets censored in one way or another, and it usually gets it happens when I do, site specific installations that other people feel they have a claim on that territory. And ultimately, what I have, found out by doing these installations is that public art, in many ways, is all about territory and turf.

I mean, we saw that with, Robert Smith and, Tilted Arc, and the different, you know, entities that were vying for control of that space. And I feel like I've experienced the same thing. So the piece that you're talking about in particular was,

in Newark, it was in, an area of Newark that was being developed.

It's called Teacher City. Richard Meyer, the architect, had designed a bunch of the buildings and they were not complete. And there were a number of empty storefronts because they were still under construction.

a Pharaoh gallery, which was a gallery for a long time in Newark that unfortunately just recently closed. They, put together a program for the annual Newark Arts Festival where they took over venues all over the city for temporary exhibits.

So I was given this long, series of windows on a corner of a new brick building.

And Newark's nickname, long ago was Brick City. So, so when I say before Brick City, it's because the I filled the entire window with imagery from art history textbooks. I'd been teaching art history, for years in high school, AP art history and more and more books were not being used.

You know, students would get the textbook at the beginning of the year and return it unopened at the end of the year. Because, you know, that they were getting their information online, basically. Anyway, I had all these textbooks that I had gone through over and over again, year after year teaching these particular artworks. And, having done it for so long, it felt to me in some ways, like all of those artworks start to blend or mix together, almost like hamburger.

Okay, brown meat of art history. And so I, wanted to make an installation that introduced a bunch of those iconic figures from very early on and, human efforts at image making and eventually have all of those images mixed together. And so, I created kind of a filigree of cut paper that looked like the mortar of bricks and created kind of a river of bricks going across this long stretch of windows.

And then I had all of these figures cut out from art history, that were started out kind of chronologically ended up mixing together. So I had to say the head of, urubu queen on the body of a Greek god, things like that. So it was kind of a mixing and matching thing.

And there were some other elements, but that was basically it.

Now, what happened is the building that this installation was in was, under it was on the first floor. On the second floor was, KIPP Academy, one of these charter schools in Newark, which Newark is full of charter schools

and, KIPP Academy, which I have some strong negative feelings about, as well as a bunch of other charter schools, especially as a public school teacher.

But anyway, KIPP Academy, where it was located, parents had to walk by the windows in order to get to the entrance of the school on the second floor. And as I was putting things in the windows one day, one of the administrators from the school came down to me and she said, what are you doing?

I explained what I was doing. She said, well, a parent has complained that there is nudity on the wall. And, I said, that's because this is art history and this is the way figures, you know, and I gave my whole spiel about and I said it, and I'm a teacher, and I would love to come into the classroom and teach.

I'd be happy to do free lessons to teach the kids all about this, etc., etc.. And she said, well, I think you're going to have to do something about it. And I said, well, how about if I arrange the figures so that whenever there is genitalia showing, it's covered by a strip of paper? That's part of the brick design.

So I did that. I moved all the figures so that, you know, you could never see, actually see a penis or nipples. And, they came back and said, no, that's not good enough. We need you to do something more than that. So then, I said, well, I'll cover the torsos. So I put something over the torso of every figure.

Now, what I really wish I had done was actually made a little t shirt out of, vinyl that said KIPP Academy on it and put it over every figure. But I didn't have time to do that. But that would have been great. Anyway. And I was told again, no, this isn't good enough. You're going to have to take this thing down.

And I tried arguing back and forth. I went to, the people that had supported me for years at new Jersey transit, and were very involved in Newark. I done stations in Newark. I tried to get them to fight for me.

what about the gallery that's that organized this whole event? Well, and I, you know, I went to the gallery and asked them to help, and they were basically, we get this space for free.

And if people are unhappy with what we're doing with the space, you have to take it down because we need to be given space next year.

they were unable or unwilling, depending on how you look at it, to, stand up for me. And so I said, well, how about if I cover the entire window

and then unveil it on opening night, which is not during school hours, so no kids are going to be walking there, and then we can cover it back up again, because at this point, I was desperate for, you know, to be able to show my work.

I'd spent weeks on it.

did go ahead and start putting that covering up. And they said, no, that won't do. And, eventually someone came over from the gallery and started tearing the work down because I refused to. Oh my God. And so by the time, the opening came around, I just had a pile of paper.

And so, you know, and I figured people are going to come I'm on the map for people to come to see my installation. They're going to come. There's not going to be anything there. So I parked my car in front of the address, and I piled all the paper on top of my car. I could do font on top of my Prius and, and and, you know, had an explanation of what had happened.

And, you know, there was, some interest in maybe going to the media with the story. Of censorship. But ultimately everyone's overwhelmed. There are too many things that happen. Yeah. By the way.

Yeah. I'm sorry. That sucks. Yeah, yeah. So I and I have had other things happen like that. It certainly was not the only time.

I mean, it's usually a different reason, but when I talk about territory,

and I just have to say with that particular situation, how sad is it that if a parent complained about,

nudity, which I don't know if a parent really did or was that just a school? But if they complained about it, how sad is it that

those kids then are not going to get any sense of when nudity is part of culture and when it's pornography, they're not differentiating between those things.

And the figures that people were most offended by were the Greek, gods and goddesses, because of course, they're the most realistic and so the most classical. Excuse me. Yeah. Yeah. So so, you know what, naked figures say from, New Guinea was people were not reacting to that because it was a much more abstracted form.

Anyway, yes. You know, I've had I had a piece, that I did in, with the Wildflower Sculpture Park up in, South Mount Reservation, about half orange. And, I was invited to do a piece specifically in, a vernal pond there, and I built it into a willow tree. It was a temporary installation.

You know those pictures I saw on your website? Yes. Yes. And someone who I'm sure meant well called in to the Essex County Parks Department and said that what I had created was a bird death trap and that it was going to kill all the migrating birds and had to be taken down immediately.

I contacted the Cornell Ornithology Lab, you know, to ask, is this true?

And they said, no, but we can't, you know, we can't prove that necessarily. I mean, if birds can navigate branches, they can navigate a line of string hanging from a branch. But I had to take it down. No.

I'm sorry, but I'm glad that most of your installations have survived and are our public comment.

Yes. It's very interesting working with the public and finding out, you know, where people

choose to stand and you know, what statements they want to make and what they don't care about. And have you ever done projects that involve the community in the space?

I have certainly done projects with lots of students, you know, installations, where every student made something that became part of a larger installation.

I have done projects with, actually, I did a project in Bayonne, that was about, trees, street trees. And there I got, some,

senior citizens groups involved. Some students were involved, a, environmental cleanup organization was involved. So I definitely have done things like that.

I wonder if projects like that

that result in a installation have a better chance of going through, because the community so part so much of part of it.

Well, of course, that's the idea and that's what you would hope for. I think that and I think in the case of the Bayon project, that was successful, but it was like a kind of a neighborhood wide. It was a real effort to get a lots and lots of people involved, not just with my piece, but with the whole exhibit.

It was part of there were multiple venues that it was part of. So it really, and it took someone with a tremendous amount of energy and imagination and commitment. In this case, it was, Janine Barto of, the stand for Gallery to go out to every single store owner and talk to them and to go to every senior citizen center and talk with the people there, etc., etc..

I mean, it's it's it's it's a major,

You know, a whole different kind of work than just being in your studio making things. And I know there are a number of, kind of artists opportunities where you are invited to do something as long as you involve the community. But, I think the idea of what it takes to get the community involved is really vastly underestimated, I think.

Right. And if you want to do something like you want to involve the schools. Well, I know from being a public school teacher often the last thing you want is for someone to come and say, I have this great idea, I want you to work on this project, and you already have your whole curriculum planned out, and or the school has all kinds of rules, or the kids aren't allowed to be, you know, off site, or they, you know, that there's just a zillion things that make working with a community really difficult.

And I think it's a great thing to do. But I think when organizations ask artists to do that, they should be including a lot of resources to support that, rather than expecting the artists to go and find the community and connect with it. Yeah, I think you're right. I've tried a little bit here and there working with local schools, and that's exactly what I ran into.

And I understand that completely that, you know, as a teacher, you have your curriculum planned and there's very little wiggle room for an obscure, weird project coming in from the side. I've been able to do a little bit of that for after school. Yeah, that's much more flexible. Yeah, but also there's less support for it now. School.

So it becomes sort of like an afterthought.

Unfortunate. But yeah. And even the nature of being an art teacher in school, at least for younger kids, is you are the person that gives the regular classroom teacher a break.

And so that attitude, you know, of, oh, this is filler comes with projects that you might do with an after school group because it's you're just entertaining the kids until the parent can come, you know, it's not seen as of course, you know, you can bring a lot of dignity and interest to it, but as far as the kind of resources that get put into projects like that, you need a lot more

than what's done often. Yeah, no, that's definitely true. I, I've been in those situations where I just felt like a glorified babysitter. Yeah. Who was probably getting paid less than a babysitter was. That's you. Yes. You were. That's true.

Yeah. It's it's really it's it's too bad that the arts are so devalued in the school system.

Although I have to say, new Jersey is awfully good at making it central compared to a lot of states. Oh. That's great. Not familiar with New York State. So much, but I know California

you know, they're basically is not no art in schools.

Comparison.

Very sad, very sad. All right. Let's set let's end on a positive note. Yes. One thing to happen. What's your next? You mentioned in the beginning what is your next big project coming up? I'm going to have this, solo show at the Jane Street Art Center in Saugerties, and that's and it will be up during, upstate Art weekend.

Oh, next. So July, June to August. Yeah. And July is the upstate Art weekend.

where my studio is, we are, going to be part of Garden State Art weekend, which will be in the spring, where our studios will be open to the public. And, then beyond that, in 2026, I'm going to be, doing a large installation for the Montclair Art Museum.

Oh, cool. I'm excited about that. Although it's seems far away right now. So what's what's the main material for that installation? That is, I'm going to use the,

both historic and publication materials that the museum has produced and has overflow of throughout the years. And I'm going to take all of those envelopes and brochures and catalogs and,

postcards, etc. and, cut them up and create kind of a giant, arch that will go over a stairwell and then kind of go up onto the windows and wrap around the windows.

Oh, wow. And really be inside of. Yeah, that sounds so cool. And that's just reminding me about another question I wanted to ask you. You had put out a call on social media asking people to save those signs for voting signs from the election. Yes. What are you doing with those that I'm going to use them in the Socrates show?

But yes, that's another a great example of what happens when you try and collect materials.

yeah, I put calls out on Instagram and Facebook and that kind of thing. And, you know, people have 1 or 2 signs and then you need to go get them. So it's it's great that people respond, but it's not particularly efficient.

So, I called all the local, municipal, all public, works department to see, you know, what happens to these signs. And often people are told to put them in recycling. Then I found a woman who is starting a new, project, and a new business, collecting things that are hard to recycle. And she had told people that she would take any election signs they had after the election.

And, she worked very hard to find the one place in new Jersey where she could bring these things. And the only reason they would accept them is because she would present them as a bail, that they could not go through the machinery because, of course, the way the machinery works, you're you can't have large flat planes going through the plastic that those, corrugated plastic signs are made of is number five, but apparently the lower grade of number five.

So, number five is not always recycled anyway, but you can't mix a lower grade into it, so they're really not recyclable in that way unless it's just those signs altogether. And then I'm not sure what happens, but apparently that is something that you can sell. But to get a bale, you need thousands and thousands of those signs.

So then I finally got smart and realized I should go to the source, and I started calling all of the campaigns and asking them if I could have their excess signs. And especially, for school boards.

The people who run for those seats often go around and collect the signs afterwards, partly because they're expensive. In case they're going to use them again, and partly just kind of as part of the duty of being a good citizen.

Well, that that's not being along the roads. And there's I can see those signs in the bushes. They're everywhere. Yeah, yeah. I that's the way I dealt with the election. And actually the day, after the election, I spent a couple of days just driving around collecting signs because, I was so upset and I needed something to do.

And I didn't take the Harris water signs because I thought that that would upset people to have them disappear. But, you know, there were plenty of other signs that were around. Anyway, I eventually I've amassed about 600 of them and I'm like, I well can open take taking more. Okay.

So for all your listeners, well, if you're listening to this at the end of March of 2025, check with Kate for a seat.

She still needs them.

Well, this has been super duper fascinating. Kate, thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. It's great to talk to you, Natalya, and all of the things you're doing are wonderful. I really commend you for the community that you're creating. It's terrific. Thank you. Well, thank you for being a part of it. Yeah. My pleasure.

Thanks so much for listening. That was such a fascinating conversation. I think we could have kept talking even longer and maybe this would have been part one, and to two episodes could have happened here, but there you go. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. All the links are in the episode notes,

And I have to remind you. Doors to the Repurposer Collective are about to open for April Earth Month. So get your name on that waitlist. Click on over to repurposer collective.com. Click the waitlist button and be the first in line to know when the doors open. I can't wait to greet you there.

This podcast was created, produced and edited by me, Natalya Khorover. Theme music by RC Guida. Find out more about me at Art by natalya.com. Find out about my community at Repurposer Collective.com

Thank you for listening.