My very first solo episode!

In my first solo episode, I announce the Salvage Art Summit—a free, virtual event (September 24–26) for artivists who transform waste into art and champion sustainability. I’ve gathered artists, activists, and wellness practitioners to share techniques, strategies, and tools to fuel our creative resilience. Registration opens September 3—join the waitlist at SalvageArtSummit.com for early access!

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

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Welcome to Salvage, a podcast for conversations with artists about the repurposed materials they use in their art practice.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Salvage. This one is really, really different because it's my first ever solo episode. Yeah, we're halfway through season three, and I'm doing the solo episode finally. So why am I doing a solo episode? Well, first off, there were several interviews with artists that unfortunately fell through due to scheduling life issues and etc. I'm hoping that those will get rescheduled in the future, but sometimes summer is a difficult time to schedule a podcast interview.

The other reason for the lack of episodes in the last couple of months is because I have been very, very busy planning something very exciting. Now, if you are, a newsletter subscriber, you have already heard about it. I've been dropping hints for a couple of months, and a couple of weeks ago I wrote an email all about it.

If you've been following me on Instagram, you would have seen hints of that there as well.

But I have not shared such a thing on this podcast here. Well, because mainly when I recorded the last few interviews, I wasn't sure that I was going to be pulling this off. I wasn't sure if it was happening yet, so I kept quiet about it.

But. So here, for the first time, sharing on the Salvage podcast, I'm here to tell you that I have been very busy planning the Salvage Art Summit. The name came so easy to me. As soon as I got the idea of creating this summit, it was not even a second later that it was like, oh my God, it has to be the Salvage Art Summit.

It can't be anything else. It's the only thing that makes sense. And that's what I stuck with since then. What is this summit about? Well, this summit is about you. Really? And me. It's about everyone who listens to this podcast and enjoys the interview with the

creative, reuse, repurposed media artists that I interview here.

The language keeps changing, or it's hard to keep the language the same. I'm not sure that everyone always understands what is repurposer like. My Repurposer Collective people are like, what is a repurposer? Or I think most people who are repurposing materials for their own art practice understand what that means, but people who are not doing that usually like what is a repurposer?

Or that's not even a word. You’re right. Repurpose is a word. I just added an R at the end of it and, I made it into. Is it a noun? No, it's a noun, a verb. It's a noun. Don't ask me about the rules of rest of English language. I couldn't begin to tell you those. Mostly I know how to speak and write.

But don't ask me the rules. I will tell you the same thing about the Russian language, even though that is my mother tongue. I know how to say it. For the most part. I know how to write it for the most part, but I couldn't tell you the rules behind it. Anyhow, I'm hoping not to keep this too much of a ramble.

Salvage Art Summit is going to be taking place at the end of September, September 24th, 25th, and 26th, and it is made for artivists. If you've been in my world for a while, you know that an artivist is an artist who is also an activist. And there are so many of us out there who are exactly that we transform waste into art.

We championed sustainability.

And this summit is here to

to help you transform waste into art, to give you some new ways, perhaps to transform waste into art. It's certainly there to help you champion sustainability, but it is also there to help you fuel your creative resilience. Because when we are artists who are working with such weird and strange materials, such as plastic trash such as, trash that we find on the beaches, such as weird pieces of wood or, fabrics that no one else would look at.

It's a different type of practice. And not everyone understands it. And people in the more traditional art world, as in painting and sculpture,

always don't always. But a lot of times look at us askance, like, what are we doing? Now, I know the world is changing, and it certainly is in my

in in my work, in my art world, I see it changing.

I have so many friends, and I know so many other artists who repurpose materials in their art practice and have been doing so for decades. I know that it's becoming more and more normal, but it's still not completely normal. And now, while I am,

I have never been a huge fan of normal.

I think people I think it's better to be a little weird than normal, but whatever.

Everybody has their own version of normal, right? Where was I going with this?

I think that when artists participate in the creative reuse, when they transform discarded materials, aka trash, into art, and when they at the same time are advocating for, a legislature to be changed so that we can do something about the climate crisis that we are a part of.

I think that adds a different level of stress to the artist, because it's stressful enough to be an artist and try to make a living as an artist. Whether you are a teaching artist or an artist trying to sell their work, or an artist who does both or any other configuration, you know, as artists, we are blessed with the ability of make a living in so many different ways,

so that we can pick and choose what works best for our personality.

And it's all it's it's not easy. I'm sure that most people who are in the freelance world, who are in the gig economy, understand that, that it's not easy to make a living as an artist, no matter what type of an artist you are. But when you add to that the element of being an activist. And I think, by the way, artists make wonderful activists.

But when you add that to the mix and you want to be helpful, at the very least helpful to the movement that is trying to curb, climate pollution of this planet, single use plastic pollution, any kind of pollution, whether you are doing just the very simplest things of picking up your trash or other people's trash, or you are doing something a lot more, involved, such as helping support,

politicians who want to pass the good legislature to call to curb pollution or to pass laws that would ask you, ask us to do things better by the environment when you participate in that, and whether you are just, not just whether

you are, spending time and money sending out cards or sharing the information, or whether you are out there going to your local politicians offices and standing there with signs or trying to talk to them, or whether you're marching in the street, whatever it is you're doing that makes your job as an artist even more stressful than just an artist trying to earn a living.

So that's why I am doing this summit with three different types of speakers. So the first type of a speaker is an artist, and that is someone that you are would most likely expect at this kind of a summit. You would expect artists who would share their techniques and tell you about how they repurpose their materials, what is meaningful for their art practice.

So I have many artists who will be doing exactly that. I will have an overlap of artists who are also activists, and they will share their art techniques, and they will also to tell you about what kind of activism they participate in. I will also have activists who are maybe artists or maybe not artists or just love the arts.

But their main mission in life is being activists. And that's from volunteer activists to actual professional activists. And they will talk about how they go about their activism. They'll have some ideas for you to how you can also do activism, where you can start what the venues are for doing. So. And I will also have the people that I'm calling the tenders.

I had a hard time coming up with that award.

There was a lot of dictionary looking online dictionary looking to come up with the right word for it. But I think a tender is someone who tends to people is where I'm thinking from. So because when you are an artist and activist, you are usually a pretty stressed person.

I think it's easy to get stressed, especially in the activism world, because, you know, it's not easy being an activist. You get emotionally involved and you get worried about whether you're doing enough, whether the people you're working with are doing enough. You get discouraged all the time about how what you're doing is not enough at some point or another.

So you wind up getting rather stressed out about it. And that manifests in your body. Sometimes people have all sorts of aches and pains because they're stressed. And also, you know, your brain can go haywire too, and you can get into a depression because, you know, things are not working as well as they should be or as fast as they should be to make the world a better place.

So that's why people like the tenders, who are

somatic practitioners, EFT practitioners, or wellness practitioners or humor practitioners, because even humor is so important to keeping your sanity. Basically, those are the people that I have invited to the summit who will have some really simple ways to help you stay sane in this crazy world of ours.

That I think is super important and in this day and age is because, you know, we need to keep sane while we're doing these important things.

We need to keep sane, and healthy while we're creating our art. We need to stay sane and healthy as we are participating in activism. And if we're doing both of those things, that is even more stressful. So that is why I have the people that I'm calling the tenders, in the summit. So that is

my very wordy, but simple, hopefully enough to understand description of what I'm doing.

I've wanted to do this something like this for a very, very long time. It took me a while to figure out just how this could come together. And of course, I wish I could do this all in person. You know, like a find a place where we can all meet and talk to each other in person and hold hands and hug and all of that.

But that,

I think, is something in the future. I have high hopes that I can do an in-person summit one day.

It's a whole other heavy lift to be able to pull off of an event like that in person. So I decided that I would do this event virtually. So you can be anywhere in the world and attend. It'll be three days of presentations. There will be some live ones. Most of them will be prerecorded because, you know, technology things can get very, very complicated and things can get messed up.

So I decided that I would have most of the presentations by everyone prerecorded, so I can have everything uploaded to the website and everything's set. There will be live presentation as well. There are like for instance, there will be a live opening call with me. And that will be on zoom and all the links will be on the website.

And yes, the website, by the way, is Salvage Art Summit that I can't speak. Salvage Art Summit.com. That's the website. So all the links would be there right now if you go to Salvage Art Summit.com you will just see a wait list. So and I highly, highly encourage you to put your name on the wait list, because the people on the waitlist will be the first to know when registration opens.

After that, the second people to know that registration opens will be all the other people on my, newsletter list.

And then after that, I'll be shouting it from the rooftops. Well, the rooftops of Instagram and Facebook.

And I will be. And my speakers will also be shouting from the social media rooftops about it, as well as sharing about it in their newsletters.

But the very first people who will know that registration is open will be the people on the waitlist. Now

the registration is free. This summit is virtual. Oh, wait, I didn't finish telling you about the live sessions. So yes, there will be a live opening call. There will be at the end of every day will be alive. Sort of a wrap up session at the end of every day where I'm thinking of doing something a little more hands on.

So whoever is going to pop in there, we're going to talk about what the presentations were during that day, and maybe work on some of the techniques that were shared in those presentations.

Oh, I'll be doing a presentation on my technique as well. So it's going to be sort of a a very casual zoom get together where people can work on maybe a technique they've just learned, oh, we can just talk about it.

It's going to be very easy and relaxed. Finished for the day and only for about an hour. Okay, back to the back to the registration for the summit. So the summit is completely free to attend.

Everyone who registers for the summit will have 24 hours to watch all the presentations that are available that day.

And, oh, by the way, the presentations aren't very long.

The live sessions will be about an hour, but all the presentations will be only about 20 minutes long. So it's not like you'll be spending the whole day trapped at the computer. And also a lot of things with that. You know, maybe you don't want to watch every single presentation. You'll only want to watch a couple of presentations, and that's fine too.

Anyhow, the presentations will be free for everyone to watch for 24 hours.

But there will also be an option. An option to upgrade to what I'm calling the Reclaim Pass, which means that, you could watch the presentations.

First of all, you could you would be able to watch all the presentations at once if you wanted to.

Although I think that would be a little crazy.

Or but you can watch them for as long as you wish. You would have lifetime access to all the presentations, and you would also actually get other bonuses. As well, there will be, a couple of presentations that are just for the Reclaim Pass holders. You know,

I want to give everything away for free.

But for the people who are willing to pay to have access for a lot longer, I also want to reward them for wanting to do that. So there will be a couple of sessions that are just for the Reclaim Pass holders. Those will be live sessions, which will be, by the way, all the live sessions will be recorded.

So if you can't be there live for the session, there will always be a recording to watch. So yes, the Reclaim Pass will have extra bonuses such as these live sessions. And there will be some bonuses from the speakers that are only for the Reclaim Pass holders.

The Reclaim Pass will be available once you register for the event for free.

You will have an option to upgrade for the Reclaim Pass.

If you upgrade right away, there will be a very generous discount for you to do so. If you upgrade at some point later, there will still be a discount if you upgrade before the, summit itself.

But then if you upgrade during the summit, it'll be the full price.

So I am trying to keep this as fair as possible to everyone. But I'm also trying to give more options to the people who

have the ability to spend a little to get a slightly, more involved deal, so to speak.

So I hope that makes everything clear.

This is this is what I've been working on nonstop, and even more so I am working on it so much right now that I'm actually literally dreaming about it in the middle of the night.

If I wake up to go to the bathroom like we do in the middle of the night. I wake up from a dream where I was trying to figure out how to do something on my website, or something else that still needed to be get done for the summit. So I'm, Yeah, I'm living and breathing this summit right now.

I am having email and Instagram conversations with my speakers. I am gathering the information from my speakers. I am talking to them about their presentations. Jumping on zoom calls with them to talk about their presentations. Some speakers are totally like, I got this. I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm on it. And other speakers, just like life, need a little bit more.

I don't want to say hand-holding, but a little more of a conversation. So we have a conversation about what kind of a presentation they can put together. You know, usually I'm approaching speakers because I either know them already personally or I have learned about them from someone else. But I research the speaker and I know what their, art practice or their activism practice or their wellness practice is.

So I have an idea of what I specifically would like them to present at the summit.

So, but sometimes we need to have a conversation because just I have because I have an idea of what I would like them to present. Doesn't mean that they're comfortable with that idea. Or maybe they have a different idea, which might be even better than my idea.

So sometimes a conversation is necessary. And I found that definitely something that, has been important is you have a conversation and you start by saying, well, I think I would like you to do this. And they start with saying, well, I kind of do this. And then as we talk, all of a sudden a third brilliant idea comes up and we're like both, yes, this is what needs to be.

This is what the presentation needs to be. So that is what I'm up to right now. I'm building, website pages. I am a recording my own presentations. And I am working on, you know, sharing about it a little bit here. Well, as much as possible about it on social media, I've been sharing about it in my newsletter.

So this is what I've been up to. And I'm sort of as I'm talking to you, I'm looking at my registration page, which is, not available yet. It's just, it's still in the works. Like, I don't have any of my speakers on there. I have a lot of verbiage and some images, but I don't actually have my speaker information on there yet.

I'm just getting getting there. Just I'm going to be actually, later today, I will be adding some of the speakers whose headshots and other information I already have onto that page. So.

To wrap up, this Salvage Art Summit will take place on Thursday, September 24th through Saturday, September 25th. There will be a variety of presentations to choose from each day. This event is entirely virtual, so you can attend from anywhere in the world with internet access. Of course, there will be workshops. There will be thought provoking sessions. And I'm going to have about 20 thought leaders in this artist activist wellness space who can't wait to talk to you about this.

And actually, I just remembered something that I had had forgotten to mention the talk to you about part there will also be available to everyone who signs up for free, or who upgrades to the Reclaim Pass. There will be a, a telegram space for everyone to have conversations in. Some of the speakers will be in there.

I will be in there. We will have a conversation there. And if you have questions to the speakers, you can post them in there. If the speaker can't get to the telegram chat themselves, I will make sure to share your question with them and then share you the answer as well. So yes, there will be a telegram speaker space.

If you're not familiar with telegram, it's an app for your phone, sort of like WhatsApp, where you can have text conversations. You can include images, you can include videos. You can actually record videos. Yeah. You can do lots of things on telegram. I use it all the time in a different coaching group that I am, and that's how I learned about it.

And it's really it's super easy. Sometimes you'll get a weird spam, message from someone that you have no idea about, and I just block that user and go, bye bye. And that just happens every now and then. I have had that happen on WhatsApp as well. The reason I chose telegram is because, well, because I like using it.

And also I don't go on Facebook very often. I the stuff that I share on Instagram gets automatically posted to Facebook. But really Facebook for me is to go and wish a friend a happy birthday and I'm always forgetting to check on there. And I know there's plenty of people out there who don't like Facebook as well, so I was trying to choose a neutral space to be able to have interactions.

So telegram is it for this summit and hopefully it will work as well as I would like it to work. And when you register for the summit, you will get a link to join the telegram chat group. So yeah. So everything that you will get announcement emails for will also be announced in telegram and even more.

So what else can I tell you? What else have I forgotten to tell you already? Oh, I know what. I was just preparing this page yesterday. There will be a scholarship, so the scholarship will be open to everyone. Whether you are a free registrant or at, the Reclaim Pass register is open to everyone. I will be giving away a one year scholarship to the Repurposer Collective.

All you have to do is fill out a form and answer a couple of questions as to why you would want the scholarship, and I will choose the winner on the very last day of the summit, and you will get one year membership to the Repurposer Collective, completely free. So what else am I forgetting to tell you?

There's so much that's going to be a part of this that sometimes I forget myself, even though I have planned it all. So yes, artists will talk about making and creating with waste to help shift culture and fuel the climate movement and fuel your creativity. There will be like, talks about activism that organizing, campaigning, building the collective power that we need to challenge these systems and demand change and a healthier, better future for our planet and for us and our children and grandchildren and the tender's well-being, the people who attend to the artists who are doing this work so that, you know, we don't burn out and we can keep going.

Your free ticket will include 24 hour access to all of these presentations and to the private summit community and chances to win. I haven't figured out exactly what these chances to win, what the prizes will be yet. I'm still working on that. But there will be chances to win, prizes that are not the scholarship. Something else.

And then, of course, you'll be able to upgrade for the VIP experience with the Reclaim Pass. And the last day of the summit, I'm calling it the Co-Create Day. They'll be live and they'll be interactive. Some of them will be bonuses for their reclaim pass holders, and others will be for everyone. I am going to have the members of Repurposer Collective together for a member panel that will be on zoom, and we'll talk about our collaborative project called Currents of Connection.

You've heard a little bit here. If you're a if you listen to the podcast regularly, I've done three episodes of, my members talking about the Currents of Connection, collaborative project that we completed. And actually, we're still completing it. We're still in the process of doing it because we have another, few sections of it that didn't get completed in time for the first showing.

And we have a second showing coming up. So we'll be talking about that. We also do a showcase. Remember those panels I talked about at the end of that every, every day where you'll get to work on things and talk on things. So if you've made things during the summit, I want to do the Salvage Showcase where people can share what they've made during the summit.

I am going to do a special presentation about you. You guys all know about the reduce, reuse, recycle the three Rs. Well, you may have heard about my framework of the ten Rs. I actually have a free YouTube video about that. I'm going to do the expanded version of that. That'll be for the Reclaim Passholders only. But I'm also do going to do a closing keynote address and I'm calling it, You are the Ripple.

It's going to I'm going to talk about that really like butterflies. One small act will make a ripple outwards onto something bigger that any of us can do alone. So we will talk about that. And.

That's the main thing that is I think I've covered everything. Once the registration opens, all the information that I've talked about here will be on the registration page, including a FAQ section. You know, frequently asked questions and all of that. Everything will be on there. So to wrap this up, I hope that you will go to Savage Art Summit.com and you'll get your name on the waitlist.

And.

The registration will open it up on September 3rd. And if you're on the waitlist, obviously you get first dibs and then everybody else will know. So that's why I'm asking people to get on the on the waitlist so you can get right on there. And yeah. So that's it. So I'm not even going to do a commercial for this podcast.

I'm just going to tell you that this episode was brought to you by the Salvage Art Summit and of course, the Repurposer Collective. I cannot wait to start this going. I cannot wait to share everything else that I have been working on behind the scenes here. I am very excited about it. It's been a lot of work.

I am tired quite a lot, but I'm also exhilarated. It's been so much fun having the conversations with my speakers and planning everything behind the scenes. You know, from designing the web pages to, writing the explanations for everything, I it's it's just been exhilarating. That's the word. I'm so excited about the summit. I cannot wait to share all of it with you.

And I still have so much more to do because it's mid-August, but we're going to be ready. I can't I can't wait to share this with you. So again, please go to Salvage Art Summit.com and get yourself on the waitlist. And registration will open on September 3rd. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here today and I'll see you real soon.

Bye bye.

This podcast was created, produced and edited by me, Natalya Khorover. Theme music by RC Guida. To find out more about me, go to Art by Natalya.com to find out about my community, to to Repurposer Collective.com and to learn with me, check out all my offerings at Eco Loop Dot Art. Thank you for listening