Hidden in Plain Sight and Brought to Light: Natalia Khorover’s Transformative Waste Practice and Upcoming Salvage Art Summit

By: Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein 

Natalya Khorover’s quilted urban landscapes offer hidden surprises and lessons about waste and climate change. For over two decades, she has seamlessly integrated and transformed plastic and other discarded materials into her work so that it becomes nearly unrecognizable. This upcoming September 24th to 27th, she has organized a Salvage Art Summit that will host 20+ art-activists gathering together about a common passion for creative resilience and sustainability. We hope to see you there! It is free to sign up at this link: https://www.salvageartsummit.com

Natalya, It is very exciting to hear that you are running a Salvage Art Summit later this month (Sept 24 to 27)! Would you tell our members what they can look forward to when participating? 

The Salvage Summit (Sept 24–27) is a free virtual gathering for artivists (artists who are also activists). Participants can expect workshops, thought-provoking sessions, and presentations from 20+ leaders on transforming waste into art, championing sustainability, and fueling creative resilience. The event includes live sessions, a Telegram community for discussions, and a Co-Create Day with interactive activities. Free registration grants 24-hour access to daily presentations, with an option to upgrade to the Reclaim Pass for lifetime access and exclusive content.



What a unique opportunity to hear from 20+ leaders on sustainability art-ivism! Which includes yourself, having worked with salvaged materials for many years. How does combining single use plastics through sewing allow you to reflect on the climate crisis and sustainability? 

It’s my way of taking what would end up choking our planet and giving it new life. And here’s the thing: it makes people stop and look at what they’d usually ignore, and that’s how I get them thinking about sustainability and the climate crisis. In many ways, it’s a meditative process which is also good for my sanity. Sewing single-use plastics together, by hand or with my industrial machine, is how I transform trash into something beautiful and unrecognizable.

(Screenshot from www.artbynatalya.com)

Transforming trash into something beautiful and unrecognizable as a form of artivism and meditation in your depictions of urban landscapes must be a powerful experience. Why is it important to your message and process that they become beautiful and unrecognizable?

I make the plastics blend right into my urban landscapes because trash is already everywhere — we just don’t always see it. We’re blind to it. By making it part of the scene, I force people to notice what’s normally invisible. And that’s the whole point: once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and maybe it’ll push you to do something about the climate crisis.

Thank you so much, Natalya. We are looking forward to seeing you on September 24th and really digging into how art can create change! 

REGISTER

Visitors learn about MARZ while touring Un-development 2 at Metabolic Studio

Un-development 2

MARZ Soil Remediation

Transforming a Contaminated Industrial Site into a Living Riverbed

Metabolic Studio

Aug 12, 2026

MARZ is a soil remediation experiment within Metabolic Studio’s Un-development 2, a project that aims to transform an industrial warehouse into a living riverbed connected to the Los Angeles River floodplain. The site was formerly associated with Standard Oil and then used as a petrochemical storage facility, and baseline testing confirmed elevated lead and petroleum-range organics beneath the warehouse floor.

From April 2023, to June 2026, artist/chemist Maru García worked with Metabolic Studio’s Farmlab team, developing protocols and testing bioremediation strategies that could be used in situ. The first phase of the project tested surface-applied zeolites, compost, mulch, and phytoremediation, with three different treatment protocols in nine plots. In the second phase, after identifying willow as a strong remediator, we favored willow phytoremediation and added oyster mushrooms in all plots.

The study prioritized methods that reduce exposure, avoid disruptive excavation, support soil as a living ecosystem, and can be replicated at sites without industrial remediation infrastructure. We have included our results and methodology below along with a poster summarizing the results, and a remediation toolkit that explains how you can use these methods yourself.

Click here to download the poster and the soil remediation toolkit.

Continue reading full article on the Metabolic Studio Substack here

Online Course for Members October 24, 2026 - January 2, 2027 Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio: Environmental Justice DEADLINE October 1, 2026 This course will help artists integrate a solidarity-oriented approach to their creative practice, as we address the significance of intersectional thinking within repressive structures. We will cover topics such as environmental justice, decolonial praxis, and food sovereignty, (among others) to understand the impacts of globalization on people and the environment. As we study these topics alongside the function of art in cultural production, participants will be invited to attune to their surroundings through collaboration, advocacy, contribution, or invocation in their own eco-art practice. No prior understanding is required.  As part of our Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio series, participants will also learn how to wildcraft art materials, and think critically about how one’s community and ecosystem are vital allies in a time of socio-ecological destabilization.   The first half of the course includes lectures, guest artist talks, resource offerings, and group discussion, as we explore the implications of a justice-oriented art practice and investigate the function of art today. In the second half of the course, each student will work on their own research project, informed by course content (this may include a project already in progress). They will receive feedback from Anna and the class before a final presentation, open to the public.  All classes will be held on Saturdays from 2-4pm ET. The first three sessions will take place over three consecutive weeks, beginning on October 24th. The final two classes will take place over two months, giving students time to execute a creative project of their own inspired by course content. This online course is taught by Anna Chapman with guest artists Juan William Chávez, and Beverly Naidus.

Course Schedule I - Intro to Solidarity in Creative Practice - Saturday, October 24, 2-4pm EST - Visiting artist from ecoartspace (((Bee (Beverly) Naidus)))  - Function of art in cultural production - Ecological frameworks - Environmental Justice  - Solidarity in creative practice - The local and the global II - Art Processes & Sustainability - Saturday, October 31, 2-4pm EST - Sustainability as a standalone concept - Historical background of art - Sustainable art processes - Paints, inks, & watercolors - Charcoal - Natural dyes  - Papermaking  - Found & recycled materials - Ecological approaches to art education III - Objectives, Relationships & Alliances - Saturday, November 7, 2-4pm EST - Visiting artist from ecoartspace (((Juan William Chavez))) - Interbeing  - Local relationships and alliances - Decolonial frameworks - Settler-colonial + Indigenous Relations - Food sovereignty - Developing ideas around sustainability - Action plan (students develop a project from an action plan) VI - Progress Presentations - Saturday, December 5, 2-4pm EST - Participants share the research and progress of their projects and receive feedback from class and instructor V - Presentations - Saturday, January 2, 2-4pm EST - Participants present and debrief about their projects Anna Chapman is passionate about the intersection of art, education, ecology and healing. Believing that interdisciplinary approaches to art and education are necessary to meaning-making in the context of the Anthropocene, her work is inspired by post-colonial, post-human, early European, and indigenous perspectives. Through her practice, Anna aims to mobilize reconciliatory relationships to place, community, materiality, and voice, to awaken one’s innate capacity for care and creative life force. She received a BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012, a Masters of Arts in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022, and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at UMass Amherst. Anna currently teaches through the Center for Art Education and Sustainability, the Continuing Education department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Umass Amherst. @owl_and_apple  annachapmaneducation.com Cost is $375 per member, membership fee can be waved if needed. Approximately 12 participants max. Scholarships available.  Email info@ecoartspace.org to participate

August 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here

Fostering Underlife Gardens Through Image: Cindy Stockton Moore on her work as a naturalist animator and her upcoming workshop @SWALE

Interview with Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Cindy Stockton Moore creates research-based animations about underground soil ecosystems. Trained as a naturalist, she has written extensively about art making and has a fully integrated artistic practice making her own natural inks and dyes for her artwork and animations. By integrating foraging practices and informing her work with environmental science, she collaborates with musicians and poets to create animations that are reflective and educate about the natural world. We are very excited to have her give a workshop at ecoartspace @SWALE on Governors Island in New York City, Saturday, August 8th, from 2 to 4pm EDT exploring underground motion through hands-on animation techniques. To sign up for the “Animated Soil Workshop” with Cindy Stockton Moore, please use the following link: ecoartspace - Swale House - Governors Island 2026.

Hi Cindy, your upcoming workshop where you will teach participants to make short animations reflecting underground ecologies sounds super interesting. Would you tell us a bit about what participants can expect from the workshop?

In this workshop, participants will be introduced to some of the underlife creatures found in the rDNA tests of the soil. From there, we’ll be making analog animations – starting with a simple two-frame motion – imagining the ways things may move underground. I’ll bring in some early moving image devices – zoetropes and phenakistoscopes – to build up to multiple frames and play with the optics of moving images.

As well as being an artist, you are also a master naturalist. What does this work look like? And how did your inspiration sprout from this interest?

This is a great question and opportunity to clarify! I don’t have an additional master's degree as a naturalist – I am a PA Master Naturalist, which is more akin to being a Master Gardener. The Master Naturalist program is an extension of my volunteer conservation work and provides a network for collaborations with like-minded people and organizations in the state. I’ve been certified since 2024, and this year, I’ve been working with The Land Health Institute on a series of workshops, experiments and talks around natural color and native species.

It sounds like you will be integrating this work into the animation workshop, which reflects your unique work as a naturalist animator. Does your practice process look like this as well?

My process is a blend of studio and field work. Since I make my own pigments and paints, I am often outdoors gathering, growing, and foraging materials for color. I also gather imagery and visual samples in the field. The work of converting the natural materials to paints and paintings mainly occurs in the studio. The paintings are often animated into experimental videos – and that means time on the computer, layering and editing. For my process (and sanity), it’s important to fluctuate between the two to ground my work and my practice off-screen. Several times a year, I structure a mini-residency to be primarily outdoors and away from the city to reconnect.

I’ve always been inspired by a curiosity about the natural world – and rewarded by observing it deeply. This parallel between the environmental sciences is played out in the studio and during outreach. In this project, animation brings to life some of the wonders and complexity of our more-than-human collaborators.

Thanks, Cindy! We are looking forward to finding out more on August 8th!

RSVP 

July 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here

Flyer: Museum of Fishes & Greens, on view now through June 28th, River Center in Beacon, New York. Additional hours by appointment, contact eve@soonisnow.org

Carried by Hand: What the AI Inevitability Argument Leaves Out

Photography, Water, and the Fight That Is Coming

Substack post by Lesly Deschler Canossi, including review of the Museum of Fishes & Greens commissioned by Soon is Now, Beacon, New York

excerpted from here

A kind of refusal

As I write this, I am sitting in the Museum of Fishes & Greens, an exhibition presented and commissioned by Soon is Now, a climate and eco-themed arts organization founded by Eve Morgenstern, producing exhibitions, live performances, residencies, and artist-led workshops on the Hudson River/Muhheakantuck in Beacon, New York. Museum of Fishes & Greens is an immersive multimedia collaboration, made out of an exchange of ideas and art workshops between Food Studio Collective, a multidisciplinary group of artists, curators, and scholars from Kolkata and Shantiniketan, India, and women in fishing and farming communities in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. Bringing together batik sari textiles, handmade paper, a handcrafted book with data, memories, plants and recipes, and three films, this project explores the social, ecological, and cultural impact of food systems and climate change through art. The show features the handwork and personal stories of women in the Sundarbans, the biodiverse delta in West Bengal that climate change is actively dismantling.

In March and April of this year, with the support of the Food Studio Collective, these women made saris from their own drawings of fishes and plants, made paper from local vegetation, and recorded their recipes. The saris hang throughout the exhibition space, forming a kind of tent, loosely reminiscent of clotheslines, creating a warm and intimate environment for visitors to move through the flora, fauna, and fish of the Sundarbans. Handmade paper, made with locally foraged greens and fish parts, adds an unusual textural element, and original drawings by the women hang on moveable walls, giving the space the feeling of a working studio. Three films place you alongside the women as they forage, cook, create, and live. The result is an archive of knowledge - culinary, agricultural, and ecological - that the Sundarbans may not be able to hold much longer, translated into craft by the people who carry it.

Installation view: At Scenic Hudson’s River Center, Museum of Fishes & Greens, a multimedia collaboration on climate, craft and food by , artists and curators from Kolkata, and women from fishing and farming communities in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. Source

This installation allows us, 8000 miles away, to hear directly from the women as they wade into waters while navigating crocodiles and snakes, and into the markets where they sell what they have gathered. But the water itself is changing with rising salinity, driven by the Bay of Bengal pushing inland as sea levels climb, transforming the Sundarbans from the inside. The region sits at the confluence of hundreds of rivers and the planet’s largest mangrove forest, ecosystems that have long buffered these communities from the worst of what the ocean can do. But mangroves are being cleared for aquaculture, farming, and human settlement, and an estimated 20 to 35 percent of the world’s mangroves have been lost since 1980. As glaciers melt and temperatures rise, the delta’s capacity to hold back the sea shrinks. Work is already scarce. For many women here, wading in water in service of the fishing industry is one of the few options left.

Portrait of local collaborator: Gauri Mandal with original / enlarged drawing (in background), and printed sari detail from limited edition handcrafted cookbook: Recipe of Resilience, subtitle: Museum of Fishes & Greens, curated by Sayantan Maitra Boka

Continue reading here

June 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is  here

PLAYA campus and pond with the Fremont-Winema National Forest in the background

EMPHASIZING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN COMMUNITY AND THE LAND THROUGH ART AND SCIENCE: PLAYA’s Approach to Socially and Ecologically Engaged Community-driven Art Projects Blending Art and Science in Rural Oregon

By: Olivia Ann Carye-Hallstein

Sitting at Summer Lake in the Great Basin in Rural Oregon, PLAYA hosts a number of residencies and other opportunities for artists working at the intersection of Arts and Science, Community and Justice. Kathryn Wilson, the Program Manager, at PLAYA describes the organization’s approach and understanding of successful engagement within their unique Rural Oregon location. Where tribal nations, ranchers, watershed councils, amongst other communities meet, many artists work within the communities to shed light and contribute through workshops, reflecting on the changing climate, the land, and cross-cultural engagement. For those interested in working with PLAYA, consider applying to the  2027 Art/Sci Awarded Residency application before it closes on June 30. 

Hi Kathryn, I would love to learn more about PLAYA’s relationship to its location situated in a high desert basin and surrounded by such a diverse community. How does your location contribute and inform the work you do there? 

Lake County's Oregon Outback informs everything we do--from the landscape to the community. The Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of Northern Paiute have called this land home since time immemorial, and some more recent families have been ranching here for eight generations. Our programs are designed to introduce and immerse people in this breathtaking landscape, exposing them to its natural features: flora, fauna, geology, water systems, shorebirds, dark skies, and so much more. Our programs also use art as a pathway into relationship with, and knowledge about, this landscape. This region faces significant social and ecological challenges, and PLAYA works alongside the community to foster dialogue and serve as a partner in addressing these issues. We regularly host scientists conducting research in the region. Whether residents spend days unplugging and taking in the wide-open playa (or Summer Lake, depending on the time of year), exploring the wild Fremont-Winema forest, or walking through high desert wetlands, they often have a transformative experience.

Art/Sci Awarded Residency March 2026 cohort

Since PLAYA hosts a number of art/science residency opportunities in rural Oregon, often focused on specific ecological challenges, such as wildfires & water and BIPOC makers there must be a range of projects that you see. What does a successful residency period look like to you? 

A successful residency at PLAYA can take many forms, so we like to think of it as a living ecosystem of exchange, research, and mastery—where artists and scientists cross-pollinate ideas across disciplines, collaborate with the natural world, deepen their craft, and share dialogue, knowledge, and inspiration with Lake County locals. Some residents use unstructured time for creative exploration and production, while others spend their days in the field researching, playing, and discovering new approaches to their work. Strong collaborations and friendships often emerge as a result. A meaningful indicator of success is genuine community engagement, whether through workshops in local schools, outings with residents, or open studio tours. Rural Oregon is a living network of Tribal nations, ranchers, watershed councils, and more. For us, success means residents don't just make work about the community—they work relationally with it.

What an important consideration that often gets overlooked. Do you mind expanding? What do you find that art can uniquely contribute in working with a community ‘relationally’ to address the challenges faced in rural Oregon and beyond? 

Art brings people together to clarify what matters most to a community. When that consensus is visualized through art, it can help develop a strong core for the community to return to when deciding what to fight for and how to face challenges together. Community-driven art builds coalition, collaboration, relationships, and trust—skills that are essential for solving critical problems.

Art can have an enormous impact on communities facing socio-political and ecological challenges. When artists—even those who may not be local to a community—reflect back the opinions and stories of local residents, as well as the science and stories of the natural world within and around that community, their work creates an opportunity to see these issues in a new light. Artists and scientists who engage with locals also foster relationships and bonds with people who hold different perspectives on complex issues. 

Heather Goodwind in her studio at PLAYA, 2025

Keeping all this in mind, what kinds of projects have come out of previous residencies that you are particularly excited about?

Many collaborators have come through PLAYA, and many new collaborations have been born here when artists and scientists find each other in synchrony. One particularly exciting project is happening right now: spearheaded by Wildfire + Water artist Sabina Haque and poet Emilie Lygren, The Memory of Water: Field Notes from Pakistan & Eastern Oregon is a cross-cultural ecology exchange project connecting Oregon and Pakistan through water, salt, fire, migration, and climate memory. The project links students in Paisley, Oregon, with students in Karachi, Pakistan, through art and poetry centered on our shared climate crisis. The work will be on view this September at our Wildfire + Water Pop-Up exhibit at PLAYA.

Both PLAYA’s focuses on artistic engagement as well as impact sound really exciting to me. What will be next for PLAYA? 

We are excited to see how PLAYA will grow in the coming years, deepening the partnerships and collaborations that are central to its mission. The coming year will emphasize continued cohort programming, expanded educational partnerships, and public-facing programs that invite dialogue and shared learning. For instance, the Wildfire + Water: Artists and Scientists Adapting to Change residency Pop-Up Exhibit this September will be the culmination of a year-long immersion: new works by nine artists exploring the urgent issues of wildfire and water in Lake County. Informed by the expertise of local collaborators, the artists' works offer timely reflections on critical social and environmental issues in this region. Through long-term relationships with regional and academic partners, PLAYA aims to strengthen opportunities for artists, scientists, students, and community members to work together and respond to environmental and cultural change. 

We are open to hearing from groups we have not yet connected with who wish to start a collaboration with PLAYA. Whether through a campus rental, a collaboratively built program, or something else entirely, we are always looking for more opportunities for mutual growth.

Lake Abert, Lake County, Oregon

Thank you so much, Kathryn! For anyone interested in applying to the 2027 residency or other opportunities at PLAYA, Visit PLAYA’s website here.

May 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here