Geo Crumbs: Making the Invisible Visible


by Michelle Sirois Silver

Artivist: Natalya Khorover

“What does one year of collecting trash look like?”

Geo Crumbs: Making the Invisible Visible (2023) is Natalya Khorover’s most personal installation to date. Bits and pieces of trash were collected over a year of walking along a favorite footpath in a forest. These geo crumbs of trash are cast in resin and installed in a small, abandoned building steps away from the footpath for people to see just how many crumbs they may have left behind on their walks.

An interactive component is a QR code created by the artist. Encased in resin, it hangs on one of the walls. When scanned a description of the concept for the installation pops up. Followed by a series of questions: Do you know about climate change? Do you know what plalking is and do you do it? Can you tell me something about the history of the forest you are hiking through? They can then sign a virtual guest book and leave a message for the artist.  

This well-traveled footpath is where Natalya walks her dog and where she collects trash crumbs discarded by walkers, hikers, and cyclists. She describes it as her little patch of forest, “Obviously it’s not mine but it’s where I walk my dog almost every day. It’s a beautiful patch of nature with mature maple and oak trees. A stream runs through it. When I find trash on the ground it breaks my heart. I want to clean it up.”

Calls to action come in many ways. Natalya comments that when one person picks up one piece of trash and puts it into the trash receptacle it saves that piece from being washed by the rain into the water way and flowing out into the ocean where eventually a fish will eat it. “It’s one small act that all of us can do,” she says.

The concept for Geo Crumbs came about organically so to speak. From September 2022 until September 2023, Natalya picked up pieces of plastic, glass, bits of metal, batteries, charging cables, lights from bicycles, condom wrappers, and lace underwear. As well as tennis balls, dog balls, golf balls, and tees.

The concept for the installation is an intuitive process. “In September 2022 when I first began picking up the trash along the footpath, instead of putting it into the trash receptacle I felt compelled to collect it. I would bring it home, wash, sort, and catalog it. I didn’t throw anything out. At the time I wasn’t sure why.”

Creating spaces for conversations about single use plastic is an underpinning for the artivism that Natalya engages with. The walks in the forest offered her the opportunity for contemplation and creative problem solving. It was during her dog walks that she routinely walked by an abandoned building. And, it was here she saw the opportunity to create an installation that would draw attention to the trash that she had collected along the path.

To prepare the trash for the installation it is cast in resin to prevent further harm. The resin casting is a transformative process turning the bits of trash into precious shiny objects. Installed in the secret gallery, the transformed geo crumbs have the potential to draw attention and generate conversations about the responsibilities we have for objects and the things we may unknowingly leave behind.

Our conversation broadens as we discuss her decision to work with resin. Intrigued by resin she also worried about it because it’s a fossil fuel product.  We talked about why her work requires a bonding element. Whether it’s polyester thread or acrylic paint. As far as she is concerned, they all have their detriment to the Anthropocene epoch. She concludes, “These are choices I must make.” 

Some of the work is suspended with wires. Other pieces are placed on the floor and create an unexpected mosaic effect. When the exhibition ends everything will be removed. It’s Natalya’s intention to cause no harm to the site. Everything will be taken away and exhibited again or reused to create new works.

“I want visitors to initially be attracted to the beauty of the installation but as they get closer, I want them to realize that it’s trash. I want them to be surprised. And I want them to think about how they may have contributed to the installation by leaving a geo crumb behind.”

Geo Crumbs: Making the Invisible Visible. The year of collecting trash is currently on display in the secret gallery somewhere in New York state (November 2023 – Winter 2024).  

Installation:  40.96593° N, 73.74636° W

Natalya Khorover is an artivist based in New York state. She describes the work she makes as environmental art that uses the discarded materials she finds within those environments. “Everything I make is made with repurposed materials. Specifically single use plastics. This is the core of my art practice.” Community participation in the form of workshops is a key underpinning for her installations with the intention to empower participants to engage in activism in actionable ways. “I’m compelled to draw people’s attention to single use plastics. And, the way I know how is to use the plastic in my art in ways that make it unrecognizable.  When someone first sees my work, they are drawn to the imagery, color, and texture. When they lean in, they pause and ask, ‘What’s that made from?’ This is where the conversation about single use plastic often begins.” Khorover is the founder of the Repurposer Collective. A community for creatives concerned about the environment and passionate about exploring repurposed materials in art. In 2023 Natalya was the teaching artist in residence at the Hudson River Museum. She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and is a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), Surface Design Association (SDA), the Katonah Museum Artist Association (KMAA), and the Silvermine Guild of Artists. In 2022, she created a site-specific installation from single-use plastic waste for The Social Fabric, an exhibition at ArtsWestchester in White Plains, NY. Her work has also been exhibited at the Dairy Barn’s biennial Quilt National (2021, 2017, 2013), the Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego, CA, The Other Art Fair in Brooklyn, NY, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show.

Photographs by Ana Szilagyi 

December 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Deep Horizons: A Multisensory Archive of Ecological Affects and Prospects

The specifics of ecological destruction often take a cruel turn, affecting those who can least resist its impacts and who are least responsible for it. Deep Horizons: A Multisensory Archive of Ecological Affects and Prospects gathers contributions from multiple disciplines to investigate intersectional questions of how the changing planet affects specific peoples, communities, wildlife species, and ecosystems in varying and inequitable ways. A multisensory, artistic-archival supplement to the University of Colorado Boulder’s 2020-2022 Mellon Sawyer Environmental Futures Project, the volume enriches current conversations by bridging the environmental humanities and affect theory with insights from Native and Indigenous philosophies. It highlights artistic practices that make legible the long-term durational effects of ecological catastrophe, inviting readers and viewers to consider the emotional resonance of poems, nonfiction texts, sound-texts, photographs, and other artworks that grapple with the less visible loss and prospects of environmental transformation. 

Learn more about the book, which includes work by Erika Osborne, here

Entanglement and the Inner Feminine as Artistic Practice

Hillary Irene Johnson | October 19, 2023 on MAHB

Now that I am deep into the final year of my MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago, I find I’m reflecting on the problematic nature, the constraining potential of what the rational, well-ordered, intellectual, academic, rectilinear, traditionally masculine modes of thinking, doing and making. I am also researching models of success both out in the world and from an interior perspective. I wonder how I (and others if they like) might reframe experience and path from these masculine modes and views of success to those more feminine in nature, more internal processes, heroine’s journeys of transformation for the good of myself, for the good of all beings. 

I’m thinking a lot about entanglement, of our collective dilemmas and how we might move forward, borrowing Donna Harroway’s notion of a new period we have the potential to enter into, what she calls the Chthulucene. In her book, Staying with the Trouble (1), she writes:

“Chthulucene is a simple word. It is a compound of two Greek roots (khthôn and kainos) that together name a kind of timeplace for learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying in response-ability on a damaged earth. Kainos means now, a time of beginnings, a time for ongoing, for freshness. Nothing in kainos must mean conventional pasts, presents, or futures. There is nothing in times of beginnings that insists on wiping out what has come before, or, indeed, wiping out what comes after. Kainos can be full of inheritances, of remembering, and full of comings, of nurturing what might still be. I hear kainos in the sense of thick, ongoing presence, with hyphae infusing all sorts of temporalities and materialities.”

Continue reading on MAHB here

The UN/making Network: An Interdisciplinary Artist-run Platform that Celebrates the UN/making of Harm

Jill Price | September 28, 2023

Arising out of personal observations about how the art world contributes to the Anthropocene, which Dr. Natalie Loveless from the University of Alberta defines as a colonial, industrial capitalist, patriarchal and petrol phenomenon that I would add is made exponential by the globalization of Western thought that privileges economic growth and individual wealth over ecological justice and social equity, the UN/making Network is an assemblage of online platforms that support and promote interdisciplinary art forms that push beyond the production of objects for commodification and consumption and uptake methods of performativity to assist in the care and repair of ecological sites and spaces that support human and more-than-human well-being. 

Formulated as a research-creation Ph.D. project in which I was interested in discovering and developing ways in which to unmake myself from systems of harm as a consumer and a maker, as well as transition my personal practice away from the narrative towards that which could be considered performative, preventative or reparative, the UN/making Network is Inspired by other artivist or cultural websites that work to share eco-ethical mandates, resources, and outcomes, and build a community of like-minded thinkers and doers. Temporarily housed under www.jillpricestudios.ca, the UN/making Network currently exists as a series of web pages that:

Continue reading on MAHB here

Lucia Monge Collaborates With Living Organisms for While a Leaf Breathes (Mientras una Hoja Respira)

The ArtYard exhibition explores plant respiration as a metaphor for life and vulnerability. On view through January 28 in Frenchtown, New Jersey.

ArtYard November 8, 2023

To create works for While a Leaf Breathes (Mientras una Hoja Respira), artist Lucia Monge turned to plants, mushrooms, bacteria, and other living organisms as collaborators. 

“The materials in my works are prepared, fermented, cooked, and cultivated,” Monge says. “It is hard and also beautiful to adapt to another species’ temporality. It is important for me to not only talk about interspecies relationships but to try to meet another species halfway and to have my practice be guided through their cycles, time, and urgencies.”

The exhibition explores stomata — the pores through which plants breathe. Exchanging air with the environment is key to the photosynthetic process of plants. However, every time these pores open to breathe, the plant risks losing water. There is vulnerability in opening up, and loss and nourishment must be balanced in order to stay alive.

Continue reading at Hyperallergic here

November 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Photo: A Oyster Mushroom fruits through one of Carol Padberg’s handwoven wearable sculptures.

Carol Padberg's fully integrated art and educational practice

Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Carol Padberg lives her practice. Through a combination of material work creation and a back-to-the-land, spiritually integrated lifestyle, the artist/educator is fully entrenched in her mission. Padberg was the founder of the low residency Nomad MFA program through the Hartford Art School at University of Hartford (2015) and along with Mary Mattingly, appling the Nomad curricular model also recently founded the Confluence MFA concentration (2022) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. This unique regenerative culture program integrates multiple sites in the Americas with a focus on both ecology and community. View her TED talk here for more information: Radical: Art, Education and Ecology | Carol Padberg | TEDxUniversityofHartford

Interview

Carol, a word that comes to mind when exploring your work is: connection. Whether the connection is between fiber and living organisms and/or people and the planet, the weavings you present seem to be both literal and abstract manifestations of this interconnectedness. What drives the dedication to develop and promote these connections?

We are living in a time that has been devastated by the myth of separability. Yet we are all connected. My efforts in raising sheep and weaving, my commitment to work with mycelia and indigo, all of it is driven by the need to return to non-extractive economies, ancestral practices, and a direct, interspecies connection to the web of life. So, yes, ‘connection’ is a key concept for me. It is essential to understand this word within the ecological, political and cultural context of this destructive myth of separability. Another way the idea of connection shows up in my work is that the mycelial sculptures I make decompose back into the soil of the dye gardens. This way the life cycle of the art is directly connected to the life cycles of the planet.

Photo: A slug eats one of Carol Padberg’s decomposing mycelial sculptures, accelerating the release of nutrients and mycelia back to the soil (2018).

A huge aspect of challenging separability and a necessity in connection is intimacy. In “Meeting Mycelia” (2019) and the “Mycelial Muse Kit” (2022) you explore deep emotional and nurturing relationships with natural growth and cycles. How does the relationship between human and earth develop through these processes?

A human being is an interspecies being. We have more non-human DNA in our bodies than human DNA. This is thanks to the bacterial and fungal communities that keep us healthy in our gut, on our skin and in ways we have not yet scientifically named. So, interspecies intimacy is “built-in” to mammals like us. When you consider this deep interspecies reality, it can be surprising that we need to pause to remember this. Yet here we are, with our idea of individuality, which is a biological fallacy. I want to trouble this idea of ‘appreciating nature’ by completely breaking down the human/nature binary. We must undo this idea that we are separate from nature. Art that creates a direct experience of our skin’s mycelial community to the mycelial community of the forest floor is not only poetic, but useful. This art has the ability to remind us to listen with our cells, loosen our grasp on individual selfhood and build new neural pathways that may foster better ways of knowing.

Photo: Carol Padberg's spun wool from her sheep, created on a 17th century walking wheel.

And you practice what you preach: your regenerative practice has expanded beyond artistic production and has become a way of life for you at the Nook Farm House. What role does place hold in your socially-engaged environmental art practice?

In the past sixteen months I moved from Nook Farm House on the east coast of Turtle Island to Tewa land in the Southwestern region, to bring the Confluence curriculum to the University of New Mexico. All last year I felt bereft leaving Nook Farm House in Hartford, and yet it continues in new forms. Now I live on a farm in Northern New Mexico where I have a workshare arrangement in exchange for lodging. I raise wool sheep here and they graze on the grasses of this apple orchard. I also grow indigo to contribute to the local fibershed. I am fortunate to live in an area with abundant textile traditions: from the Pueblo peoples, the Diné, and the descendants of Hispanic settlers. I am a student of this place: observing, listening and growing as I adapt. And I am being shaped by the tenacious and fragile high desert. In my mycelial practices I have begun working with the Oyster Mushrooms I meet in the Jemez Mountains. And I am also beginning a project that considers the Questa Mine Superfund site and questions conventional ideas about remediation. As most of the materials I use as an artist come from the place where I live, a change in location brings new possibilities and requires adding new skills. So I am in a time of adaptation, and this is invigorating.

Photo: A participant in a Meeting Mycelia workshop feeling the mycelia of fruiting Oyster Mushrooms through his eyelids (2020)

In the spirit of creating this bridge, you have been incorporating new growth (mycelia) into textiles in recent years. How do these living woven cloths relate meaning to this inseparability?

This is an ontological question, and by that I mean it relates to how we know what is. Let’s get mystical for a moment… One of the ways I walk in the world is as an animist who participates in old ways that have been carried down from my deepest human ancestors. I am from descendants of settler colonists on both sides of my family. But before we were colonized and trained into colonialism, we were living in Northern Europe and practicing a belief system in which weaving was world making. The three fates wove past, present and future. By collaborating with Oyster mushroom mycelia, who create by metabolizing rotting wood, I am considering how to process my family history and the trauma we have created in the world. How do we digest this? I practice spinning and weaving on ancestral wheels and looms as a way to reconnect with my heritage and then I work with mycelia because they are the best teachers of metabolization. How do we weave a future from this time period we have been born into? I believe textiles and mycelia hold clues.

Photo: Sheep grazing near Carol Padberg’s Ger (Yurt) on the Northern New Mexico apple orchard where she lives, October 2023.

Photo: A selection from the book Otra Visión: Mujeres Que Tejen, created by students in the Confluence MFA in collaboration with the Mujeres Que Tejen Weaving Collective in Valle de Teotitlán, Oaxaca, México, 2023.

Your work is both in practice and in education. The MFA programs you have developed have been called “the MFA of the future”. What inspired you to develop these novel models?

I deeply believe in the power of education to change lives and shape our world for the better. A democracy requires relevant, varied, and thoughtful educational institutions. In terms of the Confluence MFA, we are proud to be part of a state university that serves a majority POC student body. The leadership at the University of New Mexico is forward thinking, and adaptive to the changing conditions we are living in. Are we the MFA of the future? I think when people tell us that, what they are noticing is that we are purpose-driven, holistic, and that we have a low-residency format that is practical for working adults. An MFA dedicated to regenerative culture is a niche MFA. It serves a very specific need. There is no one MFA for the future, thank goodness. As the program will soon be ten years old, I would say it is going well. We are continuing to evolve a curriculum that gives students an expanded toolkit with which to address the world’s most complex issues. We attempt to do this in a way that is trauma-informed, liberatory and engaged. Is it easy work? No. Is it meaningful? Absolutely!

Confluence MFA Online Openhouse, info here.

Photo: MFA students with teaching artists Mark Dion and Christy Gast in the Everglades, Florida, 2018.

Thank you, Carol, for expanding our horizons with your ideas and practice!

Lauren Bon on site at Bending The River, 2023 (photo courtesy Metabolic Studio)

The Artist Working to Reclaim the LA River’s Water

Through adaptive reuse, environmental artist Lauren Bon is diverting water from the river and distributing it to the Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Matt Stromberg September 12, 2023

LOS ANGELES — Since 1960, nearly all of the 51-mile Los Angeles River has flowed within a concretized channel. It begins in the San Fernando Valley at the intersection of Bell Creek and Arroyo Calabasas, then moves east through Studio City, curves around Griffith Park, and heads south past Glendale, Downtown LA, and the Gateway Cities of Vernon, Bell, and Maywood before emptying into the San Pedro Bay in Long Beach. Its stark, industrial shores have served as a backdrop for Hollywood films (Grease, Point Blank, Drive) and a fishing spot for intrepid urban hunters. What the river does not provide Angelenos is water, which its concrete shell ensures is channeled directly into the Pacific: 207 million gallons per day, according to the City of LA. 

Through an ambitious project titled “Bending the River” (2012–ongoing), environmental artist Lauren Bon and her Metabolic Studio are working to reclaim at least a small portion of that water.

“This is the first adaptive re-use of LA River infrastructure,” Bon told Hyperallergic. “This work acts as a case study. My hope is to set a precedent and path forward for creative and innovative thinking about how we can better use our infrastructure and re-evaluate our commons of soil, seed, water, and community process.”

Continue reading on Hyperallergic here

Patricia Johanson (American, born 1940) Fair Park Lagoon, 1981–86, Gunite, native plants, and animal species, Dimensions variable. For the People, the Meadows Foundation, Communities Foundation of Texas, Texas Commission on the Arts and their private and corporate donations. Permanently sited in Fair Park, Dallas. © Patricia Johanson, Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Michael Barera

Groundswell: Women of Land Art

Sue Spaid

Published October 1 for AEQAI

Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

On view through January 7, 2024

A couple of years ago, I unearthed a disappointing story. Between 1971 and 1990, as earthworks gave way to eco-art, twelve museums mounted exhibitions focused on eco-art, which featured artworks by a total of 238 men and 25 women, even though women actually built half of the fifty early examples of ecological earthworks. Moreover, dozens of women participated in the Land art movement, yet the very notion of women creating Land art, which typically requires heavy machinery, specialized skills, and expensive materials, still astonishes fifty years later. Thanks to Anna Mendieta’s well-publicized career, more women are known for their ecologically-oriented performance art. Seven first generation eco-artists are among the twelve artists featured in “Groundswell: Women of Land Art.” Since museums have historically ignored women’s vital contribution to this field, an exhibition focused entirely on women artists only seems fair. “Groundswell” offers a historical context for Patricia Johanson’s Fairpark Lagoon, a massive remediation project commissioned by the Dallas Museum of Art in the early 1980s to revitalize the lagoon sited three miles southeast of the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Continue reading on AEQAI here