Conversation with Niki Lederer

Please enjoy my conversation with Niki Lederer. Discarded and found objects are Niki’s starting point. She makes sculptures from repurposed umbrellas and post-consumer plastic that she harvests from curbside recycling, garbage cans and the street. Niki finds the colors intoxicating, and can’t resist collecting them. The sheer volume of recyclables and broken umbrellas creates an endless and overwhelming supply of material. Back in the studio Niki processes her finds by thoroughly cleaning them and removing all branding on the bottles and armatures from the umbrellas. Then she dissects these materials so that she can reconfigure them to make sculptures.

https://nikilederer.com/ 

https://sva.edu/events/plasticulture 

https://gagosian.com/artists/jeff-wall/

https://hunter.cuny.edu/

https://gagosian.com/artists/nancy-rubins/

https://www.artanddesignhs.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_Sugar_Refinery

https://www.anthonycaro.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 Niki Lederer. Discarded and found objects are Niki's starting point. She makes sculptures from repurposed umbrellas and post-consumer plastic that she harvests from curbside recycling, garbage cans, and the street. Niki finds the colors intoxicating and can't resist collecting them. The sheer volume of recyclables and broken umbrellas creates an endless and overwhelming supply of material.

Back in the studio, Niki processes her finds by thoroughly cleaning them and removing all branding on bottles and armatures from the umbrellas. Then she dissects these materials so she can reconfigure them to make sculptures.

Well, Niki, thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me. I am delighted that you were up for the for this. Yeah, I'm excited that you asked me. Thank you for asking me. It was fun to show together. Yeah. I, I guess at the end of last year. So it's been fun to get to know your work.

Can you in person. So do we. Good to chat today. I'm looking forward to it. I think so. So to fill in our listeners, we were exhibiting together in the exhibit called Plasticulture, and I have been so well, first of all, I'm so pleased to be exhibiting with you and all the other artists in this that I, artists that I have admired for so long, but also.

Oh, how perfect is that? I have all these artists to interview for my podcast, The.

Yeah, I think it's so exciting. You know, we were in that, exhibition together and all of the artists in the show, use plaster ink in some way or another. And what I thought was so interesting was how many variations on incorporating plastic into an art practice there could be. So I know for myself that I'm very deeply invested in certain types of plastic.

So it's always exciting to see people using other means of putting those materials together, because it's almost as if I'm using plastic as if it was, a material that I would I would buy ready made and ready to go. But I just think about this one source. So it's always inspiring to see other ways that people are putting plastics together to kind of open up, you know, your practice and the esthetic approach, I guess.

Definitely. And the the wide range of the materials to like, it's just it's mind boggling how many different plastics there are and how many different ways everyone can use them. Yeah. It's true. And when you start to think about plastics, like, where they feature in our day to day lives, like if you're in your own setting, right now listening or, or doing something in the morning and looking around, everything you encounter, is created with the material.

So it might be a toothbrush and then it might be, you know, something in the kitchen that you're using, like the frother to make your coffee might have a plastic handle, so it feels almost inescapable. And it is. Yeah. And now trying to sort of look for other options to switch out those materials, I guess, is the focus of some manufacturing.

But still, there's, it's been, I don't know, like 60 years of plastic, maybe longer in the consumer space. And even with recycling, there's just so much available. I think even as people start to switch out. So it's yeah, we yeah, we will not be lacking our materials anytime soon. Let's put it that way. Yeah. It's true, it's true.

And I think that's how I got started. It was seeing so much material everywhere like. Yeah. So let me let me ask you a question before we get to, the question of how you found plastic for your practice, I'm assuming that you were an artist as a kid, since you got a BFA and an MFA and you're an art teacher now?

Yeah. As a kid, I was always very, I guess, object and dimensionally oriented. Like, I remember in school. There are a lot of students who drew very well and would make a lot of pictures, and then that would be the student that everybody asked, can you draw this for me, or can you draw that for me?

And, I wasn't really that person when they called on me to draw something for them. It wasn't really up my alley. I like to write from the get go, make, make three dimensional objects. So my first, I guess, main project would have been the effort that I built in the back yard. So I grew up in the suburbs of Canada and it was a new subdivision, so there were a lot of homes being built.

And I would scour the neighborhood for building materials, leftover building materials. And, so you were a scavenger from the start? Yeah, I was putting together a fort in the back yard, so I guess that would have been, middle school age and started to put things together. And I really enjoyed the tools and sort of the weight of the materials and the scale of it.

It made me feel very activated in a way that working in regular materials or at a desk, I didn't like it as much. So I think that looking looking at it now or thinking about it now, it seems really clear. But at the time I didn't understand that that was like an option to make work or to practice as an artist without drawing, you know, because that's sort of traditionally what you learn about in school, right?

Yeah. And people around you. So when you went to get your BFA, what was your concentration? Yeah, I went to school at the University of Victoria because I grew up in Vancouver. And, my concentration was photography and sculpture.

the time in Vancouver, the Vancouver school was emerging.

So it was artists like Jeff Wall working with conceptual photography and large scale dual trans like advertising, scale and materials of presenting photography. So that was really foremost in the environment. And what I was understanding as Artmaking and the esthetic at that time was, you know, post-modernism and paying attention to how materials were put together. So studying sculpture there on the West Coast was really interesting.

So my focus there was on sculpture and photography. I wasn't really drawing very much. So you have to always do that in a foundation class and a little bit of painting, which was, you know, those products are quite horrible but still exist here and there. I see them once in a while when I go home to visit. You know how your parents will keep a painting or two, but it was really objects from the get go.

And I think one of the really interesting things about studying there was one of the professors we had, we're actually two of the, sculpture professors. We had took us on a field trip to the dump where, you know, the dump. So the whole sculpture class went to the dump. That's so exciting. It was so exciting. We were allowed to select materials and we could select kind of large materials, because the sculpture Prof had a large truck that he welded out of it.

It was a mobile welding truck. Oh, along public artwork like that. So he took us and we got to select some things, and we brought them back to the studio at the school, and we were allowed to make work. So it was normalized right from the beginning. In practice, this was an expected normal way to make work and put materials together.

So I thought that was really interesting. When I look back now to kind of approach it in that way, there wasn't, you know, it wasn't really, urban type of center. You're on Vancouver Island on the coast of, Canada. It's not like a lot of detritis that you would see in a much urban setting, and people are quite careful about litter and managing materials.

So recycling and all of those ways of managing waste were prevalent then, like in the mid 90s, it was pretty active. So it wasn't like you could see a lot of things strewn about right? That's so cool. I, I went to the dump for the very first time this past summer. I haven't been to the dump since.

Oh, really? I always think, oh, it would be. I'm very careful about going because it must have been. I mean, I don't know, you can tell me, but when you went, I wouldn't know how to edit what my selections were. I guess you have to go in with a project in mind or like, an idea, at least in my mind.

Right. And when you went to the dump, like, just because I haven't been here, so I don't know what it's like. Do they? Do they? You park somewhere and you're allowed to walk around or. So this dump was in Aspen, so I'm not sure. It's like any other dumps around here. I haven't been to a dump in New York.

Actually, come to think of it, I have been to a dump in Vermont, and that was a very spare. They're very good at recycling there, but I wasn't there to looking for art supplies. The dump in Aspen. I was looking for art supplies, and they actually their dump was rather curated, like there was a portion on this side that was just like a pile of everything dumped.

And there was a portion on the other side where things were sort of separated, and there was even a little shop. Wow. Of smaller things, things indoor like there were the outside was like these containers, you know, like truck containers, that were all separate, like furniture was in one thing, like all hockey sticks were in another one, or golf bags were in another one, like sort of separated like that.

And then in the shop were the little tchotchkes and books and things like that. I mean, everything was still was I think I spent 20 bucks and I got like a big bucket full of supplies, and I went specifically looking for just plastic things. So it was interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm always curious that maybe I should try it out, but I've sort of been careful, careful and cautious.

But maybe that's something I'll think about. Yeah, well, maybe we can like, combine and go together. It'll take a field trip adventure field trip to the dump? Yeah. So did you go on to your MFA right after you finished your BFA? Yeah, I did, it was, I was applying to a lot of schools from, Victoria, and you had to send slide carousels out, so you was about, I don't know, 200, $250.

It was pretty arduous. And. Oh, I really wanted to go to the East Coast because, you know, I'd grown up on the West Coast and had a sense of that and wanted something different, a little bit of a change. So I applied to a lot of schools in Canada for graduate school, and I wasn't accepted anywhere. Oh, which was a little bit devastating for me.

I was surprised that I wasn't able to do, a solid enough application to get into graduate school. So I had applied to Hunter College. Somebody from our program, undergraduate program had gone the year before and just as a long shot. And then, they called for an interview, and three of us went out from Victoria to go, to interview at Hunter College.

And that's how I ended up coming to New York. That's awesome. I was like, oh, I'll just go to school and then I'll come back, you know? But, I came out to New York and it was very it was such a different change that it kind of it helped your kind of creative ideas, you know, like it was a bit of a difference that, I really was excited by the environment and wanted to stay.

So that was, you know, quite a few decades ago at this point. Yeah. And I haven't really wanted to go back. So it's been that's how I sort of traveled through the MFA program and got to graduate school at Hunter and landed in New York. So I think sometimes, you know, when you're challenged with these, directions that don't quite go where you think they will, they can be very fruitful, you know, if you can tolerate the the disappointment, the initial disappointment.

I was really quite devastated on some level about it and defeated because obviously, you know, in Canada there aren't as many programs to apply for. There weren't it wasn't like there were hundreds of MFA programs. There were a couple really solid programs. And if you didn't get in, it was sort of, you know, it was a little bit embarrassing.

Yeah. Now I can imagine. But I'm so glad you wound up in New York, and I can totally understand how New York could feel an art practice and take it into maybe even a completely different direction. Yeah. I mean, I remember coming to New York, with our undergraduate class because we were quite, isolated in terms of being able to see contemporary work.

So one advantage being there because we're on the West Coast is that we had, artists come up from LA, which was really quite exciting because they were friends with people who taught there. So we had, Charles Ray come up, for example, and then we had, Nancy Rubens. That was very influential for me, for Nancy Rubens to come up.

She was making those, you know, at that time they were absolutely unseen of before enormous sculptures put together like used canoes or different huge materials somehow. Cool. That was really exciting to see. But coming to New York, you know, you could see them, you could see sculptural works in galleries. And there wasn't that kind of a market or a system where I come from.

So it was a whole new way to be able to look at work. I mean, galleries were still in Soho, so you would see famous people at openings. It was sort of a smaller sense of New York, in a way. I guess it was before you could see things online. So it was really, it was electric when you could see work in person.

I remember seeing some of the really early works that influenced me at that time. You know, to think that I went to see Robert Gerber's work in Soho, you know, as an exhibiting artist, not as a museum show was pretty, pretty exciting. So that was the kind of moment when I first arrived and it was, it was interesting to see, you know, just work out and around really to normalize.

That would have never happened where I was going to school before. So that was really exciting. Yeah, that's really cool. So what kind of artwork were you making in grad school? Yeah, in graduate school, I was making things that were, because I wasn't able to really go in and get materials in the way I had in the undergraduate school.

And the studios were quite different, like in undergraduate school, we had a full time lab technician and things were quite catered. And if you wanted to find a piece of steel rod and thread it into a screw, we had all the technology for that and the machinery for that. But at Hunter it was a little bit DIY. There weren't like tech shops, so it was a very different approach to putting objects together and at scale.

You had to use materials that you know might be you could you had to move them around on the subway. I remember taking like long pieces of conduit metal on the subway, like on a train, and nobody had said anything about it because the materials that were. Yeah, construction based, I guess you could say. And then combining those with a lot of materials from I was working a lot with materials from canal rubber can Street.

So those were, materials that could be expanded at large scale but easy to move around before you had manipulated them in the studio. So it was always this challenge of how to access enough material to make something at a large scale, but be able to move it around without a car on the subway now is pretty funny, even though I still schlep a lot of stuff around like that.

But, it wasn't really it wasn't really found material oriented at that time. It was mostly, materials that were used probably for another application. And then. Right. Yeah. Alternative materials, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, it was a challenge because I didn't have the opportunity, to work in that kind of a studio. But the advantage there was that they had a ceramics studio, and so I spent a lot of time in the ceramics studio that was in their uptown space, in the basement of one of the townhouses.

I think they might have renovated it since then, but that was a very, cozy kind of space in the sense of the bustle of New York. Whereas the studios at Hunter downtown were in a building at, right beside the Port Authority Bus terminal. So. Oh, hundreds of square feet. The studios were huge and breezy and kind of open.

And then in contrast, the ceramics studio was sort of very cozy and intimate. So it was an interesting combination. So I did a lot of ceramic work there, which was fun. And taking advantage of the opportunity to use the kiln and those types of materials, which I hadn't had before. That was one, you know, thing that was good about the the material availability and studios there.

That was exciting. So, from how did you wind up being a teacher at a High School of Art and Design? After that, my alma mater. Yeah. The High School of Art and design is really been a fabulous place to be that I've been kind of in a very long, long and winding road. Like when I was at Hunter and graduate school, I was still influenced by this, approach to photography and sculpture together.

Like I had been exposed to on the West Coast. So my thesis exhibition was an enormous photograph of, a garden and, in a sort of curated grounds on Leeds Castle in England. I had gone to study hedge mazes and formal gardens. So it was this enormous billboard size photograph. And at the time, in the mid late, I guess, late 90s, that photograph cost like over $3,000 to print.

And imagine that in Ohio, like buy a billboard company. There was no technology to do that locally. Wow. And so I started temping on a in the Financial district on Wall Street doing graphic design. And so for my last six months at graduate school, I was temping there. And, that led, after graduation, to full time work to support my practice.

I moved, into a studio in Williamsburg after graduating, and I started working in the financial industry, and I worked in that industry for at least, like maybe ten, 12 years. Oh, wound up doing graphic design. Yeah, doing graphic design, very sort of local stuff. And then the market crashed and, I wasn't there, luckily, but I had I had sort of had a sense that maybe I didn't want to work in the industry anymore.

It was a very intense kind of 9 to 5 experience, very formal. You had to sort of wear suits and professional practice. People were very interesting and exciting and fun to work with, but it was a real challenge. So I, was practicing a lot of yoga at the time and I decided to, get trained in, hot yoga practice.

So I went to Bikram yoga training for nine weeks in Hawaii. It was like, oh, wow. Yeah, it was a 360 from corporate work. And then I taught yoga for a couple of years, hoping that it would, be helpful to my studio practice to not have this kind of really taxing kind of job. But what I found was I wasn't really having the energy to work.

I really liked the teaching part of it. And so that's what led me to teaching. I thought, well, you know, maybe I should focus on teaching. My brother was an art teacher and my mom was a librarian, so I said, oh, well, let me investigate this a little bit, even though I had resisted for so long and I was well advanced.

And, you know, in my career at this point, I wasn't exactly a young person, but I went back to Brooklyn College and I got a teaching certificate, and then I started teaching at a public high school on the Upper East Side. And I worked there for the first six years of teaching, and then I wanted to make a switch into a more art focus.

And I was very lucky that this job opened up at the high school of Art and design. So I teach art history there, and it's been a really engaging environment. The students are very exciting and you're sort of in the center. You know, you're just a couple blocks down from the MoMA and it just kind of keeps it alive in you.

Whereas I felt like even when I was doing graphic design, it felt very separate from my art classes. And this kind of feels a little bit more integrated. So it's been really interesting. I think also working with younger people helps you, stay a little bit out of your own, worries and mindset. There might be moments where you're not feeling completely, you know, enthusiastic about the current situation or whatever's happening, but because you're working with young people and sort of questioning different things and learning, it helps you kind of stay activated.

So I really enjoy that part of it. Though sometimes it can be quite tiring. You know, it's sort of interesting ebb and flow, but I think that, I feel very fortunate to be able to work with young people and to be able to work with different people from different, boroughs and experiences and, you know, demographics that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise.

So I think in that way it's helped me, have a much better sense of New York. I think when you're working in a corporate job in New York, it's a very small sliver. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I think I feel very lucky in that way. I don't know if I initially would have said, you know, that's how I felt about it because it's so hard to get a handle on teaching.

But I think that I'm happy that I landed in that space because, even teenagers can be pretty funny. Yes, they can be. I have to say, I, I still frequently refer back to my time as a student at a high school of art and design. It was just, you know, for me, I think partially it was freedom because I grew up in Queens.

Yeah. And as soon as I found out I could apply to a specialized high school in New York City, and I got in, it was like freedom. I, you know, I took the subway all by myself. I left my parents behind, you know, obviously I still lived at home, but I could spend the entire day in the city and the freedom of that was huge.

But also, you know, it was like a playground. Yeah, I had it still had to do math and English, but otherwise it was just a playground. I could do so much. We had, I did fashion illustration as my major. And we had a totally, totally kooky teacher, Mrs. Galati. I'll never forget her. She would like, sneak us out of school and we would go down the street to Bonwitt Teller and draw the windows all day.

Yeah. Of course. I mean, I think what's so interesting about the location and it's very similar now, you know, the students are going walking trips and it's all very localized because it's in Midtown. So it helps students like, engage, you know, they study architecture or fashion like you did and all these different aspects of it. So it's really exciting to always be immersed in that creative pursuit.

I feel very lucky in that way. It's been exciting, and when I started teaching at the high school of Art and design, my practice really shifted. I was just going to ask, yeah, I think how you describe somehow this freedom of it, it was similar for me somehow arriving in this space, there was a freedom, to really fully acknowledge who I was, where I felt, you know, previously, you know, maybe I was teaching art, but it wasn't you weren't in a cohort of similar people.

And the joke at the school that, you know, everybody finds their finds their own there. So everybody has their own tribe or clan of very similar types of people. So it's interesting to work because there's 25 art teachers in department and we work together, and it's sort of an easier way to express. So my work became very large in scale at that time.

And right about the time I switched to that school, I moved from a studio. I had a metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, right by the water, right by Domino Sugar Factory. So there was a long time when I was working in that studio, and the factory was still active. So there would be a couple times a day where they would let the steam out of the factory system so you could smell it was sort of like a burnt sugar, caramelized aroma.

Right? The domino. And it would waft right into the studio. But, but I guess after about 20 years, that and I mean, that's unheard of to have a same studio for 20 years, but, the building changed hands. It's still the only building that hasn't been renovated in the area at Metropolitan, and Kent in Williamsburg. They're still sitting on it.

It's just empty. They do movie shoots there, but it hasn't been converted. And then I moved down the street, down Metropolitan, closer towards the ISP on Morgan and I had I moved into a studio with no windows. No windows. So weird. It had no windows. And it was very, very, very tall, like 15ft high. It was like a little box, but really long.

And that's when I started making that really elongated, tall work. So I started working with plastic bottles and I was making standalone and sculptures that were maybe my scale, but but wait wait wait wait wait, how did you get to the plastic bottles? How did that hat start happening? That happened when I was teaching Bikram, actually, when I was teaching hot yoga in the neighborhood, because, there's so many plastic bottles that students would use during class and we would recycle them.

So these bags and bags and bags of plastic bottles outside the studio. And that's how I started, collecting bottles. So I was using clear bottles in the beginning and doing kind of pieces that looked maybe a little bit like stained glass or chandeliers, working with cool, loose quality. But what started, I had a very bad dog at that.

I'm a bad dog was bad. His name was poncho, and anybody who was bitten by him, I apologize, but he was so bad that I had to walk him when other dogs weren't around. So I would be doing these like two in the morning walks in Williamsburg. And, you know, there were still things on the street he would find a chicken bone or step into something he shouldn't.

So my eyes were always on the ground looking as he was sniffing around. And that's when I started to notice, for nighttime recycling. These colored jugs and bottles in the in the recycling for the plastics, because it would be dark and it's a little dreary and maybe kind of dirty on the streets, but then these bright colors out of the corner of my eye, I'd see them in the bags and I'd be like, oh, what is this pink bottle?

And it would be like, you know, a recycled bottle of Mr. Bubble or something like that. And I was like, well, maybe you could start to incorporate color into your work. I mean, color was something I've always been afraid of selecting and choosing through, you know, painted surfaces or something like that. It just wasn't an approach. But this was an opportunity to really use color without having to think about it in that way.

It was like I call it found color because it's just available. It's like manufactured into the material, and it's so, bright and enticing because it's like, you know, for materials that were to be purchased in a store. So they had to really stick out on a store shelf. And, that's kind of how it started. That's how I started collecting the bottles.

That was just so, available and easy because I had to walk them all the time at these really late hours so nobody would see me. And there was nothing sort of embarrassing about it. Later, later, I started to collect. And still sometimes I do. If I see something good in the day time, you know, with the tequila bag full of things.

And then I would notice that people would cross the street to avoid me or not make eye contact. And I remember one time, actually, I was coming back from installing a show and one of the pieces hadn't fit, so it was still in the Ikea bag. And these plastic pieces just look like plastic Tetris in a bag like that.

I remember struggling to go through the turnstile at the subway and somebody said, oh honey, I'll swipe you in. She thought I was unhoused, and she swiped me in to let me in, and I thought, oh, what a moment this is, you know, that somebody would help me, which I thought was tremendous and generous of this person. But also for them to have characterized me as somebody who was unhoused because I had these bags of right plastic with me.

So the taboos of garbage, which I'm sure you're very familiar with, are very interesting culturally, like inside concepts of, you know, someone else's discard, which you know intimately because you've been working with these materials also for very long time. But someone who's, you know, has no use for this item. It's either something that was intended to not be used, like the wrapping of a food item or something used temporarily, or it might have been something that has been lived with and used, but is no longer of use to someone and they discard it.

But then, you know, we might find find value in it because the materials so walkable. No, it's there is definitely a sort of a stigma about picking up trash. It's like I have finals. So I do a lot of forest walks here, and I have finally, well, for the last two years, I feel totally comfortable cleaning up the trash on my walks like I carry a bag with me and I used to hide it in my pocket and used to be a little bag.

Now I carry like a little, you know, it's not a huge bag, but it's a, it's a bag that I hold a couple of bottles because sometimes I'll find nothing. Sometimes I'll just find a couple of wrappers and sometimes I'll come up with, you know, like 5 or 6 bottles, plastic bottles or something. So it's a bag that it would hold, something like that.

And now I can proudly carry it on my shoulder. I don't think of anything, but cleaning up trash, like on a city street, I just, I do pick up. I don't do like full clean ups. I'll do pick, but I'll pick up if there's something really interesting to me. And I do feel self-conscious about it. I kind of like, like, quickly, you know, squirrel it away into my bag.

And it's true. I always laugh about it because when I'm when I go to work, when I go to the school, you know, I walk to the subway and then walk back. And I remember this bad dog. His name was poncho. So if he would find a chicken bone or pizza or something, you know, I'd make sure he didn't get it.

But then he'd remember on the walk later that day, and I find I do the same thing, like I might see something on the curb, but I'm like, that's fantastic, but I can't put it in my bag and take it to school with me. Though sometimes I do and I'm like, I'm just going to remember that for when I come home.

And then just like he did a look and I'm like, is it still there? Is it still there? And sometimes there's pretty fabulous things. So in North Williamsburg, I've been using umbrellas recently, and in North Williamsburg, there's a lot of pretty fancy umbrellas that I'll find on the sidewalk. So often I'll say, oh, is that umbrella still going to be there when I commute home?

And then if I'm lucky enough and it's still there, I pick it up. So but it's also a little bit of that taboo. Like, I don't want to put it in a bag. Take it with me on the subway, take it all the way to work, and then carry it home with me, you know? Right. Yeah. So it is sort of an interesting approach, but it was funny when you were talking about this forest walk because I was thinking about, you know, growing up hiking and going out into the forest like for a hike or kayaking or something like that.

And I remember, my parents were pretty strict, and they'd always said, you know, whatever you take with you can't leave a trace of anything behind. And we would never see anything on a walk, in the woods or anywhere else. But I think because so many more people are doing outdoor activities from when I was small, I think those habits aren't as in mind.

So now, like I was back in December for a visit in Vancouver, and when I went on a walk and there was I was surprised there were wrappers and, you know, the garbage here and there in the, in the forest. And it was a little bit disappointing, but I didn't actually pick it up, actually, now that I think that we're talking about it.

But it was surprising and I think that might have been also what was so, jarring when I first came to New York is how much garbage there was, because there would just be piled on the street, like at a scale that was so tall. And I remember in Midtown, the garbage bags were silver, and I just wore it.

Yeah, finished reading like Andy Warhols Diaries. And I was like, these are like, you know, his silver helium filled pillows floating around the room. It's just like silver, the land of plenty. It's just like silver plastic garbage bags full of garbage on the side of the street. It's the scale of it. I think that's silver thing. That's funny.

I think in in the defense of people who walk in the woods where I walk, these are suburban woods, but they're it's literally like this little triangle. I don't know how many acres, but it's a triangle that's bordered by a major highway into really major roads. So I think a lot of the trash that I see especially like bottles and things like that.

Yeah, fine. That's usually oh, it's not like fresh trash. It's trash that I call has been wilding for a while. So I think that's kind of like gets blown in. Yeah. From the highways because you see a lot of trash along the side of the highways, the wrappers clearly, you know, candy wrappers and things like that that I find or, you know, hair ties and things like that.

That's fresh people. You know, I try to think of it as, you know, sometimes you do miss a pocket or something falls out of the pocket and you don't even notice. I know I've done it. So I try to be kind in my thoughts about this kind of trash when I find it. Yeah, but, but it is.

But I think it is more I don't really go hiking out in the wilderness these days that much. Yeah, but I have certainly seen a lot more trash along the highways than I have when I was a kid. So I think a lot of the trash gets into the forest there. I think people I don't understand why, but I think people do throw trash outside of their car windows.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. And I think the, you know, when you think about waterways and breeze and traffic in the wind of the the freeway or the roads, that is how a lot of it travels around, you know, like we might find it in these local spaces because it's either collected for recycling pickup or on the side of the streets.

But it does kind of like you're describing, travel around for different by different means. You know, when it lands in places you might not expect. Yeah. But I still go looking for it on the street because it's a very it's a really easy way to collect and pick up. Well, so because it's so concentrated. Yeah, yeah. And plus you know, does it really get recycled.

So if you're picking it out of somebody's recyclables I think you're recycling it probably in a better way than it would be recycled if it went to a actual recycling facility. No, it's true. And I think, you know, this is sort of the the challenge of it because I think word word has gotten out somewhat that maybe these things aren't recycled as well.

And then it feels a little defeatist and people sort of throw their hands up and, and give up on it anyway because they're not sure. Yeah. That's true, I did travel. I did take a tour of the recycling facility in Sunset Park. I don't know if you've ever been there. I have, I have an artwork that hangs in there, actually, that's fantastic.

And that that is sort of instructive to see, like how, the materials come in and maybe, are very complex in the way that they've been sorted and maybe they're not completely sorted accurately, but the machinery, you know, divides the materials into the spots they might be in. There was a time in the city where it felt like that was more activated.

Now, I'm not sure, you know, because the need for these recycled materials or the market doesn't demanded as much anymore. No, it really does. And that's the whole problem right there with the recycling. Yeah. No way to pay for it or sell it or what. The impetus is. So it's a little bit challenging in that way. Yeah. I think it's a lot challenging, not even a little bit until the challenging.

So did you when you first started using the plastic in your art practice, you weren't thinking about it from the environmental standpoint where you you were just, you know, it was just an intriguing material for you. It was just available. There was so much of like, it's always scale with me and making work, like, how can I make something really, really of a scale that you can encounter when you're looking at a work of art?

I like it to sort of be relational to the body. So some kind of body size, just so it's in the space of the viewer, not really intimidating, but so that you can sort of activate it. And it's always a challenge to have enough material at a reasonable cost to make big things. So that's why I liked it, because, again, it was so much material that I could use enough of it to create an object that was big enough to really, command a sense of space.

And that's why I started. And I think the other, aspect about it is that it's fairly easy to process. So I could use, exacto blades to cut it. I'm a little reluctant to do that now, because I've had a couple of stitches visits. Yes. Yeah. So I sort of use a different type of scissor now, but, it's very easy to manipulate and it's very easy to put together without needing technology or activating the, the, the chemistry of the plastic.

So no heating. So how do you put them together? I just drill holes through that plastic and I attach it with a nut and a bolt. Oh okay. Like a hex knot in a bolt. And on a smaller piece I just use wire. So I puncture it with a small hole, almost like a hole punch tool. And then I just, put a wire through it and hold that together.

And in some ways, for that material of the piece, finds another life. It can go back, to recycling if need be. So you're right. Yeah. It it's, it's, it's lived out its life as an art object or, maybe I don't have space for it or change my mind about it. I can recycle it again. And that's an advantage because making artwork often you may have objects or materials that you you know, at one time we're very invested in or you've exhibited them or you wanted to keep.

And then, you know, you might do a little bit of reorganizing the studio to say, this piece is sort of lived its life, and I need some more space. And it's very freeing to be able to just return it back to the recycling, cycle in a way where, as with some of the other works I was making before, that was very hard to do.

Because they couldn't be easily recycled. And then you've sort of produced another item that might be a discarded garbage. And I think as an art maker, that's challenging because, you know, the value of an artwork is quite subjective, especially early in art making. So you sort of are burdened with this concept that you're adding more to the cycle, you know, and that's always a challenge in that way.

Yeah, it's either storage or it's yeah. What do you do with it if it's no longer wanted? Yeah. So it's another object taking up space. But the plastic is very easy to work with. And, it's very light also. So you could make something not quite large scale and not have to, worry so much about the weight of it.

Yeah, that's a real advantage. Some of the pieces I've been making, like, the work I made in the show we had at us VA, was quite long. I think it's like 15ft long. So I have a funny story about that piece. Yeah. Okay, I was coming. I was bringing my work for delivery to to before they were hanging it.

And I'm walking down the street at my work plastic. It's light, but it's a little cumbersome. So I had bags hanging off both of my shoulders. So I'm sort of walking ahead pretty straightforward. And then I see these people walking ahead of me, and I see that they're also carrying something on their shoulders. And I'm like, but I don't understand what it is.

And it was wrapped in a blue bag, but it was a man and a woman, and they were walking one ahead of the other with this really long thing on their shoulders just down 10th Avenue. And I was like, I don't know who that is, but I'm going to bet they're delivering artwork to Plasticulture. And then I finally caught up to them at the loading dock, and it was it was Aurora and her husband and they were carrying your work.

Oh, that's so sweet. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, because I don't I don't work with anyone else. Like, I don't have anyone that helps me in the studio. So I think even though the scale is quite large, I can I can move that work by myself. Yeah. And so there's a freedom in that to, of not having to rely on, you know, really extra ways of moving the work around.

So that's been an advantage of using plastic. It's very light. Definitely. Well, so, so you never use paint, you just use the color as is. Right? Yeah. I never adjust the color and I don't change the surface. That was something, ingrained in me from undergraduate school that it wasn't appropriate to put a skin on a sculpture.

Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. So it was a very, strict kind of formless static that I learned under, which was pretty awesome. We had a, professor who had studied under Anthony Caro in England and then, you know, had come out to the West Coast and he, Roland Brunner and he was very particular about the esthetics and the approach to using materials.

So I never change the surface of, found material. I always keep the integrity of it as it is. And the advantage of the plastic is that it comes in so many shades. And even though I usually work monochromatic, so a red sculpture will only be made up of red bottles, or blue sculpture will only be made up of blue bottles.

All the color is as they were found. So I just clean them and, cut off all the labeling so that you don't really see that. And then put them back together again in a way that kind of transcends its original shape. So I think when you look at the work a little more closely or spend time with it, you can see what the original material was.

But I think that first encounter and first glance at the artwork, you don't necessarily get a sense of what it's made out of. So a lot of times people ask me, how did you get the color, you know, so bright or so vibrant? And then I say, well, you know, I just explained that it's the original material, not so.

A lot of times when people start to recognize the branding in the bottles because they're so known to people. Yeah, a lot of these items are from the home. So a vinegar bottle or bleach bottle or maybe, a detergent bottle of a brand that they recognize, and then right away they're just pulled right into the work. And it's sort of like, sort of humorous realization of what all the materials are.

And then the scale of it, because I use hundreds of bottles in each piece. So then that's kind of the the ultimate underlying realization is that there's so much, plastic and so much material. So your work sort of took an, an environmental, turn sort of organically, I guess. Yeah. I guess that a necessity. It certainly it's always been in the back of my mind because when I first came to New York, there wasn't a recycling system.

And in Vancouver and Victoria it was already well into play. It had been going on for years that you had to curbside recycle and manage your, trash in that way. And ultimately, hey, if you had too much. So every household was limited to a certain size, and if you had more than that amount in the weekly pickup, you had to pay for it.

So it was quite, paramount in my mind when I arrived. But there was no means of recycling anywhere in New York. I came in the mid 90s and it wasn't in play yet, and it came so late. So, it always made me somewhat uncomfortable because of the volume of garbage. So I guess it was in the back of my mind, but I hadn't thought about it in that particular type of way.

Right. And that only emerged as I started to make the work and then realized that that it was sort of a commentary on that, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's an excellent commentary on that, you know, citing that. So I have a technical question. I know that you do quite a bit of outdoor sculpture as well, right?

Yeah. How does that sturdy plastic hold up outdoors? I have one sculpture that's now probably ten years old outside. So it's it's outside. Still. And most of the plastic has not changed whatsoever. Wow. Color or shape. And it's through the seasons because, you know, on the East Coast we have all the seasons certain to be extremely warm.

The plastic becomes quite malleable and soft and it might adjust its shape. And then it gets really cold through the seasons and it contracts a little bit and it might crack here and there. But for the most part, a lot of it still intact, which is absolutely horrifying. Yeah. But and you don't put anything on that, like, you don't put resin to make it sturdy.

You know, I don't endorse the material at all. Yeah. There are some bottles that break into pieces. So we hear a lot about how the plastic never goes away, but it gets into smaller and smaller pieces. So some of it cracks and becomes brittle and then breaks down into smaller pieces. And then I guess that's ultimately what's finds its way into the water systems and right into the drainage and, and that so that to our bodies.

Yeah. Into our bodies for sure. And into the bodies. If you're consuming, you know, things that also eat plastic like fish, it's quite common. But yeah, it doesn't deteriorate that much. That's, that's impressive, shall we say. Yeah. Impressive. Like, it's great to show outside because that can be an all season sculpture that you don't need to really concern yourself with.

And the color will stay vibrant. Yeah. Even the sun doesn't really bleach it, does it? Not so much. I mean, there's certain, types of the the tide bottles bleach out and they really change color. But they don't deteriorate. So there's something that's not quite light fast about the red that they use. But red is a challenging color, I think, for, for most materials.

So that's not light fast, but all the greens and blues and yellows, they don't change at all. So fascinating. Yeah. I, I mean, I've, I haven't experimented with those kind of heavy duty plastics, shall we say, for outdoor sculpture. But I have with the soft plastics and I know that that deteriorates much faster. Like I can't really have it outside for more than two, three months, tops.

It does start to disintegrate, unfortunately. So. And I certainly don't want to add more tiny trash to the environment. Yeah, that's true, but for the interior pieces, they hold up totally fine. I have pieces that are more than ten years old and there's nothing no charm whatsoever. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting about longevity and artwork because of course in art movements where the final product, it's not necessary for it to be, you know, a forever material.

It doesn't matter as much, you know, if you think about sculptures that deteriorate over time. So it's always a bit of a conundrum there. Also, like, does it have to be an object that lives forever, right, and sticking around forever? Or is it okay to have something maybe that existed for public viewing a couple of times, then might just be recycled again?

So that's something I think about. Also the permanence of it. And if it has to be permanent for so long. Yeah. Do you repurpose some of your. Well, I think you said you do you repurpose some of your older sculptures into newer things sometimes, right. Yeah, I can I can disassemble them and reassemble them. And that's a moment sometimes when I edit, if the materials change too much or photos deteriorated, then I put it in the recycling and send it back out.

But often, you know, because the hardware is kind of expensive, the, the hex nuts and bolts, the nuts are used. So I repurpose that. But some of it rusts also, and it's not able to be reused, but then I can just put it in recycling so it feels, a little bit easier to manage rather than having to work with other types of materials.

And when you do your, standing sculptures like it's the plastic is light, what do you use to anchor them? Yeah, those are usually anchored on tomato planter supports that I recycling. So a lot of times those I don't know, they're welded together like you know, there's it looks like a it almost looks like the Duchamp piece where you had the water water bottle drying rack, the bottle drying rack, but it's like an upside down tree shape.

And, it's three circles usually, and three strips of wire. And usually people put them in the recycling because the weld has cracked apart. And so I, I collect them out of recycling and use those. And I kind of use that as an internal armature to help support. And then the base is usually a tire that I've picked up from the road.

A tire. Oh my God. Wow. Yeah. Because the car tire is quite substantial in terms of its, stability. When you lay it on its side, it's very stable. And then I can anchor the tomato planter internally and it's a completely invisible structure. So it's malleable and easy to work with without having to use welding or heat. And it's all mechanical.

I can just drill and use hex nuts and bolts and then that can also cool. Yeah. So that's what you know, those are the moments where I'm a little bit like, rolling a tire down the side of the road. Let's do. Yeah. Like those are moments from like, I don't know about this, but it's been okay. You know, I don't do so much work with those, but, I suppose you can stop by an auto body shop and say you got any tires you're throwing out?

I yeah, they do, they do. But there is a resale market for that. So that's also like, yeah, it's surprising they don't always willingly if it's totally stripped balled and can't be redeemed, they will do that. But a lot of times because the economic tide is shifting, that a lot of those tires get repurposed and reused. Oh wow.

It's kind of amazing. Yeah, that is kind of amazing. Oh, that's so awesome. So I have a heavy duty question for you as we are nearing towards the end of this, conversation. What do you think is the artist's role in fighting plastic pollution or climate change, or does an artist have a role? Yeah. I mean, I guess that's sort of why I came to the content component of the work a little bit organically, because I don't really have a sense that artwork needs to sort of engage in that type of way in an overt way.

I think that, you know, that concept of the artist exploring the world and seeing something and then sharing that, that, observation with a larger audience is sort of core of my practice. So I don't necessarily think that, It's overt in that way, in terms of environment, but I do think, you know, it's curious, especially teaching art history, because, you know, the output of a culture is really its cultural output, like the artistic artifacts are what remained of any culture.

So if we're looking in ancient Egypt or ancient Greece and Rome or even the Renaissance, and, you know, afterwards, if you think about postwar American art, those are the things that we sort of understand culture through as we look back. So they're helpful in that kind of way as a record or communication. And oftentimes when you look at that contextually, you understand maybe more of a political moment or a message.

So environmentally, I think it's tricky and it's a challenge because you have to how's the work? A museum has to store it, maybe in climate control. Right. It has to be transported, you know, the art fairs or, environmentally disastrous. Everybody flies to them and the work has to be sent there. And then the booths have to be set up and taken down.

So there there is like a very wasteful component to the industry, even packing materials and how things are arranged. So it's a challenge to be, participating in it again. It feels inevitable, like the way we spoke about at the start of the conversation, because the plastic is everywhere. It's hard to avoid. And if you're kind of engaged in a practice as an artist, it's a challenge.

But I think in in all the ways possible, I try to be as low of a carbon footprint as I can. So, you know, I don't own a car, and I'm very fortunate that my friends are nice enough to help me go from place to place if need be. And, I'm not using materials that, that use a lot of, generate a lot of electricity use and that type of thing.

So I suppose like the way that an artist's practice is a way that they could exercise their environmental concerns or interests, but it's a challenge. I think if you're an artists working in a large scale and you're known the demand is usually that you engage in practices that might not be as positive for the environment. Yeah, such as casting a work in bronze or any other type of I don't have the luxury of those concerns right.

But my my thought is this in a hopeful way to maybe think about it towards the end of the conversation, is that up until now, I have banked my carbon footprint as minimal as possible so that when the opportunity comes and I need to spend my carbon tax, I will have a lot in the bank. I like that up until now, it's been very low key and I haven't had to fly all over the world, touch the work and ship it into big places and cast it at a large scale.

But hopefully all of the good environmental will that I've expressed to this point will help me. When those times come, I'm sure that they will.

But yeah, I think, you know, as somebody who's working with this materials, it's top of mind really, of thinking about that. Yeah, I think it's impossible not to think about these things. When you work with materials such as this, because you're learning more and more about it as you go. Yes, that's true. And I think, you know, on a, on a sort of upbeat component of that, if you make, things that are of esthetic interest to people.

I mean, I know saying something's beautiful may be controversial for some, but if you're creating objects that people might want to exist with or live with, that's an advantage, too, because you can, you know, bring joy to people. So if somebody has a work in the house where they, you know, they exhibit the work and it brings pleasure to some people, I think that's also, some kind of like a buoyant way to look at it.

It is. And I think it's valid too, because, you know, I think, I think we all need beauty in our lives. Yeah, absolutely. We totally do. Otherwise things start to be very bleak. Yes, yes. So I'm grateful to people who work in that way. And the work that you exhibited in the plastic sculpture show, I thought was so stunning and beautiful.

I didn't really, you understand, understood, when I first looked at it that it was plastic. I didn't understand, you know, it was so transformed that I didn't really know what the material was. And I think if you can do that as an artist with your materials and introduce that back into somebody's, environment or their home or their kind of experience, it's really it's really a joy.

It's like a gift to be able to transfer that other people. So I hope that we can inspire at least that component of it for others, you know? Yeah, I'd like to think so. Yeah. You know, I'd like to think that we're picking other artists interests and materials such as these. And I think most artists probably like a challenge.

Yeah. And maybe they will take on a challenge of using a piece of trash from the sidewalk, right? And transforming it into something really beautiful. So it's a challenge. I put it out there for everyone. Yeah. No, I agree with you. Like, how can you do it differently? Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Well, thank you so much, Nicky.

This has been a delightful conversation. Yeah, it's been very fun to chat. Thanks for asking me. It's been really exciting and hopefully will show again sometime soon. I hope so. Two together. That would be really great. That would be awesome.

That was such a wonderful conversation. I am so inspired by Niki's practice, and I hope you will take the time to look at all the links and check them out yourself, and maybe even see the some of the sculptures in person. Thank you again for listening. Please rate and review and comment and share and all that jazz. Thanks so much.

See you next time.

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