SALVAGE

Please enjoy my conversation with Michelle Vania Beattie. 

Michelle is an intuitive artist known for her striking sculptures made from beach-found plastic, inspired by a lifelong connection to the ocean. Growing up in Plettenberg Bay, she collected what she called “mermaids tears”—a childhood fascination that returned years later in Kommetjie, where she discovered these were actually nurdles, raw plastic pellets. This revelation ignited her commitment to addressing ocean plastic pollution. 

Since 2020, Michelle has transformed the plastic debris she collects during beach cleanups into conceptual sculptures that raise awareness about environmental damage and consumer impact. Her work gives a voice to the ocean and calls for urgent change.

https://www.instagram.com/mishvania_art/?hl=en

https://www.manzart.com/collections/mishvania?srsltid=AfmBOoqzpU1CwX7EUrJXYeZ28X8tPcfZh2bGGc34HBKGWlG9YGZW14wr 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurdle_(bead)

https://www.inkbox.co.za/

https://www.facebook.com/p/Relevant-Art-Gallery-61573709015808/

https://woordfees.co.za/en/ 

https://openstudioskommetjie.com/ 

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Loren Eiferman. 

Over many decades Loren has created a unique technique of working with naturally found wood. Her organic wood sculptures take the detritus from nature and turn it into art. 

Loren wants the viewer to have a sense of wonder and awe when looking at her work.  We have all at one point or another picked up a stick from the ground—touched the wood, peeled the bark off with our fingernails.  Loren’s work taps into that same primal desire of touching nature and being close to it.

https://www.loreneifermanart.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/loreneiferman 

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ 

https://www.hanshofmann.org/ 

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beinecke_Rare_Book_%26_Manuscript_Library

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

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

https://www.hammondmuseum.org/ 

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Carli Vergamini. 

Just a girl trying to change the world, that’s Carli. What started as a creative outlet eventually turned into a resourceful smorgasbord of repurposing vintage jackets & dilapidated kiddie pools. 

It all began when Carli wanted to make stuff with leather but didn’t know where to find any (spoiler: it was thrift stores). Add getting grossed out by her own consumption habits & here she is today making cool, wearable stuff out of trash.

 Because there's already enough cool stuff in the world without starting from scratch making something new.

https://www.cravebycrv.com/ 

Carli’s IG https://www.instagram.com/cravebycrv 

Carli’s shop CRAVE by Carli Rae Vergamini https://www.cravebycrv.com/shop

Carli’s clothing repair clinic https://www.cravebycrv.com/event-details/clothing-repair-clinic-2025-07-27-11-00

Carli’s blog https://www.patreon.com/cravebycrv 

Buy Now, The Shopping Conspiracy on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/81554996

Amy Meissner, extraordinary artist and repair master https://www.amymeissner.com/

Katrina Rodabaugh, author, artist, mender  https://www.katrinarodabaugh.com/ 

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Pauline Galiana. 

Pauline engages simultaneously with a wide range of artistic practices, including collages, paintings, drawings, ephemeral installations, small-scale sculptures, performances, and videos. Her work incorporates both noble and mundane materials; regardless of the medium or method, the source materials are typically deconstructed, reconstructed, and hybridized. 

Pauline wastes nothing. Her processes are obsessive and meditative, involving meticulous planning and patient execution. When applied to materials of varying forms, resilience, and textures, the otherwise ordinary actions of drawing, looping, sticking, or sewing become transformative. By expressing instinctive states of mind through formal compositions, often involving rigorous grids, she extracts meaning from unexpected encounters and entropy. Bridging the gap between fine art and everyday utilitarian objects and materials, Pauline invites viewers to reconsider the boundaries of sustainability and reflect on conventional art forms.

https://www.paulinegaliana.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/paulinegaliana/

Pauline’s videos: https://vimeo.com/user41579259

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Benjamin Von Wong. 

Get ready for a wild, inspiring ride with this artist & activist. From mining engineer to creator of viral installations like Plastic Tap and Plasticphobia, Benjamin shares how he fell (literally!) into a life of purpose, using art to make climate issues unforgettable.

Giant faucets, 10,000 plastic bottles, mermaids, phoenixes, and community-powered change—this one's not to miss.

Benjamin Von Wong's work lies at the intersection of fantasy and photography and combines everyday objects with shocking statistics. It has attracted the attention of corporations, like Starbucks, Dell, and Nike and has generated over 100 million views for causes like ocean plastics, electronic waste, and fashion pollution. Benjamin says that he is an artist focused on amplifying positive impact. His mission is to help make positive impact unforgettable.

https://www.vonwong.com/ 

United Nations https://www.un.org/en 

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

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

Cop 16 https://www.cbd.int/conferences/2024

Ocean Plastic Leadership Network https://opln.org/

Downloadable Plastic Tap Project vonwong0.gumroad.com/l/giantplastictap 

Support the show

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/ 

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/

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Meredith Andrews aka Plastic Mermade.

 Contemporary portrait, travel and lifestyle photographer Meredith Andrews has shot for editorial, advertising and private clients all over the world. Based on the sub tropical island of Bermuda, where she finds much of her inspiration. 

Her work can be seen in almost every medium including dozens of international exhibitions such as the 2009 and 2019 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at National Portrait Gallery in London, UK, Portrait of Humanity 2020, OpenWalls Arles 2020, the Copenhagen Photo Festival, a solo show at the Bermuda National Gallery in 2021, a silver winner of the Association of Photographers awards, the BJP International Photography Award, the Royal Photographic Society International exhibition and the PHOTO IS:REAL Festival all in 2022. 

Most recently Meredith’s work was exhibited at the Women Street Photographers exhibition in NYC, Miami Art Week and Apollo’s Decathlon, Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad at Château de Montsoreau in France.

https://meredithandrewsphotography.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/meredithphoto 

https://www.instagram.com/plastic_mermade 

https://www.gold.ac.uk/

https://www.uwcatlantic.org/

https://www.mcgill.ca/

https://www.marimekko.com/us_en

Bermuda National Gallery https://bng.bm/  https://bng.bm/a-collector-at-heart/ 

Documentary about Meredith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aktHI8iZiA0&t=387s

Keep Bermuda Beautiful https://www.kbb.bm/

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, author All We Can Save and What If We Get It Right? https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/ 

Sam Bentley Good News https://www.youtube.com/@itsSamBentley

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/whimsical-legos-are-still-washing-ashore-decades-after-they-were-lost-at-sea-180979580/ 

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Nat Kalbach. Nathalie is a self-taught mixed media artist, writer, and advocate for historic preservation, whose vibrant works explore urban subject matter through a fusion of paint mediums and collage materials. Her unconventional path into the art world began as a sanctuary from her former role as a paralegal, where she discovered the transformative power of art as a means of storytelling and personal expression.

Nat finds inspiration in the ever-changing dynamics of city life, particularly in the urban subject matter that surrounds her. She connects deeply with the spaces she lives in by not only exploring the visual aspects but also by researching the history and the stories that unfold within the buildings and structures that populate the cityscape. 

https://www.natkalbach.com/ 

​​https://www.instagram.com/natkalbach/ 

https://natkalbach.substack.com/ 

https://www.natkalbach.com/podcast 

Plant based acrylic paint https://www.placrylic.com/home

Liquitex bio-based acrylic paint https://www.liquitex.com/

Jimmy Leslie, Nat’s mentor https://jimmyleslieart.com/

Artful Adventures in Mixed Media https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/633752/artful-adventures-in-mixed-media-by-nathalie-kalbach/ 

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with kHyal. Complex, and unclassifiable, kHyal’s mixed media work riffs off of pop culture icons and performs like a Rorschach Test in a behavioral science lab, tugging at the neurons of each viewer, and born to challenge perceptions. Using ordinary objects snatched from dumpsters, recycle centers, flea markets, tag sales, thrift stores, the ocean and the street — assembled with raw precision in a dazzling cacophony of visual clutter — each piece decidedly explodes the human-centric flaws, foibles and sometimes tragic outcomes of a plastic society.

https://khyal.net/ 

https://getfizz.com/ 

https://www.soundlycaring.com/ 

https://goodwilloutlets.com/

https://www.beyondplastics.org/

Support the show

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/ 

Please enjoy my conversation with Amy Orr. Amy is a multimedia artist whose work often involves the reinvention of manufactured materials; plastic and plastic cards in particular. The understanding and perception of plastic and ephemera is changing quickly. Where Amy’s work was once a lighthearted narrative about consumerism and culture, it is now overshadowed by the environmental disaster that our single-use practice has caused.

Amy is drawn to materials for their color, abundance and original intent. Whether constructing a patterned composition or figurative mosaic, the plastic fragments become a sparkling wasteland of personal histories and common stories. With a background in textiles, Amy’s work can be understood with references to the crazy quilt, in which fabric scraps are pieced together to create a whole cloth that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Previously a tenured professor, administrator, designer, and art publication editor, Amy Orr is now a studio and street artist.

https://www.amyorr.net/ 

https://www.inliquid.org/artist/orr-amy 

https://www.instagram.com/amyorrwhat/?hl=en

https://www.saqa.com/

https://metrophiladelphia.com/snyderman-works-galleries-to-close-after-52-years/

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

https://plaidonline.com/mod-podge

Church of the Heavenly Rest exhibit https://pdflink.to/cc3a3579/ 

Support the show

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/