Currents of Connection: How Art, Water, and Community Weave a 32-Foot Tapestry of Unity

Dive into the inspiring story behind Currents of Connection—a breathtaking 32-foot collaborative tapestry created by the Repurposer Collective. In this episode of Salvage, artists share their personal journeys of transforming NASA ocean current maps and repurposed materials into a stunning, unified artwork. From the thrill of creative problem-solving to the joy of collective creation, discover how this project celebrates connection, sustainability, and the elemental power of water. Hear firsthand how each artist’s unique voice harmonizes into a powerful statement about community, creativity, and our shared planet.

Listen now and explore the beauty of art that binds us all.

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 Caledonia Curry aka Swoon. This is a warm, wide-ranging conversation Callie talks about her journey from street art and wheat-paste portraits to massive collaborative installations built from salvaged materials – including the famous floating rafts seen at the Brooklyn Museum. She shares how reuse has been central to her practice from the start, driven by environmental awareness and a love of found materials. The conversation also touches on her humanitarian work in Haiti, the tension between solo and collaborative creating, her deep connection to the ocean, and her current shift toward storytelling, puppetry, and stop-motion animation.

https://swoonstudio.org/

https://www.uncsa.edu/kenan/artist-as-leader/caledonia-curry.aspx

https://www.heliotropefoundation.org/

https://musicboxvillage.com/

TEDxBrooklyn 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5298KZuW_JE

Finding Good in Our Own Limitations, TEDxPittsburghWomen 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUjIlXmXptU

Swimming Cities of Serenissima - Empire Me https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5dwosy

https://www.faile.net/

https://swoonstudio.org/#/submergedmotherlands/

https://deitch.com/

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

https://riversofsteel.com/attractions/carrie-furnaces/

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/

What do a penny in a nightlight, a suitcase of family mending, and 500+ women named "Unknown" have in common?

Anchorage artist Amy Meissner joins the Salvage podcast to talk about turning inherited textiles into powerful art, teaching repair as self-care, and why the thing spontaneously combusting in her house was her. This conversation will make you want to dig out your mending pile immediately.

https://www.amymeissner.com/

https://www.instagram.com/amymeissnerartist

https://dairybarn.org/quilt-national-archive-history-2/

https://www.anchoragemuseum.org/

https://momentummag.com/bike-pogies-101-elevate-your-winter-bicycling-game/

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/

What happens when 24 artists say yes to a shared prompt… and trust the current? 🌊

This episode of Salvage kicks off a special multi-part series about Currents of Connection — a 32-foot collaborative artwork stitched, collaged, painted, and assembled by members of the Repurposer Collective.

We talk about:
• receiving a single block and trusting the whole
• working with limits, deadlines, and doubt
• plastic, paper, fabric, dryer sheets, and “trash” as material
• collaboration as both method and message

Every stitch feeds the wave.
Every voice matters.
Just like water itself.

🎧 Listen to Part 1 wherever you get your podcasts
📺 Full visual episode on YouTube (trust me — this one’s worth seeing)

https://www.repurposercollective.com/

https://www.repurposercollective.com/currents-of-connection

Cathy Mitchell https://www.instagram.com/old_doxie

Sharon Williams https://www.instagram.com/williamssharoneco

Ellen November http://ellennovember.com https://www.instagram.com/ellennovemberfiberart

Ana Szilagyi http://www.anaszilagyi.com/ https://www.instagram.com/anaszilagyi

Marsha Borden http://www.marshaborden.com https://www.instagram.com/marshamakes

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 Aaron Kramer.

By exploring the intersection between the found and fabricated in his sculptural work, Aaron seeks a deeper understanding of the transcendent nature of ordinary objects. His work is often of a woven nature. Street sweeper bristles or reclaimed hardwoods are woven over welded steel armatures creating a skin. Whether skinning an object or new ways, he is excited by the process of reinvention. At the core of this sensibility is the belief that “trash is the failure of imagination”.

http://www.urban-objects.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@urbanobjects

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

https://craftcouncil.org/

Wolf E Miro https://closeoutjewelryfindings.com/

https://theloftatlizs.com/

https://rediscovercenter.org/

https://www.tinkeringschool.com/

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 Christopher Ender Coryat.

Ender is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in New York. His practice confronts systems of control through deeply personal, material-based investigations. Drawing on his lived experience with epilepsy and disability, Ender creates sculptural installations, performances, and pigment-based paintings that center the body as a site of vulnerability, resistance, and transformation.

Often working with pharmaceutical pigments ground-down medications once prescribed to him, he explores spaces like bathrooms, hospitals, and other liminal zones as sites of solitude and survival. His work challenges the boundaries between the private and the public, the sacred and the clinical, using form, texture, and sonic experimentation to guide viewers through layered, embodied narratives.

https://www.christopherendercoryat.com/

https://www.instagram.com/endercoryat/

https://www.salkschool.org/

https://cooper.edu/

https://www.artstudentsleague.org/

Fragmentation of Identity Show- Closes January 20th https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/14879514/fragmentation-identity

ALLICETTE Y EL PAIS DE LAS MARAVILLAS (ALLICETTE IN WONDERLAND)

https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/node/14714157

https://revolugallery.com/nyc-art-events

Here's the artist residency link: https://revolugallery.com/the-art-residency

Here is the magazine submission link: https://belicosamag.com/about-2

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 Sari Nordman.

Sari was born and raised in Finland, and is now a New York - based interdisciplinary artist. She creates public art projects, fiber-art installations, and mixed media and video works. Many of her projects have been informed by climate change and respond to environmental social justice issues. To amplify multilingual voices from around the world, she engages people of diverse backgrounds through interviews and fiber-arts processes.

As an artist, Sari is interested in exploring questions around protecting nature and ourselves through experiments with fiber-arts and interview processes. She is interested in how art can change people’s perspectives on consumerism and environmentalism, and can help lift human spirits from eco-anxiety towards advocacy.

https://sarinordman.com/

https://sarinordman.com/bridging-voices-on-climate-change/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1weIHGo3Vbd6qin9lM-vcaqTWnHn6lGX

https://catwalkinstitute.org/

https://www.theimmigrantartistbiennial.com/

https://jcal.org/jamaica-flux-u

https://www.kingmanor.org/

https://ps122gallery.org/

https://socratessculpturepark.org/

https://irvingtonlibrary.org/martucci-gallery-program-room Sari’s exhibit!

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

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

https://sva.edu/

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 Aurora Robson.

Aurora is a visual artist predominantly known for working with plastic waste. She was born in Toronto, grew up in Hawaii, and later lived in New York City, where she studied structural metal welding (she is a NYS Certified Structural Welder!) and worked in film, construction and entertainment. She studied art history and visual art at Columbia University.

Throughout her career, Aurora has developed many ways to sculpt with plastic debris, including fastening, weaving, sewing, ultrasonic welding, injection welding and 3-D printing. She shares these methods with others who want to reduce and transform plastic waste. Aurora has received several awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She also founded Project Vortex, a global collective of artists and designers working with plastic debris. Currently, Aurora lives in the Hudson Valley with her family, cats, garden, fruit trees, and a very expressive dog.

She says that her practice is a form of serious play. Aurora works in a variety of mediums, but have dedicated the majority of the past twenty years to working with post-consumer and post-industrial plastic aka plastic pollution. In order to maintain her creative rational optimism, play is essential, but her work is also a meditative exercise in subjugating negativity and a practice of radical acceptance.

https://www.aurorarobson.com/

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

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/katy-hessel-podcast

https://meatpacking-district.com/

https://beaconscloset.com/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-if-we-get-it-right/id1773809532

https://www.projectvortex.org/

https://ecoartspace.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/