Artist Statements

Natalie Boburka
Since childhood, I have been picking up litter, influenced by the lesson to always leave a place better than I found it. The image of the weeping Native American in the 1971 advertisements deeply resonated with me, inspiring my personal mission from age nine to encourage others to pick up after themselves—a commitment I remain passionate about today.

In my artistic practice, I’ve incorporated discarded objects—what many would call trash—into my work since the early 2000s. These materials are used for embossing, impressing, and mark-making, and I integrate them into my pieces both subtly and overtly. My artwork spans from free-standing sculptures to wall-mounted works. Sometimes it directly addresses pollution and its impact on the environment; other times, the found objects contribute intriguing textures, structures, or focal points that add an element of mystery regarding their origins.

Nicole Helen Brunner
Nicole Helen Brunner (she/her) is a visual artist and sculptor working in collage, painting, textiles, and ceramics. In communication with my experience with consumerism my work is grounded in a sustained engagement of material transformation utilizing found everyday materials like magazines, aluminum cans, plastic, synthetic clothing, pottery to investigate grief, mortality, gender norms and environmental themes through a feminist perspective.

Isabel Cotarelo
The focus on trash, particularly plastic, in my work during the pandemic reflects a critical examination of our contemporary existence. Plastic is not merely a convenience; it has become a symbol of our consumer-driven culture and the environmental crisis we face. As we navigate through modern life, plastic is ubiquitous—found in packaging, products, and even in our daily routines. Yet, its permanence in landfills and oceans highlights a troubling relationship with waste.

In choosing to recycle plastic, I intentionally reclaim its value, transforming what is often dismissed as garbage into something meaningful and beautiful. This act serves as a powerful commentary on how we perceive waste. Trash is more than just refuse; it embodies the remnants of our lives, the choices we make, and the consequences that follow. Throughout the pieces I created in 2020/2021, I aim to elevate these discarded materials, encouraging viewers to see beyond their initial purpose and recognize the potential for renewal that lies within them.

Each piece is crafted to tell a story—stories that challenge us to reconsider our values and attitudes towards consumption. By presenting these narratives, I invite contemplation on the cycles of usage, abandonment, and rebirth that define our relationship with material goods. In redefining waste, I hope to spark conversations about sustainability, responsibility, and the beauty that can emerge from what we typically overlook.

As you engage with this work, I encourage you to find beauty in the discarded and reflect on the intricate tales each item holds. These stories are not just about what we throw away; they are intertwined with our own experiences and the broader narrative of our shared existence.

Collin Douma
If everything in the universe is nature except us, are we on the wrong side? My work challenges humanity’s role in the natural order during an era of existential crisis. The United Fauna series imagines animals salvaging discarded human technology: military vehicles, industrial machinery, salvaged parts transformed into instruments of resistance and survival.

Adah Frank
I am drawn to themes and materials that are overlooked, thrown out, hidden. Cakes mark celebrations and rites of passage. What happens when they’re taken out of context and cannot be consumed? I am drawn to cultural symbols and everyday materials that juxtapose humor with remnants of an indulgent, wasteful society.

An inedible cake, size increased, becomes architecture, disrupting expected environments, creating moments of humor and curiosity.

Andrew Harrison
As a lover of music and collage art I began this project in 2013. After seeing hundreds of unwanted albums being dropped into a dumpster outside of a Goodwill that was going out of business, I was provoked to think about the life cycle of the LP from the realization of the musicians vision to either treasured possession or in some cases, a throw away in the dustbin of history.

I use only the covers and inner sleeves of discarded LPs in works ranging from 2.5″inches square to 4” or 5” wide. It is an attempt to honor the musicians, producers, designers, photographers, labels and listeners who were a part of this “product” lifecycle.

Sue Horowitz
My work revolves around time, decay and preservation, using materials such as resin, found objects and other sources to expand my worldview.

The pieces submitted are composed of encaustic, zinc type, mushroom spores and watch parts. Sardine cans frame the pieces. They shelter thoughts that would otherwise wither in the course of a day; they do not “mean” anything, and allow the viewer to control their take on what they’re seeing.

Though I work in all seriousness, I like to poke fun at the need for control and explanations we humans demand, while loving the questions that survive our need for both.

Judith Hoyt
My collages are about old material used to create new work depicted in scraps of paper, fabric, found metal, and bark. This material is discolored, corroded and

misshapen by the random process of history, a history that get passed on to each collage.Each piece evolves through trial and error, the shapes and colors of the materials guiding the process.

Chong Kang
I found myself boxed in from all the online purchases during the Covid locked down. This was the beginning of my experimental paper making journey.

My concern for limiting household trash contributed in being more creative, adding plastic, fabrics and more new ingredients.

My new resource has become a big component in my creative process. Unfortunately, there is endless recyclable cardboard boxes and trash to choose from.

Rivka Katvan
I am drawn to the fleeting, unscripted moments that unfold in the street. My work explores the quiet tension between presence and absence, intimacy and anonymity, revealing the poetry embedded in everyday life.

As I move through urban spaces, I watch for the convergence of light, gesture, and chance— those brief alignments that exist for only a second before disappearing. I am less interested in spectacle than in subtle human exchanges: a glance, a pause, a solitary figure passing through shadow.

For me, the street is a stage without rehearsal. The drama is real, the narratives unresolved. Through instinct, patience, and careful composition, I seek to slow time and invite viewers to look more closely at the overlooked rhythms of the city.

Natalya Khorover
My art practice stems from a need to create beauty from that which has been discarded. Striving to lessen plastic pollution and overconsumption drives my creativity. Zero waste is the ultimate goal for my practice. Most of my materials come from daily life. I collect single-use plastic food packaging in my home, or clean up trash on my walks and bring it to my studio to transform it. Stitching, collaging and transforming these repurposed materials provides a transformation.

Reclaiming and repurposing materials that often end up choking our environment or overflowing landfills has been my art practice for years. I use meditative hand stitching, alongside my industrial sewing machine, to stitch and collage layers of translucent single use plastics which would otherwise contribute to litter pollution. My mission is to make these materials unrecognizable.

Humans are instinctively drawn to beauty, thus I must entice viewers to look at something which they would otherwise avoid or not notice. Creating public art installations is an important part of my practice. I believe part of my job is to inspire people to take ownership of this planet and hopefully, to do what they can to help in our global fight to manage the climate crisis. Each installation endeavors to make the trash littering our forests, waterways and beaches visible, contributing to an awareness that drives change.

David Lantow
My work was first developed as a full-scale collage using corrugated cardboard and beer packaging that I’ve collected from my neighborhood bodega. Additional drawing and paper are sometimes added to the figurative composition. Once the maquette is near or fully realized, the image is deconstructed into hand drawn film positives. (Ink on mylar) Then the ink drawings are transferred onto screens and reconstructed as an archival screen-print. The reuse of printed material, even my old prints, was something I learned from working with other artists like Frank Stella back in the 1990’s. You have to love free art materials…

Tracy Leavitt
My creative process most often begins with the drawing/painting of a bodily gesture or a facial expression, then the concept expands as I experiment with different materials, looking for the right path to follow. Usually, oil paint or encaustics play a role in connection with found fabric, clay, or cardboard, or more recently, I’ve been growing my own substrate material of mycelium to explore the questions I have about the environmental sustainability of art. What might look like a painting at the beginning often expands with the inclusion of found objects and unusual materials that have their own energy and memory.

Whether the movements are big or little, the deep attention of my process is born of repetitive action; it is nourished by the possibility of meaning in the combination of elements. It might feel like a jolt, or, alternatively, like a slow, unfolding awareness of conscious connectedness, but it is that shift to a new perspective that I seek in working. Without that shift, or expansion of consciousness, the work has failed, or it’s just not done yet, because ultimately, my work is a part of a global call for evolution through individual positive transformation. My artwork, for me, reflects my concern and esteem for the heart and the spirit of humanity as we begin to understand our responsibility for and dependency upon all of universal life.

Lori Merhidge
Built from discarded materials collected along the Hudson Riverfront, my sculptural cairns reimagine the ancient practice of stacking stones to mark a path. Formed from river-tumbled dock remnants and marine foam, they embody the collision of natural and manufactured worlds. Each remnant carries a trace of industrial history, transformed by water, weather, and time into something both fragile and enduring.

The salvaged objects have gone through a journey: beginning at the point of discard, traveling along our waterways, and ultimately landing on the shore where I collect them over a period of months and years. Walking the Hudson River waterfront and meditating on the marks humans have left on our planet is a major part of my current practice. By transforming throwaway objects into structures of balance and weight, the work fools the eye, questions how value is assigned, and suggests that beauty is entwined with danger. The cairns are monuments to the traces humanity leaves behind—signposts of our precarious existence on earth.

My work that references the Madonna—a symbol of impossible purity and perfection imposed on women—is meant to be a meditation on power, belief, and erasure. Just as cultural symbols recycle and reinforce ideals that diminish individuality, industrial systems imprint the land with ideals of progress that often undermine its survival. My attempt is to arrange this detritus in a way that reveals how humanity inscribes meaning onto both bodies and landscapes, often at great cost.

Mary Mobijohn
As an artist, I manipulate found images to construct a perception of dynamic energy in the stillness of time.

Grey Ivor Morris
Much of what we discard possesses an overlooked, inherent value. Objects we view as merely functional often reveal a beauty that goes beyond their everyday purpose. When assembled or observed with intention, these materials form patterns and combinations that express hidden messages. Through this transformation, the commonplace becomes extraordinary.

Franc Palaia
My photo-sculptural works incorporate three components: photographic images, sculptural three dimensional objects and illumination. The pieces are composed of found and recycled domestic and industrial objects and containers that house back- lit transparencies or Duratrans.
My illuminated photo sculptural constructions blur the lines between photography and sculpture and present photography in unconventional ways. Many of the works investigate the inherent tensions of travel, the balance of fear and pleasure that emanate from inside a suitcase. Suitcases are symbolic icons of travel and carry the psychological “baggage” of the good and the bad of traveling.

The thrust of my work involves images that either relate to or contrast their host container. They manifest themselves in crates, suitcases, trunks, paper bags, heating ducts, mirrors, car parts, toys, oil barrels, lamps, furniture and appliances. These “Iconic Lanterns” are made of unorthodox materials that add to the perplexity and surprise of encountering a glowing array of images emanating from familiar 3 dimensional everyday objects that can include volcanoes, fires, pollution, landscapes, guns, geological sites, classical and derelict architecture, industrial parks, bridges and Roman antiquity.

Eileen Power
My art usually starts from a “I wonder what would happen if” frame of mind. Sometimes the work is spontaneous, whimsical, impulsive, intuitive, and comes from a place of feeling rather than thinking. Other times, my process is more methodical; an idea may come forward, usually tied to an emotion — fear, love, joy, grief, or the desire to transcend — and I purposefully set out to explore it. For me, there is magic in manifesting ideas.

I like to work across various media and I’ve never met a raw material I would turn away. I particularly like upcycling objects others might discard.

The work submitted for Trash Chic was born during the pandemic when art stores were closed. I began using old canvases, painting over them with black gesso, melting old beeswax candles to paint. I incorporated pieces of old metal screen and cardboard into some of the pieces. I started working in a way I haven’t really turned back from. Raw materials, raw art.

Suprina Troche
As I continue to practice my craft, my work has visually settled in-between beauty, darkness and humor. Through my eyes, our world is in a perpetual state of “Carnival”, and so my work takes on that visual to aid in communication on social, political and environmental themes. The sensibilities of ‘carnival’ feel very approachable, its humorous side allowing viewers to examine and probe my works without intimidation.

I celebrate us, and our absurdity. We are beautiful, horrid, tragic, and profoundly funny.