sTo Len, whose fascination with waste removal started when he was a child, is the New York Department of Sanitation’s current artist in residence.
His interdisciplinary art project “Office of Invisibility” aims to spark curiosity from the public about sanitation practices and to re-contextualize the DSNY as diligently working toward a healthier and more sustainable city.
Len has been digitizing the footage to contribute to the DSNY media archive as well, claiming that he’s gotten through around half of the records so far. These documents of now-defunct incinerators, residential trash collection procedures, and operations across the city’s inactive landfills, he says, are a missing piece of New York City’s history.
Reporter Rhea Nayyar speaks with the artist in her latest article.
Brooklyn-based artist Sto Len isn’t so much a magician as he is alchemist and soulful choreographer, revealing graceful, swirling gestures from the surface of New York’s most polluted waters, en plein air, from the edge a rowboat. That something so immediate and arresting could be rendered from a shameful and alarming human imposition on nature is how Sto Len draws attention to environmental crises through his creations. It’s radical, political art-marking through traditional craft. His is a curious mind seeking to expose what’s right in front of us.
For Mapping Mespeatches, his recent exhibition at The Gallery at Ace Hotel New York, Sto Len exhibited prints pulled from the surface of Newtown Creek and Corona Park through an original process he calls tsunaminagashi — a mix of traditional suminagashi and his own techniques — mirroring toxic impact as a moving spectacle of psychedelic beauty. Following the show, we spoke to Len about transitioning his practice from the studio to urban wilderness and the question, “where does all the garbage go?”
Hi Sto, where am I catching you?
I'm up in Mendocino County right now. It’s really pretty here. Horses and cows, in the middle of nowhere.
What are you doing on the west coast?
I have a solo show in San Francisco at Parlor, a new space that’s in an old Volvo dealership, so I came out here to cool off for a minute, finish some paintings, and then I’ll drive back down to San Francisco. And I’ll be doing the San Francisco Art Book Fair as well. It's my first time doing it, but I love doing book fairs. I make a lot of books and stuff, so I will be tabling all weekend. I'm also teaching a workshop at the Minnesota Street Project — they have an outdoor courtyard and I’ll do a workshop there on suminagashi, which is how I got into my current body of work. It’s super fun. You use sumi ink, which is the black ink normally used for calligraphy, and you paint on top of water. Sumi ink naturally floats on water so you make a print from its surface.
How did you start doing that?
I went to Japan and I just loved the hand-painted signs that used black ink. I took a lot of photos, came back here, got sumi ink and some of the traditional calligraphy brushes, and I started to paint with it. And I loved painting with it. I mean, I love painting with it. The ink is super smooth and elegant, it's really sexy to paint with and your line lasts a really long time.
I totally fell in love. I tried doing calligraphy for a while and then started doing paintings with the ink. Then I realized that the ink floated, so I started doing these water paintings by creating a composition on top of the water and pulling prints from that. I just got obsessed and started to treat water like a canvas. I started adding other elements to it, started using color, oil paints, and natural materials like dirt and all kinds of stuff — I was getting crazy with the water.
How much can you manipulate? How much control do you have with the surface of water being the way that it is? Is it that you can control the color, but the shape is left to the water? Or have you been able to gain some control after doing it for so long?
You start to get a sense of what can happen or what will happen. I love the fact that you can't control it completely, right? You give up some of your control but, certainly, you learn what little brush strokes will send paint down the water in a certain way. I also use time to do a lot of the work — I'll set colors up in inflatable swimming pools in my studio, let the water sit for a couple days, and patterns will form over time, naturally, in the water.
These days, I'm really interested in that type of technique where I’ll set it up as these experiments in the water, let them do their thing, come back to it, manipulate it some more, and then print from it.
Over the past couple of years, I’d get really obsessed with a material and then just have to try everything. It’s part of the fun that you don’t know what’s going to happen. I love that part.
You’ve been working with the Newtown Creek area of New York and I want to know how that came to be. Were you looking out at the water one day and thought, “this is exactly like the inside of the studio.” How did you start working outside?
I just experiment like crazy in the studio. I started bringing more natural elements inside the studio, like dirt, and the more I was thinking about it, the more I realized I was basically making oil spills on water inside my studio and that Green Point is actually home to one of the biggest oil spills in the country, right where Newtown Creek is.
And I thought, “well, what if I went out there and printed from an actual oil spill?” I lived right by the creek when I first moved to New York and I had seen stuff floating in it for a long time. I was like, “oh my God, it's kinda what I've been working on anyways. I should go and try it.”
A friend of mine, Marie Lorenz, has been doing a project where she builds around boats and takes people on boat rides in New York City. A couple of summers ago, her theme was to take people to work. I had told her that I had been printing off the shore, that I've been doing some print experiments with the creek, and that it was working. I was really excited about it and so she said, “why don't I take you to work?” She took me on her boat and we went out and I printed from her boat. I realized that, with a boat, you could get to more places and it was super fun to cruise around on a boat, just printing.
She showed me the ropes on how to launch your boat from different places in New York and — I didn't know this at the time — but you actually don't have to get a license or anything, you can just get a boat. As long as you're wearing a life-jacket, you can go rowing around New York City. I love that aspect of it, that I could just do this. So I got a boat and started exploring, and because the Newtown Creek is fairly desolate (besides the factories that are there), I've been able to keep my boat there for the past couple years and use that as a home-base for my printmaking journeys.
It's so interesting because you'd think that there'd be a lot of traffic on that canal, you'd think that New Yorkers would think of it as a free and clear highway.
Well, it adds another aspect to New York, right? We're surrounded by water but most people don't actually have that much contact with it except maybe going to the beach sometimes. It's known that it's polluted, so people don't really go swimming in the water, but they don't even think of boating as a thing that they can do. I've always enjoy saying, “check it out, you can just go do this!”
Were you initially thinking about the environment when you were in the studio, or were you more interested in the formal aspects of suminagashi? When you went out on to the water, did you suddenly realize that the canal was basically made of oil paint? I’m curious to know how these concepts emerged.
I think it was a natural evolution and a natural conversion. My art practice has always been pretty improvisational and I like to adapt to situations, I like to let my material take me places. I think exploring water as a medium was slow and gradual, but when I realized what I was doing out on a rowboat, in the pollution, I realized that this was all different fucking versions of my love for New York and my love for the planet.
All of a sudden, a lot of other concerns in life were converging with the art work. None of that was necessarily intentional, but once I realized all these threads that were connecting — that all were really important to me — I was that much more excited, I knew that was the right path.
Does the type and the intensity of colors you get from the prints tell you anything about what’s in the water? Do you have a rainbow of colors that indicates diesel fuel, or lady’s hair dye, a color map of pollution that indicates some sort of pattern?
Yes. Every trip I go on, I make journal entries to note where each print was made and, looking back through them, it’s interesting to see that certain areas produce certain types of color. It’s all different shades of reds, browns, blacks and grays, but when you really look at them (and recently at the show at Ace Hotel) you see that “oh, this one’s super light in some parts.” It was pointed out that one of the pieces in the show was really different — that’s because the piece was actually done in Staten Island. The more I do this, the more I realize that there are all these subtle differences in different bodies of water. It makes me want to go around the world doing them.
It’s like research, my way of researching colors and textures and trying to figure out what causes them. A lot of times I do these prints and I’m like “oh my god, what causes this?!” It’s this nasty cocktail of oil and sewage...
Were you an environmentalist before or did this trigger that aspect of yourself?
It's always been a deep concern of mine. I've always wanted to speak about it — I've certainly had it in my mind — but I haven't, until now, really made work that addressed it. And this was just perfect for me because it wasn't premeditated. Now that I see it acting as a way to create dialogue around how we treat our water and what we're doing to the environment in general. I think it's a vehicle for me to be able to talk about things that I've always been interested in talking about.
Do you have specific hope for the viewer when you exhibit these?
One of the great thing about these prints is that they're not didactic. They still hold a place for the viewer to exist and have a little bit of their own experience. It doesn't hit you over the head too much, which I think is really nice. I like not being didactic in that way. I love viewers to have their own interpretation of the work. In exhibitions, I love how people approach them because they can be these beautiful images, but they reference nature in their forms.
A lot of people will think they're photographs or that they're maps. It's so up to interpretation before you really know how they're made. And I love, love when people don't immediately get it and take time to look at them as objects. And then, when they realize the process behind it, it brings a whole other aspect to it. I like people to spend time with them and take them in slowly. It's subtle work, in a way. You can enjoy them without the idea behind it, but for me, it's great to have that in there as well.
Absolutely. Do you see more environmental awareness in the city these days? Has this work brought you to those communities or have you noticed that people are maying more attention?
There's definitely been more awareness in New York...and in general. There are more groups that are specifically focused on water preservation. The city is supposed to be fixing it — and I think that they are trying — but it's a really slow process so other groups crop up that are taking matters into their own hands. And while I'm not affiliated with any group, I still do it in my own way.
I wonder if the prints will also become relics one day when the creek is finally clean — a bright, optimistic future in mind — but that people will look at these and think, “I can't believe that this was right next to where we lived, ate, bathed, had kids...”
Totally. It's a document. It's exactly what was in the water. That's exactly what what was right next to your condo.
As an artist who works in so many different mediums, does each medium speak to a different artist inside of you or do you see yourself as the same artist throughout?
I thought about that recently and I could see, in hindsight, how there are ongoing threads through everything. With the prints, it's so process oriented: I have these materials, I have a boat, I have some paper, and then I go out and it's unpredictable to know what's going to happen — but I'm so down for this journey. And I think the same thing is true with my performance work where I have these specific things I use to make music, to make sound, and then I always have a journey, I don't really know where it’s going to take me. And I think that process has been an ongoing thing for me throughout everything I've done.
I also just like to bounce around from material to material, keep things very interesting, and they all end up informing each other.
When you're doing something like leading a workshop, do you have certain things that you say to your class to get them free, to be able to create with whatever sparks their interest?
I actually make it a part of the workshop, usually at the beginning, to have an automatic drawing session where I try to break people out of thinking too much. I think sometimes we think too much and, especially when it comes to art, people and non-artists will say, “ah, I don't know to draw, what should I draw, I can't really draw,” and these ideas get stuck in people's heads. I think a great way to get people free is to erase some of that stuff.
At the beginning of a workshop, I have a thing (which I personally do almost every day), to use just ink and paper and not be allowed to paint anything specific. Just get your hands moving and your mind clear. Approach it like a meditation practice.
I've noticed that once people start, they’re still drawing trees, etc. And then, after five, ten, 20 minutes, they really start to give themselves over to simple movements of their hand and then we can start working with the water. But I guess I’m trying to break people free of thinking too much.
It's so amazing that five to 20 minutes can be a revolution in someone’s art experience and they had no idea because they never let that five to 20 minutes even happen.
Totally. It's like meditating. I'm sure a lot of people haven't sat down and meditated for 20 minutes. It might seem really long at first, but if you do it, it goes by super quickly. I love introducing that to people, I think that's a big part of who I am as a person, but it’s also just a nice exercise for people to do.
What are some artists or ideas that you look to that makes you want to make work? That really inspires you?
I'm always inspired by music. I'm constantly listening to music and discovering new music and film so I'm always inspired by that. And I feel like I'm inspired by things that aren't necessarily like what I do. I just watched The Fly last night, directed by David Cronenberg who I love, and there's this creepiness. He always sort of has these fleshy, grotesque, bloody, kind of messy... I don't know, I like to get messy.
I love that The Fly is one of those things that is still a timeless, disgusting — but amazing — movie that inspires you.
It's kind of gross but it's also super thought provoking, right? And I love that. People get grossed out by these prints and at the same time, they're like, “oh, they're really beautiful” or, “you know, now I'm really thinking about all this other stuff.” I love that kind of art where it just gets you on different levels.
Especially because that's just so human, too. We are amazing in growth.
Yeah, we're super great.
What are you listening to right now?
Recently I listened to some Lightning Bolt, and I listened to some Jimi Hendrix. The new Tribe Called Quest record's good.
Are you reading anything right now that you think is cool?
I recently went back and read this book called Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers that tracks where all the garbage goes, what happens to it, and it's super fascinating to see every step.
You can think about it next time you throw something away.
I'm starting to get really conscious about what I'm getting rid of. I also just borrowed a book called You Can't Win by an author named Jack Black — not the actor Jack Black, hah — and I'm excited to read it. Apparently, it had a big influence on William Boroughs.
Do you have any advice for young artists or environmentalists?
I think what I've realized is that actually going out to these places has demystified some of that for me in this positive way. I've talked to a lot of people who really care about Newtown Creek, for instance, but who never go there. I went to a city council meeting that was about Newtown Creek and there were a lot of different kinds of people who were really invested in it, but I could tell I was one of the few people that actually went in the creek, in some of the worst spots. I had this first-hand knowledge and I wanted to use that knowledge to help in some way.
So, just get out there. Discover things on your own and use what you're good at to be part of the solution. I'm not a scientist. I want to work with scientists, but I do what I do as an artist and can at least use that for some sort of good.
Challenge things with the voice that you have. If everybody did that, we'd get closer to a better place.
Sto Len is a printmaker, sculptor, painter, musician and curator with interests in improvisation and experimentation within a variety of media. His current body of work integrates the traditional art of Suminagashi with experimental marbling on found maps, books, and printed propaganda. Recent collaborations with nature, sewage and pollution in the New York waterways has made the Newtown Creek his second studio. Working en plein air from a rowboat among “bloated rats – with eyeballs hanging out,” Sto uses a process like paper marbling to print directly off of the water. Sto Len is based in Brooklyn with familial roots in Vietnam, his work incorporates these bonds connecting issues of both their history, environment, and politics.
Read more from my studio visit with Sto at http://picnic.aimeelusty.com
Sto Len creates one-of-a-kind artists’ books out of hand-marbled papers. We picked these up at the Cinders Gallery table at the New York Art Book Fair. -sh
