The best way to collect art is find pieces that resonate with and move you. It is a personal, emotional, and even spiritual, experience to connect to a piece of art. Not only are you investing in your favorite artist but the piece itself may also appreciate in value over time. There are many ways to find underrated, up-and-coming artists who offer an array of unique and often more affordable art than established industry icons. You can visit artists in residency, attend open studios and art fairs hosted by gallery curators, buy prints and original works of art at charity auctions, and follow young artists pursing their masters in fine arts. 

All of the artists included preach the use of sustainable practices and profess their love of nature through their work. Some use abandon materials that may otherwise end up in landfills, similar to all the artists included in the last Museletter, while others incorporate natural scenery to show their love of the outdoors. 

Ultimately sustainability is a lifestyle. Collecting is a lifestyle, too. It's making the courageous and often more inconvenient choices that benefit the environment in the long run rather than taking the easy way out. That can mean making the effort to recycle your papers and plastics or not impulsively buying cheaply-made fast fashion and investing in pricer sustainably-made ware. The artists featured below will help you to reflect on these themes, and investigate how you can live life in a more sustainable way.

The avant-garde artist co-founded Chashama, a non-profit that provides affordable workspaces to artists, in Midtown, Manhattan, in 1995. Its namesake translates to “to have vision” in Farsi, honoring her mentor Reza Abdoh who died of AIDS. She is a self-proclaimed flower child born to hippy parents who have lived in Newfoundland, Canada, Ibiza, Spain, and the New York City suburbs. 

Chashama has teamed up on numerous occasions with Art to Ware, a Black-owned and women-run small business that makes upcycled clothing, to sell upcycled clothing at Chashama pop-up boutiques. Art to Ware was founded in 2021 by Lesley Ware who defines her brand as a “wearable art gallery.” They’ve had pop-ups in Tribeca, the World Trade Center’s Oculus, the West Village, Chelsea, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal shop, where the team has showcased one of a kind clothing and accessories from independent artists including Ooh Baby by Anikka, which the Real Art Muse bought a jacket from, Bunny Shop, Googly Eye Cru, Elements by Land, and Project Runway Alum Epperson. The boutique’s are part of Chasama’s Storefront Startup program with help from the city’s Department of Small Business Services. Lesley Ware is a co-founder and also known as the Creative Cookie. Chashama also has residency programs.

Meg Webster is a San Francisco-born sculptor who makes minimal art with natural materials to build bodices. Her project, Wave, was display in the Upper Gallery at The Arts Center at Governors Island last year. The installation is interested in nature’s cycles, using natural matter such as water, soil, moss, salt and twigs to spark conversation about the intersection of nature, ecology, sustainability and technology. You can also see her work at Paula Cooper Gallery. 

A great summer getaway that is close and not too costly is visiting New York's Governor's Island. Governor's Island Arts’ Organization, which is run through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, has a robust residency program, offering opportunities arts, cultural, educational, and environmental nonprofits to share their work with the public and advance their missions in a setting unlike anywhere else in New York City. Its newest LMCC exhibits opened last month, however none of them are sustainability focused. Governor's Island has programming all summer long, which is considered its peak season. 

John Milkovisch is a Houston-based folk artist who created the provocative Beer Can House Rice Military, Houston, Texas in 1968, which still exists today. It uses beer cans, bottles and other beer paraphernalia, as well as marbles, rocks and metal pieces. Over 50,000 were used to create the structure created by the retired upholsterer for the Southern Pacific Railroad. You can visit the Beer Can House on weekends from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. for $5. It is currently being preserved through the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. The Orange Show’s 42nd Annual Gala is on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m., which you can attend to support the organization. The visionary Lawndale Art Center in Houston offers an annual residency program. ​

Cynthia Grow is a visual artist who is from and currently based in Florida. She combines her study of art and literature through her abstract paintings and text-based conceptual paper work. Her work has been featured in publications and exhibitions around the world, from the U.S. to Italy to Spain, including Saatchi. Her project, Love Letters, is a mixed-media project that lays upcycled books of love letters written by historical figures and famous lovers throughout history onto canvases.