FLOORED BY THE BEAUTY OF STINKY, OLD LINOLEUM

IN NEW YORK, THE ARTIST STEVEN HIRSCH FOUND A LOVELY — AND STINKY — ANTIQUE TREASURE IN THE CURBSIDE TRASH

by Steven Hirsch
(Instagram: @stevenhirsch)

This past September, on a rainy Friday, I went to see the 2023 Armory Show at the Javits Center in New York City. Feeling all pumped up after seeing some wonderful art at the fair, as I was heading back home, I came across a pile of old linoleum lying in front of a tenement building on West 36th Street in Manhattan. It was being renovated. The material that had been thrown out was wet and smelled intensely of mold. Yuck. Still, I could sense that there was some art to be made there.

One of Steven Hirsch‘s photos of the scraps of decades-old linoleum that he discovered and rescued.

Enter Wikipedia wisdom, which reminds us that linoleum, a word that is “sometimes shortened to ‘lino,’” is a floor covering made from such materials as “solidified linseed oil (linoxyn), pine resin, ground cork dust, sawdust, and mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate, most commonly on a burlap or canvas backing.”