Oysters, etcetera, with Manya K. Rubinstein
For over two decades, Manya K. Rubinstein has been celebrating all things Providence. Her work with Outpost Journal helped bring critical media attention to the local art scene, and recently, she co-founded the Industrious Spirits Company (ISCO) which—despite being only a few years old—already feels like an Ocean State staple. In the photo above, Manya’s posed with a gorgeous Vendome Copper and Brass Works still. The ISCO team calls it Baby.
The Well (TW): Hello, Manya. Who are you?
Manya K. Rubinstein (MKR): I’m a co-founder and CEO of the Providence-based distillery, ISCO, a storyteller, a hand-talker, a hot glue aficionado, a mama, a surfer, a lover of tasty things, weird flavors and lesser-known edible flowers. I’m a believer in the brilliance of nature, the supreme silliness of French bulldogs, and the absolute necessity of sticking googly eyes on “inanimate” objects.
TW: We can get down with some hot glue and googly eyes. Do you remember any of your most early works, something with a similar materials list?
MKR: There’s a little sculpture I made when I was in kindergarten. It’s fashioned out of toothpicks and a block of wood and glue. It’s hot pink and neon orange and I’ve carried it around with me for 40 years. It still makes me happy when I look at it.
TW: Tell us a bit about this young sculptor.
MKR: I had a really blessed childhood. I grew up in NYC but spent weekends in upstate New York helping my mom garden, hanging out in the woods, catching frogs and snakes. I developed a love of words early, enjoyed basketball and photography, and was a dedicated classical flautist. High school was a lot of fun—we had a huge amount of freedom, and NYC in the 90s was a very different place than it is today. I was lucky to have great friends, we looked out for each other then and still do to this day.
Above: An artwork by Manya K. Rubinstein, NYC, circa 1984
TW: Can we ask about Pet Sematary?
MKR: It is my childhood handwriting (reproduced by the art department) on the tombstones for the 1989 version of the film Pet Sematary. And also here for some stills, but you might have to just watch it and wait for my credit...
TW: So NYC in the 90s. What were you up to? Sneaking into Limelight? Chloe Sevigny parties on Wooster street? Hanging low key in the libraries?
MKR: Oh, you should have seen the libraries!! I kid. I read ahead and did all my homework during class so I wouldn't have much work after school. My friends and I spent a good amount of time sitting around in parks or on stoops. An absolutely huge amount of time, actually. There are a handful of NYC dive bars that shall always hold special places in my heart. We also went through a few years of really good dance options: Wednesday hip hop night at BoB Bar (ig), Thursday 80s night at Don Hills, and Saturdays there was salsa and merengue at a place on Varick street that I can't remember the name of anymore! No sign of Chloë Sevigny but I did once style Kristen Chenoweth for a PAPER magazine shoot when I was interning there because the real stylist didn’t show. I hope you are picking up a theme! I am a good bullshitter.
TW: Cool sighting! The Annabeth Schott arc in West Wing was solid; we appreciate that she stayed on with the Santos administration. Moving on...Let’s talk Providence. Why are you here?
MKR: I came to RI in 1997 for college [Brown], barely made it off campus till 2000. I then discovered what an amazing city Providence was in terms of participatory art making, performance and, let’s be honest, ridiculously fun and often quite beautifully weird parties. I met a boy, stuck around, left a few times for some more school and some work, but kept coming back and decided in my mid twenties to make a life here. I loved—and still love—the collaborative nature of Providence, how its scale helps you to quickly connect with people and keeps folks kind of top line decent to each other (You will see that person again, so try not to be a @#$!). I love the creative spirit here, and that the ocean is never far away. I love how often people come together to try to make things better.
Above: Self portrait, NYC, circa 1996
TW: What was your concentration at Brown. Were you engaged with the local creative community back then, too?
MKR: I studied Comparative Literature at Brown and wrote an entire thesis on Susan Sontag and Donald Barthelme (don't ask). I attended exactly zero college sporting events, played zero games of beer pong, and set foot inside a frat house exactly once—to steal some shampoo. I was the principal flute in the Brown University Orchestra and a Managing Editor at the Indy, the Brown/RISD paper, for which we would pull an all nighter every single Wednesday night to deliver the issue to the printer on time in the morning. Once the sun was up and the issue was complete, I would drive home, sleep most of the day, get up in late afternoon in time for orchestra rehearsal, and head straight from there to a standing weekly party at a friend's house. Regretfully, that party was called 40s Night, which is what I call every night now, but for very different reasons. Anyhow, I’d then go home and sleep some more, and then I'd be more or less human again by Friday morning. There were not a huge amount of opportunities for engagement with the broader community during my time at Brown. I think I was pretty self obsessed as someone in their early 20s who really enjoyed literary theory. It was not very practical.
TW: After Brown...you were in Saas-Fee, Switzerland?
MKR: This is correct. I went to the European Graduate School. It was an amazing experience because I got to study with a number of philosophers, artists, and theorists who I had been reading in college. I made a very strange and very silly video "art," taught yoga—which I had no business teaching—to my fellow students and, once, to Antony Gormley, who gamely attended my "session." I took a class with Baudrillard that he conducted entirely in French through a haze of chain smoked cigarettes. I do not speak French, but it was amazing.
TW: That time you spent at The Indy...perhaps informed your role as publisher of Outpost Journal later on? What did you learn by working on that?
MKR: Outpost was an awesome project. I had a great co-editor Pete Oyler and a great designer Jay Peter Salvas. I think we’re all really proud of what we were able to accomplish over those years, and we loved making connections with like-minded folks working in other smaller cities. In terms of what I learned: I learned a lot about the cities we were featuring and about how sometimes our assumptions as outsiders were totally wrong. I learned how to manage a team, or in some cases, how to royally f-up managing a team. I learned that there is a museum entirely dedicated to works created from human hair; I’m still not sure if I should be beyond grossed out or utterly entranced by the ingenuity of our species. No new print projects on the horizon at the moment. But I don’t know, maybe I’ll start making zines again when I retire.
Above: Providence, circa 1998
TW: Outpost had a bit of an activist tint to it, in that you were highlighting then underrepresented cities and artists. With your current work, what feels new, challenging, and a bit radical?
MKR: I’m a bit obsessed with how agriculture and aquaculture can have positive impacts on climate, as well as with the idea that everyone’s birthright is access to the natural world with all its wonders and in all its deliciousness. There are a lot of amazing organizations doing work around this both locally and nationally. At ISCO, we’re committed to sourcing regeneratively or organically grown grains, sending our main waste product of spent grains back to local farms, and working with organizations such as the Billion Oyster Project (to whom we donate a portion of proceeds for every bottle of Ostreida Oyster Vodka sold), the American Farmland Trust, Fundación Tortilla, Greenwave, Eating with the Ecosystem, and lots of others who are helping create healthier lands, oceans and food systems while taking into account the actual humans who are involved along the way.
TW: Could you go into a bit more detail on agriculture and aquaculture?
MKR: For many years, I’ve been borderline obsessed with the magic of plants and the people who know how to grow them, the deep restorative powers of the ocean and all it contains, the sense of well-being that can come from eating well-grown, nutritious foods, the joy of creative, adventurous cooking, the excitement of new flavor discoveries, and the generous, welcoming way that food and beverage can bring people together to bond and share stories.
The food, agriculture and land use sector is responsible for nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and solutions around reduced food waste, plant rich diets, perennial crops, regenerative animal cropping, and conservation agriculture are no small part of addressing the serious and increasing issues humans face around climate. For me it was a really beautiful moment when I realized that these all these things that were super important to my sense of joy and connection to both nature and to others were not just small “me” things, but were intimately bound up in these sectors where there is both much work to be done, but also so many wonderful organizations and people working very hard to make a dent and set us on a better path.
Most people don’t think about the idea that their spirits come from agricultural products that were grown by somebody, somewhere. They do not connect what is in their glass to the land and labor that have created it. ISCO’s mission is to make delicious things made from beautiful ingredients that we source in a responsible manner, but also to help spread stories about things like why oysters are so amazing. In addition to being incredibly tasty, oysters provide excellent ecosystem services such as filtering up to 50 gallons of water a day, cleaning waterways, providing habitat for other species, and creating natural hurricane barriers. ISCO wants to share how a perennial wheat like Kernza—that we malted and are aging in a whiskey—is an incredible advance. A perennial requires far fewer resources to grow and maintain than an annual crop, which must be planted each year anew.
Above: Martha Mucha (Manya’s Grandmother), Maine Coast (cropped), circa 1980s
TW: Related to that, we read in another interview that you’re a fan of Bren Smith's Eat Like a Fish. What other texts have been meaningful in your agricultural explorations?
MKR: Here are some other good ones
Drawdown by Paul Hawken is an amazing text on climate solutions.
American Catch by Paul Greenberg provides an engaging deep dive into the state of America’s relationship to aquaculture and fishing, solutions on how the US might not have to import 90% of its seafood from other countries.
Never Out of Season by Rob Dunn asks us to consider why we only ever see one kind of banana. Nature made a huge variety of bananas. Humans chose one to propagate. Monocropping, e.g. growing just one kind of a thing in huge, industrial operations, instead of lots of types of things, has left agriculture extremely vulnerable.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer offers beautiful lessons in connection with nature. Favorite section is when she talks about how fresh soil produces oxytocin in the human brain, eg. our hormone system is engineered to help us bond with the land around us...like, woah.
Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson. Why do Americans use forks and knives and not chopsticks? What’s up with egg beaters? Why do we call food “rich”? A cultural history of eating and eating tools across many different countries and time periods. Have I mentioned I am a giant nerd yet? Am guessing by this point I don’t have to.
Lastly, Cork Dork from Bianca Bosker. Speaking of dorks, this is a great book. Flavor is weird. We don’t really have words for it. All about how we can train our brains to become better at perceiving flavor, but also about how so much of flavor is created with senses other than taste and smell. Really fun.
Above: ISCO Seaflow Launch, Providence, RI, May 2024
TW: Anything coming up from ISCO we should be on the lookout for?
MKR: I’m really proud of ISCO’s latest release, our Seaflow Ocean Gin, made with both local oysters and seaweed, alongside light juniper and tons of bright citrus. It’s crazy delicious and we used peaflower to give it a natural light blue hue that calls up a lazy day near the sea. And I’m also super proud of our brand new collab vodka with Myrtle! Working with friends and respected peers on creative projects is just about my favorite happy place. The vodka tastes amazing and I’m obsessed with the packaging. I hope people love it.
TW: Ah yes, thank you for that moment of co-promotion! We’re biased but, yes the Seaflow Ocean is incredible. So how about when you’re not at ISCO—what’s keeping your own spirits up?
MKR: I’m trying to paint more. I’ve always loved to sketch and draw, especially when traveling, though mostly before being a parent and running a business, which leave me with pretty paltry amounts of time for other pursuits. I find it relaxing and peaceful. My grandmother was a talented watercolorist, and my mother had gone deep into her art practice in the decade before she died. So for me painting is a lovely way to call up both my connection to the present moment and my connections to those who are no longer present.
Last Q: What do you hope for Providence, ten years from now?
MKR: BETTER BIKE LANES. More trees! More gardens. Climate resiliency. A generally higher level of prosperity and wellness. I hope it is still arty and weird.
