Spotlight Artist

Alice Pixley Young

Midwest
Artist profile photo

Garden

Small tree surrounded by an orange woven fence on a yellow-green background.

gouache and ink on paper

Cauldron

Round decorative plate with black, gray, and pink marbled pattern on a metal stand.

gouache, ink, and salt on paper

Moccasin Bend (Swamp Portal)

Abstract watercolor art with black, yellow, and gray leafy textures on a white background.

gouache, ink, and salt on paper

Featured in New American Paintings1 / 3

Artist Statement

 My studio sits on the Ordovician fossil bed within the Rust Belt, the home-lands of the Myaamia people and a nuclear Superfund site. This layered landscape of deep time, displacement, industry, and contamination directly informs my drawings and immersive multimedia installations. Recurring motifs of bell jars, trees, mirrors, transmission towers, and fire move fluidly across these bodies of work. By documenting compromised landscapes—brownfields, industrial ruins, and wildfire-scarred sites—I explore vulnerability and resilience.

The materials I employ speak to cycles of resource exploitation drawn from the traditions of land art and the Hudson River School. They include hand-cut tar paper, ashes, salt, coal slag, ink, and gouache to create crystallized surfaces. The use of video and mirrors evoke the idea of portals connecting personal and cultural memory to the geologic record; the fossil age and the nuclear age serve as conceptual bookends to our current moment. These juxtapositions prompt questions about history, labor, and our relationship to the environment.

What lies beneath us? What was here before us? What will remain after us?

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