Alice Pixley Young

My studio sits on the Ordovician fossil bed, the homelands of the Myaamia people, a nuclear Superfund site and within the Rust Belt. This layered landscape of deep time, displacement, industry and contamination directly informs my immersive multimedia installations. My drawings, monoprints and installations merge vocabularies from both built and natural environments. By integrating large-scale silhouettes, shadows cast by rotating sculptures, and miniature models of industrial scale machines, my work carries a sense of theatricality. 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, drawing from the traditions of Land Arts and the Hudson River School. This includes hand-cut tar paper, salt, ink, and gouache to create crystallized surfaces. the use of video and mirrors, evoke the idea of ‘thresholds’ or ‘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?