Alice Pixley Young (b. Washington DC) 

My studio sits on the Ordovician fossil bed, the homelands of the Myaamia people, a nuclear Superfund site and within the Rust Belt, a layered landscape of deep time, displacement, industry and contamination. These histories directly inform my immersive multimedia installations and drawings which merge vocabularies from both built and natural environments. By integrating miniatures, large-scale silhouettes and moving shadows my work carries a sense of theatricality, yet the juxtapositions within it prompt deeper questions about history, labor and our relationship to the environment.

My drawings, monoprints and installations function in dialogue often mirroring one another in form and content. Recurring motifs of bell jars, trees, mirrors, transmission towers and fire move fluidly across these bodies of work. The materials I employ speak to cycles of resource exploitation, drawing from the traditions of Land Arts and the Hudson River School: hand-cut tar paper for large installations, modeled miniatures of transmission and water towers, and salt and gouache to create crystallized surfaces.

The fossil age and the nuclear age serve as conceptual bookends to our current moment. Through the use of video and mirrors, I evoke the idea of ‘thresholds’ or ‘portals,’ connecting personal and cultural memory to the geologic record. By documenting compromised landscapes—brownfields, industrial ruins, and wildfire-scarred sites—I explore vulnerability and resilience. Shadows cast by rotating sculptures deepen this meditation, inviting viewers to pause and ask: What lies beneath us? What was here before us? What will remain after us?

Young received a BFA in Fine Arts/Painting from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida and participated in the New York Studio Program. She received an MFA from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a MA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2020), Akron Art Museum (2022), Sarasota Art Museum (2022), 21c Museums (2014-24), The Print Studio London (2019) and UICA (2012 and 2016). In 2015 Young participated in the contemporary light exhibition, InLight Richmond, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and was awarded Best in Show. Select solo shows include Taft Museum of Art (2019), University of Kentucky’s Bolivar Gallery (2024) and University of Rochester’s Hartnett Gallery (2024). She is a grant recipient from the Puffin Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Summerfair AIA and has attended numerous residencies including Stove Works, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel, Ragdale, Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Hambidge. Her work can be seen in Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, ÆQAI and others. She is a member of A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.