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  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 echo 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?

Alice Pixley Young (b. Washington, DC) has created recent multimedia installations for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Taft Museum of Art and Sarasota Art Museum. Additionally, her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Print Studio London, ArtPrize/UICA and recent solo shows at the University of Kentucky and the University of Rochester. Her work is in several public and private collections including the 21c Museum, the University of Cincinnati and she created a 40’ public sculpture for University of Dayton’s new fine arts center in 2024. She is the recipient of grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Puffin Foundation, Ohio Arts Council and was named an Ohio ‘Women to Watch’ by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her work can be seen in Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic and the Midwest 2026 New American Painting issue. She recently completed residencies at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA and Two Coats of Paint in Long Island City, NY. Young is an alumni member of A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn with a solo exhibition opening there in February 2026. She is working towards another solo exhibition for the Akron Art Museum to open late summer 2026.