Behind the Scenes of "Keepsake" 2026
In Keepsake, our annual group exhibition, eleven artists reflect on the concept of keepsakes and how an artwork can serve as a vessel to carry a message, memory, or metaphor from the creator.
Prior to creating a new body of work, the artists were asked to respond to the question: What memory, or message from you, does your artwork carry with it? Approaching the idea of keepsakes both conceptually and personally, the artists featured in our end-of-year exhibition offer insight into the transaction and evolving translations of meaning and material as artwork passes hands.
The 2026 exhibition features new work by Andrew Alba, Ben Skinner, Carrie Crawford, Hayley Sheldon, Katrine Hildebrandt-Hussey, Kayla Plosz Antiel, Langdon Graves, Liesl Pfeffer, Nicole Anastas, Olivia Botha, and Xochi Solis.
In his carved wood sculptures, inspired by the Mexican folk art tradition of Milagros (“Miracles”), Alba nods to the sacred objects that adorn altars and serve as offerings. Alongside his paintings, the pieces are reflections of things held sacred, including the act of making itself. A practice in contradiction, the works contain both mess and order, absurdity and the ordinary, ugliness and beauty. Moving between the beloved and the mundane, the works become vessels for the comedy and tragedy that shape a life.
Skinner’s work grows out of an evolving collection of found and gathered objects: postage stamps, scraps of leather, glass half domes, and photographs of dogs organized by breed. Carefully encased in frames made from silicone-molded paper pulp and plaster, the disparate items are transformed into thoughtfully constructed assemblages, probing novel connections and offering a glimpse into the idiosyncratic associative logic of the artist’s mind.
Sourced from her own collection, Solis combines vintage postcards collected during a trip to México, layering them with SolarFast prints made from leaves and dried flowers gathered along the way. These fragments become unstable records of time, bringing together faded histories, imagined relationships, and the artist’s own impressions of a passing place. Flashes of fluorescent color evoke the heightened quality of memory, where moments can become more vivid and surreal through recollection. By layering images and materials, Solis explores how objects accumulate emotional meaning and how memory remains fluid, allowing the past to be continually reimagined.
Hildebrandt-Hussey’s totemic wooden wall works are made from scrap remnants salvaged from the woodshop of a close friend, whose hand-built home the artist now resides in with her family. Allowing the materials to guide her process, she found herself drawn back to memories of working alongside her father, reflecting on the ways making can preserve shared experiences across time, holding traces of memory, place, and the hands that shaped them.
Plosz-Antiel’s paintings mark life’s milestones, from birthdays and weddings to moments of loss, and draw on the tradition of preserving flowers as tokens of affection and remembrance. Though entirely imagined, her arrangements feel dreamily familiar, evoking the flowers we keep as tangible reminders of people and moments we wish to hold onto. Through exaggerated color, expressive, textured brushwork, and playful patterning, her paintings capture the imperfect, shifting nature of memory and the feelings that linger long after a moment has passed.
Similarly, Sheldon’s woven, shaped screens explore color and form as fragments of memory. Each acts as a self-contained color field, inviting a moment of quiet contemplation. When gathered together, they begin to reconstitute something larger, reflecting the way memory is assembled and reshaped over time.
Graves’ works chronicle a similar shift in recollection by archiving memories of her half-brother after his passing. Crafted from polymer clay, wood, and mixed media, each sculpture is abruptly halved, giving physical form to the rupture of his absence and their shared experiences.
In Anastas’ sewn canvas works, stitching joins together separate fragments into a cohesive whole, uniting them together to evoke the ways shared experiences and everyday interactions accumulate over time. Through the assembly of individual pieces, the works reflect how seemingly unremarkable moments gain significance through remembering, forming a record of the relationships and connections that shape our lives.
Botha’s paintings burn with an internal temperature. Layers of scumbled paint move rhythmically across the surface of the canvas, simultaneously concealing and revealing the layers underneath. In this undulating surface, shapes begin to emerge that give the suggestion of foliage and landscape but remain untethered to a specific terrain. The works evoke the lingering presence of a world that has since faded from view.
Crawford’s works conjure new worlds through the interplay of hand-dyed grounds and hand-woven overlays, exploring the tension between the natural environment and the systems humans construct. As these elements converge, new forms emerge, and ambiguous spaces take shape, balancing dissonance and resonance, despair and possibility. The works capture the contradictions of a turbulent present while leaving room for future interpretations, serving as fragments for those yet to come, imagining how the uncertainties of this moment might open onto new understandings and alternative futures.
On the theme of hope, Pfeffer’s bold silhouetted flowers capture the promise of brighter days ahead, even as we enter the cold and dark months of winter. Geometric blossoms and looping green stems reach toward the light, evoking the anticipation and playfulness of spring’s return. Preserving the fleeting optimism of the season’s first signs, from budding trees to flowers pushing through thawing ground, these works serve as reminders that renewal is always on the horizon.
Together, these works consider what it means to hold onto something, whether a fragment of a place, a shared experience, or a vision of what is yet to come. A keepsake need not preserve a moment exactly as it was; its meaning shifts with the person who holds it and the memories they bring to it. These works remind us that what we carry forward is never simply the past, but the meanings we continue to make from it.
Published November 2, 2026
