Aug 22 – Sep 26, 2025

Beth Krensky — The Trees Will Love You and the Earth Will Hold You

Portable Altar, Bronze, 23 k gold leaf, crab shells, 12 x 12 x 8.75 inches, 2025, $4,000

Reliquary for a Dream, Bronze, 23 k gold leaf, mica, milkweed floss, 13”h x 11”w x 4½”d, 2025, $5,000

Beth Krensky and Zev Gorfinkle, Plant Talismans, Bronze, 23 k gold leaf, 13 plaques, each 4 ½” h x 3 3/8” w x ¼” d, 2025, $300 each

Pocket Reliquaries, silver and gold-filled antique pocket watches, mica, 23 K gold leaf, mixed media, antique oak and glass mercantile display case, 6”h x 18 ¼” w x 6” d, 2025, $3,500

Oracle of the Clovers, Archival ink prints on 100% cotton rag paper, 144 prints (each 2.5” x 3.75”), 2025, Edition of 10, $1,500

Wish, Drift wood from Port Orford, Oregon, 23 k gold leaf, mixed media, 13 wands each approximately 8”-13”h x ½”-2” w x ½”-2”d, 2025, $500 each

Wish, Drift wood from Port Orford, Oregon, 23 k gold leaf, mixed media, 2025, $500

Dispatch from Solitude #3: Pilgrimage to the Very Center, Port Orford, Oregon, Single Channel Video, Videography: Matte Hanna, 2:47, 2025, Edition of 10, $3,500

Dress, Antique linen night shirt (France), shells collected from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States, antique bells (India), wishbone, embroidery thread, 40”h x 45”w x 1”d, 2018/2025, NFS

Wand, Drift wood, quartz, antique bells, gold leaf, 12”h x 1”w x ½”d, NFS

Keys to Open the Beginning Before the End

Mixed media, electroplated copper, 23 k gold leaf, antique oak and glass mercantile display case, 60 keys (each approx. 4”-10”h x 1”-3”w x ½”-1”d), case 17 ¼” h x 8’ w x 28 ¼”d, 2025, $35,000

You can commission a key. You meet with the artist to share a bit about yourself and to answer the question, “If you had a key that could unlock anything, what would you open?” Each key is made with your desire for the key as the central focus. $500 each

Beth Krensky

The Trees Will Love You and the Earth Will Hold You is both a call and an echo—of memory, time, what has been lost, and what has been found. I am a gatherer of things—objects, words, spirit—and a connector of fragments to make us whole and help us heal. The pieces have been forged from detritus found on the edge of oceans, mountainsides, city streets, backyards, and forgotten corners. These remnants have been alchemized into ritual objects through reverence, love, and perhaps a little magic. The work is a clarion call to unlock the beginning before the end. For time, life, and love are not linear, but circular.
I want to express profound gratitude to my studio assistant and sometimes collaborator, Zev Gorfinkle. The exhibition would not have been possible without your contributions. Additional thanks to Ed Gorfinkle, the University of Utah College of Fine Arts and Department of Art & Art History.
Store of Wishes
There is a long history of collecting and exhibiting objects of wonder and awe. The tradition of Cabinets of Curiosities originated in the 1500s. Artists have long referenced or reimagined this tradition. Xavier de Maistre published A Journey Around My Room in 1794. Lucas Samaras had an exhibition of the contents of his room in 1964. Joseph Cornell and Alan Glass both created small scale “cabinets” in shadow boxes. Contemporary artists such as Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, and Fiona Hall create work that mimics museum displays.
The Store of Wishes grew out of this tradition. It is a collection and emporium of objects of wonder and enchantment that Krensky has created or collected over decades and across continents. It is both a place to store or hold wishes, as well as a marketplace for acquiring wishes.
Beth Krensky is a Utah-based artist who traverses the borderlands between spirit and matter. She is Distinguished Professor of Art Teaching at the University of Utah who received her formal art training from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies.
She is also a scholar of community-based art education. She holds an M.Ed. form the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado-Boulder.
The Yale Institute of Sacred Music recently mounted a 20-year retrospective of Krensky’s art and she was one of five performance art finalists for the 16th Arte Laguna Prize.
bethkrensky.com
Instagram: @bethkrensky
Facebook: @bkrensky
Fri, Aug 22
5:30–6pm • Artist Talk
6–9pm • Opening Reception
Sat, Aug 30
10:30–11:30am • Store of Wishes
11:30am–12:30pm • Make a Wish Wand Workshop
Sat, Sep 13
10:30–11:30am • Store of Wishes
11:30am–12:30pm • Portable Reliquary Workshop
Fri, Sep 19
6–8pm • Gallery Stroll
Fri, Sep 26
6–8pm • Closing Reception