The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV presents Mourning Songs of Salt and Silt, an exhibition of memorial cyanotypes by artist Amy Elkins

Amy Elkins, Mourning Songs of Salt and Silt. Sacramento, California. August 1 (detail), 2025, Cyanotype on Cotton. Image courtesy the artist.

Amy Elkins: Mourning Songs of Salt and Silt

The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV presents Mourning Songs of Salt and Silt, an exhibition of memorial cyanotypes by artist Amy Elkins.

Using one of photography’s oldest processes, Elkins creates large, camera-free cyanotypes by exposing treated fabric to sunlight. For this intimate series, she incorporates her father’s ashes, surrounding viewers with constellations of ghostly, speckled blue.

Working with ash, salt, sand, and silt, and rinsing each piece in natural bodies of water, Elkins symbolically and materially reunites her father with the landscapes he loved—from the Pacific Ocean, recalling his years in a California marine biology lab, to freshwater creeks that echo his youth spent swimming with friends. The exhibition also includes artifacts from his life.

These works bring light, water, minerals, and memory together into portraits that speak to the uniqueness of a life, the transience of existence, and the ongoing act of letting go. As Elkins writes:

“Exposed in the sun as a means of holding on. Rinsed in bodies of water as a means of letting go. An action that both safekeeps his ashes and releases them into the natural world.”

On view in the Center Gallery of the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art from February 20–June 13, 2026.

Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Closed on state and federal holidays. Admission is free and all are welcome.

Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art
702-895-3381
barrick.museum@unlv.edu

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