Glendale Arts announced the first exhibition of the 2026 ace/121 Gallery season: Remnants & Renewal: On the Anniversary of the Eaton Fire. This is a poignant duo show featuring artists DeAnn Jennings and Jane Szabo that will be on view through March 7.

A deeply personal exhibition, Remnants & Renewal marks one year since the Eaton Fire and brings together two artists whose practices respond to climate catastrophe through different yet intrinsically connected lenses. One body of work approaches the fire through direct witness and documentation while the other turns toward symbolic reflection, exploring planetary fragility, resilience and regeneration. Together their work creates a contemplative dialogue between memory and healing, loss and rebirth – an emotional and narrative arc visitors will encounter as they move through the space.

When her close friend Diane lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fire, Jennings was compelled to capture the raw imagery of the scenes that had unfolded at the intersection of loss and survival. A photographer and educator whose work has long explored identity and transformation, she photographed debris, altered landscapes and objects transformed by the extreme heat. Melted household items and twisted metal became quiet markers of impact, traces that speak not only to destruction but to the profound physical changes left behind. 

Beyond the material remnants, Jennings’ work is informed by the people she encountered while documenting the site including displaced residents, cleanup crews, and charity workers whose compassion and steadiness offered moments of inspiration amid upheaval. Rather than revisiting the fire as spectacle, her photographs convey acceptance and reflection, inviting viewers to consider how resilience emerges through community, care, and the inevitable process of reckoning with what remains.

In contrast, Szabo’s work turns toward ecological symbolism shaped by both artistic inquiry and personal connection. In Remnants & Renewal, the Los Angeles-based conceptual artist presents work from her ongoing project The Anthropocene Epoch, a series that explores planetary fragility, human impact and the possibility of regeneration. 

Szabo stages still lifes and ephemeral interventions in natural environments using hand-crafted papier-mâché globes collaged with fragments of maps such as roads, waterways and patches of green, forming poetic metaphors for ecological imbalance. In the gallery, her work will be presented as framed photographs as well as a site-specific installation that incorporates her mixed media sculptures. While grounded in long-standing themes of balance and disruption, her work is deeply informed by the lived experience of the Eaton Fire. 

In the wake of the fire, half of Szabo’s community was destroyed and although her home remains standing she and her family were displaced due to smoke damage.

Together, Szabo’s symbolic visuals and Jennings’ photographic and physical preservation come together to form an interconnected dialogue that moves between the tangible and the metaphorical, creating space for the inevitability of grief while pointing toward awareness, connection, and an ultimate hope for renewal.

ace/121 Gallery is operated by Glendale Arts and is located at 121 N. Kenwood St. in Glendale. The gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to check ace121gallery.com for additional information and program dates and details.