Glendale Arts is pleased to announce the first exhibition of the 2026 ace/121 Gallery season, Remnants & Renewal: On the Anniversary of the Eaton Fire, a poignant duo show featuring artists DeAnn Jennings and Jane Szabo, on view February 7-March 7, 2026. The public is invited to an Opening Reception on Saturday, February 7 from 6:00-8:00pm. The event is free to attend; both artists will be present.

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 become quiet markers of impact, traces that speak not only to destruction, but to the profound physical changes left behind.

As Jennings reflects, “I visited the devastation and was in awe at the debris. Metal had run and hardened into extraordinary forms. Household objects had been transformed from instruments of daily life into silent witnesses of loss, their utility burned away, their forms strangely reimagined.”

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.

Working with framed photographs and mixed media sculptures, 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. 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. “Living through this climate- induced disaster transformed my understanding of environmental loss from an abstract concern to an immediate, lived reality,” Szabo reflects. “These photographs are not simply documents; they are meditations on what we stand to lose, and what we still have the power to protect.”

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.

Gallery and Exhibition Details

ace/121 Gallery is operated by Glendale Arts and located at 121 N. Kenwood St., Glendale, CA 91206. The gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday from 11:00am-5:00pm. Visitors are encouraged to check ace121gallery.com for additional information and program dates and details.

About DeAnn Jennings DeAnn Jennings is a photographer and educator whose work explores identity, self-representation, and lived experience. Born in Manti, Utah, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Utah before relocating to Southern California, where her practice evolved through documentary photography of people and communities in Downtown Los Angeles. She later received an M.A. in Art and Photography from California State University, Fullerton, developing staged photographic series including Fears and Phobias and Fruits and Vegetables, in which she often appears as the subject. Jennings taught at L.A. Harbor College for over four decades before retiring, and continues to travel and photograph people from all walks of life. She lives in Glendale’s Adams Hill neighborhood with close ties to her family, including three children and three grandchildren, and community.

About Jane Szabo Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Jane Szabo merges a love for fabrication and materials with visceral photographic images. Szabo’s work addresses environmental concerns through poetic and symbolic imagery. Incorporating hand-crafted props such as papier-mâché globes—some intact, others collapsing—she creates metaphors for the fragility of our planet. Her work navigates themes of life and death, human impact, and nature’s resilience. Balancing urgency with hope, Szabo symbolically documents both environmental degradation and signs of rebirth, capturing nature’s quiet determination to reclaim what has been lost.