Meet Jane Szabo

Can you share a bit about your background and the path that led you to becoming an artist?

Strangely, my path to become an artist was more of a lifestyle choice – I just knew I was not suited to have a corporate career. One of my jobs as a teenager included painting classrooms in a school – and from that a love of painting emerged. I began art making as a painter, and expanded into mixed media and installation work. I also learned basic B&W darkroom techniques. After many years sidelined from art making to work in the entertainment industry as a scenic painter, prop maker and project manager, I returned to an art practice, and ultimately switched my concentration to photography. The way I work now incorporates all of my skill sets as I make props and stage the scenes to be photographed.

How would you describe your artistic practice to someone encountering your work for the first time?

I am a conceptual artist – meaning that my work is based around an idea or a narrative. I create and stage scenes as a means to tell stories or inspire ideas. Unlike a documentary photographer that takes photos of things in the world, I am creating symbolic scenes to be photographed as a vehicle for storytelling.

Your art engages with the concept of planetary fragility and environmental restoration. How did your experience with the Eaton Fire inform the way you are thinking about loss, resilience, and renewal?

I have been well aware of the risk of living in the foothills and of climate change impacts to communities around the globe for many years. I had worried we could lose our home within the boundaries of the Angeles National Forest due to fire – but it never entered even my wildest imagination that half of the town of Altadena would be consumed by flames. Thinking of renewal is hard in this moment, but I chose to move forward with hope, in spite of my personal skepticism that we can reverse the dangerous course we are on.

What materials, processes or techniques were central to creating this body of work?

The series centers on hand made papier-mache globes that I create and cover with fragments of maps. Some I form as perfect round spheres. Others I allow to collapse, or cut apart to symbolize the impacts humans are having on the planet.

What conversations or emotions do you hope viewers carry with them after spending time with your work in this exhibition?

The work is a poetic conversation about climate change – and though dark topics are considered, it has a sense of wonder and playfulness. The focus should be on both the climate collapse as symbolized by the deflated globes, and on the power and resilience of the surrounding nature. The earth can heal – it we do the work to reduce the ongoing harm we cause, and allow it to recover.

Is there anything else you would like readers or visitors to know?

My work is deeply personal. In the wake of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, half our community was destroyed. While our home still stands, we are displaced for over a year 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. It reinforced a sense of urgency—and responsibility—in how I engage with the natural world as both an artist and a witness.

Through symbolic imagery and constructed narratives, I hope to evoke a space where viewers can reflect on this not only as a crisis, but as a call to awareness, connection, and action. My photographs are not just documents—they are meditations on what we risk losing, and what we still have the power to protect.