WHAT IS STILL LOVELY is a collection of work by Minneapolis-based artist Isabel Emerson exploring the intersection of identity and grief. Viewing it is best in three separate chapters: the first representing starting over, the second carving a safe family in this unsafe time, and the third trying to make sense of death amid life. Loss is universal, but our experience of it is painfully and harrowingly private.

Starting with the photograph, Rediscovering Gravity, the viewer is encouraged to begin something new amid something from the past. Here, images include beginnings of paintings, gesture drawings, and simple works that capture motion and feeling before paint gets involved. It hopes to highlight the resilience and survival, even when starting over yet again. Who were we? Who can we choose to become, if asked or forced, to begin again?

The second chapter is captured for the viewer by the image Becoming Sisters. Here we see two dogs, unrelated by birth, become family through play. This brief middle section allows us to reflect on how we define our own families through the power of love and choice. Who becomes our chosen family? What is still lovely about comfort and safety where we are now, in the brief albeit wonderful moment in time?

Finally, the Evening Beach Visit marks the exhibition's final chapter: life after loss. Much like making a happy dog leave a walk at dusk, what is painful can sneak up on us.  A particularly rough day at the office. Another overnight shift with a beautiful, sleepless new baby. Fascism and autocracy are creeping into an imperfect democracy: the loss of a pluralistic nation. 

In this chapter, the work moves to a more direct reflection about loss and grieving.

A representative at her home. A friend's mom. The best man from the wedding that never was. My mentor. My favorite uncle. My second favorite uncle. And soon to be my dog.

Grief looks radically different on the faces we know and the faces of strangers. The yellow flowers in this room are different for the same reason.

The Pablo Neruda Poem "Ode to Some Yellow Flowers" inspired this final chapter. Seemingly benign yellow flowers, for me, now provoke visceral reactions.

What Is Still Lovely hopes find those sneaky themes we might sometimes choose to ignore-  like needing to get up one more time for a glass of water, just as you were starting to get snug- and aims to encourage the viewer to take time with each of the three chapters. Get that glass of water! Sit with the paintings, listen to the adjacent songs, read the accompanying poems, and invite some gentleness in reflection in this new year.

What parts need to start over, yet again, without shame? 

Who do you choose to love? 

And what do you hope to become?

(I’d like to be some yellow flowers.)

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January 2, 2026