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For her new exhibition, on display at 934 Gallery beginning on Friday, July 10, the Cleveland-based artist encased childhood objects in sugar crystals, intent on exploring the ways our culture consumes innocence. By Andy Downing ● Art ● July 8, 2026 Read on MatterNews.org  Tanya Kaiser first conceived of the idea for “Crystallized Innocence” a few years back, recalling how she began to wrestle with the idea that American society had increasingly moved to devour childhood innocence.
“Especially in this political climate, it’s something that’s not being protected. It’s something that’s being consumed,” said the Cleveland-based artist, whose new exhibition kicks off at 934 Gallery beginning with an opening reception from 6-9 p.m. on Friday, July 10, presented alongside works by Hannah Fitzgerald and Savannah Fout. “The big elephant in the room was the Epstein files. … Then the amount of child abductions in the U.S. is really concerning with how high it is. And the sexualization of children, of course. It just goes on and on, unfortunately.” Building on the conceptual idea of something being consumed, Kaiser began to experiment with immersing childhood objects – onesies, stuffed animals, first communion gowns – in baths of sugar water for weeks at a time, allowing crystals to develop. The encased items were then placed in home-built dehumidifying chambers to dry, sprayed with a sealant, and set in wooden frames, the construction of which the artist compared with building coffins. “It really was kind of a mourning process,” she said. “And it’s very cathartic once I’m finished, because it’s almost this quiet ritual where I’m submerging it, I’m taking care of it and nurturing it, and then I’m building a box to mount it in its final resting place.” Kaiser chose to work with sugar for a number of reasons, including the reality that it serves as a corrosive agent in contrast to its reputation as something sweet and indulgent. “There’s actually a darker side to it,” she said. “It’s toxic. It’s not a pleasant thing.” It could also be incredibly finicky, forcing Kaiser to experiment with different temperatures and ratios of sugar to water in order to dial in the proper rate of crystallization. If the crystals formed too quickly, she said, the object would end up encased in a solid block. And if they formed too slowly, the crystals would reveal themselves as barely perceptible specks. In the initial immersion process, Kaiser said she kept each object front of mind, lingering on questions that would shift based on the provenance of the item. In those cases when it was something either donated or picked up at a thrift store, these thoughts could be murkier, the artist asking herself where that child might be now, and if they were living a good life. In those cases when the item came from one of her children, including her son’s former onesie, these ideas could be more concrete. “Because then you start reflecting on your own life, or your children’s lives, both the good times and the harms they encountered,” said Kaiser, who described similar thoughts surfacing when she saturated the first communion gown handsewn by her mother and worn by the artist as a child. “And that felt like a very full circle moment. This is something my mother made for me with love, and then it sat in my closet, and now it has been given new life.” Having grown up in the Catholic Church, Kaiser said religious iconography has long played a role in her work, as have those political forces that like the church seek to restrict access to women’s health care. One earlier body of work, for instance, featured ceramic sculptures made from castings of the Virgin Mary that were then modified to resemble different vaginas and other parts of the reproductive system. “Most of my work is a personal narrative, but it’s motivated by politics and our rights being stripped back,” said Kaiser, who traced her initial interest in exploring these concepts to the anger she felt in navigating the U.S. health care system when she gave birth to her first child. “I realized then how our health is not really prioritized. And that’s really what motivated me. I think with most creative people, we’re trying to express something. … There’s this idea of just getting it out of our bodies and into the world, which I think is a form of birth in itself.”
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How Tanya Kaiser Found Community — and Helped Build It — Through Cleveland’s Arts Scene  When Tanya Kaiser arrived in Cleveland in November 2019, she didn’t know anyone. She’d moved from Long Island, New York, to start a job at Case Western Reserve University, but before she could fully get her bearings, COVID shut everything down. Kaiser is an artist, curator and arts administrator, and she likes to stay busy. So in the quiet early days of the pandemic, she decided to fi nd community the only way she knew how — through the local arts scene, which was still new to her. “I like to network, so I went online and started looking up Cleveland arts organizations,” she says. “I went through their board directories and started cold-emailing people, saying, ‘Hey, can we have a Zoom call?’ And because of the madness and surrealism of COVID, a lot of them said yes. So I was able to connect in a very authentic way during a very troubling time.” During each call, she asked for the names of other people she should meet, and her days became filled with conversations about art and community. Those connections proved fruitful. She had long dreamed of opening her own gallery, and by late 2020 she’d left her day job, signed a lease on a Tremont storefront and launched Kaiser Gallery — a gallery space with a cocktail lounge that showcased contemporary international artists and hosted poetry open mic nights, artist talks and interdisciplinary programming. “It was magical,” she says of the community she built there over four years. When the gallery closed in 2024, that community didn’t disappear; it expanded in new directions. Today, Kaiser runs Renaissance Box, a residency initiative that pairs artists with STEM professionals for three-month collaborative projects — past participants have investigated microplastics and explored augmented reality. She also serves as assistant director of Summer on the Cuyahoga, which brings college students from around the country to Cleveland for paid internships with free housing. The program offers around 40 events each summer — chamber music, breakdancing, brewery tours and even surf lessons on Lake Erie — all designed to make students fall in love with the city. This summer’s public capstone event, the Collegiate Career and Community Leader Mixer, takes place July 22 at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in downtown Cleveland. Kaiser also sits on the board of the Collective Arts Network (CAN) Journal — a quarterly magazine with independent reporting and commentary on art, artists, their exhibits and related issues — and serves as exhibitions chair for the Women’s Caucus for Art, where she is tasked with helping to bring the organization’s national conference to town in 2027. Kaiser pitched Cleveland for 2027, making the case that the city has a long history of women building their own arts spaces when none existed. In 1912, for example, a group of 25 women founded what became known as the Women’s Art Club of Cleveland in response to limited opportunities for women in existing arts institutions. BAYarts, founded in 1948 by Bay Village women to support arts and culture on Cleveland’s west side, carries that thread forward. To Kaiser, Cleveland already had the infrastructure and spirit the organization was looking for. It was an easy sell. “Cleveland is overdue,” she says. “There’s a lot of talent here.” In addition to her work in community programming, Kaiser is devoted to her own art practice. She studied sculpture at Mount St. Joseph University, in Cincinnati, and later at Stony Brook University, where she earned her MFA, and has a studio with a kiln in her Rocky River home, where she works in sculpture, installation and mixed media. “In my own art I investigate a lot about censorship, systems of control and the experience of being a woman,” she says. As someone who grew up Puerto Rican and Catholic, she uses art to critique how politics and religion are used as excuses to police bodies and rights. Her current series, “Crystallized Innocence,” involves submerging childhood artifacts in sugar water. The crystallizing sugar is corrosive, preserving and destroying these relics at the same time. “Whenever I do it, I feel very mournful,” she says, “as if I’m mourning a part of my childhood or my own children’s childhood.” Her first communion gown, handmade by her mother and now completely encased in crystal, will be among the works on view in an upcoming show in July (see sidebar below for details). “What I love about the Cleveland art scene is that it’s accessible, it’s welcoming and there are a lot of opportunities,” she says. “I think artists get really comfortable in their silos, and it’s okay to break out — go to new spaces, introduce yourself, really just put yourself out there. If someone doesn’t like your work, then it just wasn’t for them. The best way is just to get out there. If they see you, they’re going to think of you for opportunities. If they don’t see you, they’re not thinking of you.”  Stories & Insights |
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