The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Abbey Hepner’s  image “The House is Just a Metaphor“ received the Juror’s Award in the “interiors” exhibition juried by Ann Mitchell.  Abbey’s exhibition “Monument Plinth” was featured from September 1 to September 30, 2024 and is discussed in our GalleryTalk with Abbey.

Artist Statement

Uranium disposal cells are geometric mounds engineered to isolate radioactive material from the surrounding environment. The mounds sit above the ground and cover surfaces from a few acres to half a mile and consist of an outer shell of riprap rock and a clay soil layer that covers the radioactive material. They are designed to allow for rain runoff and to prevent plant growth from forming on top and penetrating the clay layer. Typically, the cells in the Southwest are made from demolished buildings at uranium mines, and the cells in the Midwest and East are most commonly from uranium metal engineering and processing sites. [1]

Some sites that produced the waste contained in the cells date back to the Manhattan Project and were created to mine and construct nuclear weapons; some of the sites continue to operate today for the nuclear energy industry. The amount of radioactivity in the cells varies, but most radiation comes from Uranium-238 with a half-life as old as the earth or 4.47 billion years. There are over 100 sites like these that exist in the US and the number is growing. [2]

Disposal cells are architecturally fascinating sites. They are often designed to blend in with the landscape, but their shapes form mounds on the earth, and their suture materials seldom remain as invisible as intended. They are otherworldly to see up close, but even more fascinating to see from an aerial view where their odd geometry takes shape. While some sites are constructed away from populated cities, others such as those in Weldon Spring, just outside St. Louis, Missouri, are difficult to ignore and function as recreational destinations.

Monument Plinth features aerial images from forty uranium disposal cells across the US. The images were collected with the assistance of Dr. Mark Finco and acquired by the National Agriculture Imagery Program. I printed and mounted each image on black acrylic and laser engraved the cell detail into the surface, reflecting an internal space or void.

(Uranium Disposal Cells and Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Sites Map created by Dr. Scott White)

Abbey Hepner
September, 2024
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[1] “Perpetual Architecture: Uranium Disposal Cells of America,” The Center for Land Use Interpretation, accessed June 5, 2020, http://www.clui.org/newsletter/winter-2013/perpetual-architecture.
[2] “Perpetual Architecture,” The Center for Land Use Interpretation.

Bio

Abbey Hepner is an artist and educator based outside of St. Louis Missouri. Hepner holds an M.F.A. in Photography from the University of New Mexico. She teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as an Assistant Professor of Art and Area Head of Photography.

Hepner’s artistic practice examines health, technology, and our relationship with place through photography, performance, video, and installation-based work. She frequently works at the intersection of art and science, investigating biopolitics and the use of health as a currency. Hepner is originally from Utah, where her ancestors were downwinders who suffered in the aftermath of the United State’s nuclear testing. Her work on nuclear issues began shortly after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 when she traveled across Germany documenting the decommissioning of nuclear plants. Shortly thereafter, she lived and volunteered in Japan before attending graduate school in New Mexico. Hepner’s work has been exhibited widely in such venues as the Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival (Kobe, Japan), SITE Santa Fe, the Krannert Art Museum, the University of Buffalo Art Galleries, Noorderlicht Photofestival (Groningen, Netherlands), the University of Notre Dame, and the Lianzhou Foto Festival (Lianzhou, China). She has been an artist in residence at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity in Canada and has presented at numerous Society for Photographic Education conferences. Her monograph, The Light at the End of History, about nuclear issues was published by Daylight Books in 2021.

website: abbey-hepner.com
instagram: @abbeyhepner

link to online exhibiton