Exploring Accumulation and Preservation in Hannah Taylor Engel Art Show

In a recent column for the Albuquerque Journal, arts writer Logan Royce Beitmen explores a new two-person sculpture exhibition currently occupying the windows of Nob Hill Storage.

The show, titled “Hannah Taylor Engel,” features the work of Hannah Taylor and Taylor Engel, two artists who met as graduate students in the University of New Mexico’s sculpture program. Taylor graduated this year, while Engel graduated in 2025, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

The exhibition is part of “Windows on Central,” a project launched this July by Nob Hill Main Street, a local neighborhood revitalization organization. The display is visible 24 hours a day through the street-facing windows of the facility located at 4100 Central Ave. SE, though Beitmen notes that the lighting appears best at night.

While the artists are united by their friendship, their creative processes differ. Engel builds “unmonumental” assemblages that Beitmen compares to the styles of Robert Rauschenberg, Isa Genzken, or Rachel Harrison. Her work is described as intentionally messy and focused on entropy rather than transcendence.

Taylor, conversely, is described as perfectionistic. She focuses on replicating ordinary objects using unconventional materials, often at a miniature scale. Her work, Beitmen writes, seeks to find poetry in the quotidian and preserve moments of quiet stability.

The two artists collaborated on a single piece for the show that reflects these opposing energies. This work consists of a large tangle of rusted metal pipes contributed by Engel, from which a miniature swamp cooler spigot, installed by Taylor, emerges.

The exhibition asks viewers to consider the relationship between art, storage, and accumulation. Engel expressed to the Albuquerque Journal that she and Taylor wanted the public to contemplate why we choose to hang onto certain items while discarding others.

Engel’s pieces often utilize unstable or discarded materials, such as Q-tips, dental floss, book spines, exit signs, and even toilet paper. Some of her structures are held together by fragile materials and are intended to be burned at the conclusion of the show. Her use of Eternal brand water bottle boxes as pedestals serves as an ironic nod to the impermanence of her materials.

Taylor’s approach to preservation is more deliberate. Beitmen highlights a piece featuring a two-inch ocean rock resting on a custom-made bronze stand with spindly, Giacometti-style legs. By elevating a common object, Taylor imbues it with a sense of value and preciousness.

One of the most prominent pieces in the collection, titled “We Don’t Quit,” uses fragmented materials to evoke specific social memories. The sculpture is constructed from chopped-up Monobloc chairs and covered in a patchwork of towel scraps.

Beitmen suggests the piece acts as a “Frankenstein monster of social fatigue,” recalling the heavy, cluttered feeling of the morning after a social gathering. The work uses cubist and expressionist techniques to transform mundane poolside items into a complex commentary on social exhaustion.

The exhibition remains free to the public and will run through Dec. 31. For those interested in more information regarding the artists, the Albuquerque Journal points to hannahctaylor.com and taylor-engel.com.