EXHIBITION
May 6 - June 6, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, May 7, 2026, 6–9pm
ARTIST TALK
Saturday, May 23, 2026 2-3pm
We’re thrilled to welcome you to Vapes & Butts, a solo exhibition by Michelle Leone Huisman, on view at Gallery 881 from May 6 to June 6, 2026. Huisman’s work explores memory, consumption, and environmental narratives through striking macro photography and historic palladium printing.
Join us for the opening reception on Thursday, May 7, 2026, from 6–9pm, and return for an artist talk on Saturday, May 23, 2026, from 2–3pm.
Gallery 881 is a free and accessible third space — all are welcome!
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
Vapes & Butts is a meditation on memory, transformation and the environmental imprint on human habits. Drawing inspiration from Irving Penn’s Cigarettes series, a body of work photographed in the same month and year I was born, this project reconnects with the past to question the present. Although I’ve never smoked, tobacco use has long been part of my family story, from my grandfather’s pipe to the cigarette breaks of my friends and family members. These quiet, second-hand memories have shaped my awareness of smoking’s deeper cultural, health, and environmental implications.
This work continues Penn’s visual inquiry, but through a contemporary lens. I collect and photograph discarded cigarette butts, vapes, and joints; artifacts of a global habit that’s evolved in form but not in consequence. Found mostly near a local high school, these objects are stripped from their urban environment and recontextualized as art objects. Their synthetic surfaces and saturated colours speak to the shifting nature of what we consider attractive, valuable, or worth our attention.
Printed using the 19th-century palladium technique, with added layers of gum bichromate for colour, the images are rendered with intention and permanence offering a stark contrast to the disposable nature of their subjects. This slow, deliberate process mirrors the tension within the work itself: between waste and permanence, attraction and toxicity, familiarity and discomfort.
Vapes & Butts is both a tribute and a continuation. By revisiting Penn’s language and updating it for a world now grappling with vaping and e-waste, I hope to reflect how cultural habits persist and mutate. Through these images, I invite viewers to reconsider what we throw away, how value is assigned, and how memory lives in the overlooked. Ultimately, this series aims to spark conversation about presence, responsibility, and what we leave behind.
ARTIST BIO
Michelle Leone Huisman is an award-winning Canadian photo-based artist and community advocate based in Vancouver. Her work explores the intersection of memory, environmental awareness, and social connection. A graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University (BFA Photo Arts, 1995/96) and Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Photographic Arts, 2009–10), Huisman uses historic and alternative processes, including gum bichromate over palladium, to create richly layered images that emphasize materiality and visual storytelling.
Her recent series Vapes & Butts investigates contemporary smoking culture through macro photography and 19th-century printing techniques, offering a poetic, critical lens on consumption, waste, and ritual in public and private spaces. This body of work reflects her broader interest in how everyday objects reveal social and environmental narratives.
Huisman has exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Europe, with solo and group exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto, Barcelona, and beyond. A committed community advocate, she has led public art initiatives and serves on local advisory and arts boards. She recently completed an artist residency at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO), where she further developed her exploration of historic photographic processes and their relevance to contemporary environmental and social themes.
michellehuisman.com
SPONSOR
Gallery 881 is proudly sponsored by our in-house PrintMaker Studio, a Canson Infinity Certified Print Lab and custom picture framer dedicated to museum-quality production. When you print or frame with our sponsor, you help sustain Gallery 881’s free exhibitions, free artist talks, free and low-entry programming, and the charitable initiatives that keep our space accessible to artists and the wider community.