The Urbane Arts Club
DRIFT: Wallace May Solo Exhibit
March 2025 - August 2026
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DRIFT aims to capture the ephemeral, not as it was, but as it feels to remember. Based on archival photos from the artist's own family as well as others, the paintings in this collection are at once nostalgic and slippery, like a memory that fades and mutates each time you think of it. By choosing moments in time that feel idealized—vibrant family vacations, dreamy trips to the seashore—and playing with how the images appear, May asks the viewer to consider why we feel nostalgic for things we didn't experience ourselves, and what that nostalgia says about us. This question is particularly prescient for the artist, a queer woman, who would not have been accepted into many of the spaces and scenes the paintings depict. By immortalizing these moments in time with a dream-like color palette and playful abstractions, she not only creates a sense of romance and intrigue, but allows us to reimagine our own place in the past.
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Wallace May is a North Carolina-born, Los Angeles-based artist. She received her BFA in Art and Design at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She’s a painter and an illustrator, primarily working in acrylic and watercolor where her current body of work centers memory and nostalgia.
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To see the work, you may schedule a site visit or attend any of our upcoming events.
Collect a Wallace May Original
To purchase a piece of artwork, please email urbanebrooklyn@gmail.com with the title of the piece in the subject line. Purchased artworks will be available for pick up in August when the exhibition has concluded. Inquire over email regarding shipping.
Our Permanent Collection:
From our first exhibition, Katie Kuzin's "Flower Show" (Nov 2024 - July 2025), we have collected the pieces that felt essential to us. These works became part of the ecosystem of The Urbane, and represent our growth as an artistic community. Our latest additions from "The Sum of Light" (August 2025 - February 2026) group show featuring alum of The Art Students League of New York, have found a new home bringing light to the bedrooms on our second floor.
