Image: John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Emily Endo’s ‘Estuary,’ an exhibition of new sculptural works designed to engage sight, touch and smell, is on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, through August 30, 2026. The installation brings together glass, metal, found shells, minerals, liquids and fragrances in an environment that connects scientific imagery with mystical and material associations.
Endo works across sculpture, scent and installation, developing a research-driven practice centered on material experimentation and sensory experience. The artist is particularly drawn to glass, whose fragility, functionality and capacity for transformation under heat and pressure inform the work. At the Arts Center, these concerns are extended through an installation in which scent operates as a central element rather than as an incidental feature.
The exhibition includes organic glass forms filled with liquids and subtle scents. Transparent tubing and steel armatures connect the forms, producing structures that suggest vascular systems, ant tunnels and other networks of circulation. The Arts Center describes the resulting instruments as simultaneously medical, alchemical and futuristic. Their imagery links the human body to environmental systems, framing both as sites of movement, exchange and interdependence.
For ‘Estuary,’ Endo developed new marine- and forest-like fragrances from synthetic and organic materials. Among the scents used in the installation is geosmin, the earthy odor associated with soil after rain. Other materials identified in documentation for a work titled ‘Saline Circuit’ include marine and terrestrial shells, volcanic stone, lichen, algae, tinctured seashells, ambergris, violet leaf, vetiver root, dimethyl sulfide and fragrance molecules. The combination gives the sculptures an olfactory dimension that asks visitors to register the exhibition through bodily perception as well as visual observation.
The works’ circulation systems and organic forms are presented as active or living environments, even though they are assembled from industrial, geological and biological materials. Glass and metal appear alongside shells and minerals, while pharmaceutical-grade tubing and water-circulation equipment introduce functional technologies into the sculptural setting. The exhibition’s premise rests on the interaction of these elements, using material contrasts to consider how bodies and environments become entangled.
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center presents contemporary and self-taught art in Sheboygan and also operates the Art Preserve, another site in the city dedicated to the institution’s broader activities. ‘Estuary’ is installed at the Arts Center, 608 New York Avenue, and is scheduled to remain on display until Sunday, August 30. Endo’s work has previously been exhibited at Somerset House in London, as well as venues in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland; the artist lives and works in Joshua Tree, California.
