What Endures brings together the work of Detroit and Omaha-based artist Iggy Sumnik, whose work spanned multiple mediums—sculptures, paintings, and drawings. Iggy primarily created hand-built stoneware sculptures defined by texture, balance, and physical presence, often life-sized or larger, rooted in forms that feel familiar yet reimagined. His work reflects an ongoing dialogue between the built and natural worlds and invites consideration of how we shape our environments and how they, in turn, shape us.

In a practice guided by resourcefulness and care, he embraced reuse, conservation, and material awareness, embedding these values not only in his art but in the way he lived and worked. Sumnik's studio, a modest former boathouse along a Detroit canal, was both a site of production and a point of connection. There, in a space defined by efficiency, adaptability, and proximity to the rhythms of the river, he created with intention. He showed up to the work again and again, believing that commitment to process was itself a form of meaning.

Iggy's impact extended far beyond the objects he forged in clay.

Equally central to his practice was his role as a teacher and mentor. Across Detroit and Omaha, Sumnik worked with a wide range of communities—youth, students, Native Americans, and individuals often underserved by traditional art spaces—sharing not only technical skill, but a belief in the transformative power of making. For Iggy, art was never only about the finished object; it was about the act of creation, the confidence it builds, and the connections it fosters.

This exhibition, his first retrospective in Michigan, returns his work to his hometown, placing it within the community that shaped and sustained him. While his life was cut short in 2023, his presence remains in the objects he formed, the spaces he brightened, and the many hands he guided.

What endures is not only the work itself, but the way it continues to live on: in community, in practice, and in the ongoing act of inspiring creation.