You can’t tow a U-Haul to the grave.”
It’s an expression, uttered often from the mouths of minimalists. A blunt reminder of mortality and the triviality of material goods.
It’s also the title of a scratch-built piece by award-winning miniaturist Amanda Kelly, whose series “The Need to Keep,” depicts scenes related to social isolation, anxiety, and hoarding, the mental health condition defined by an inability to part with possessions, regardless of value.
The piece, taking the expression literally, is a miniature U-Haul Truck, chained behind a stationary coffin.
When I finished it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I think I made one of my best pieces,’” said Kelly, who flew in from Brooklyn for a Sept. 24 media preview and opening reception at the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures.
“The Need to Keep” is currently on view at The Mini Time Machine until April 11, 2027. The exhibition, which began as Kelly’s graduate portfolio, occupies an entire room of the museum.
Kelly discovered miniatures over a decade ago, and eventually became a professional in the format. The concept for “The Need to Keep,” arose when the artist dropped her commission work to focus solely on exploring complex subject matters through her miniatures.
The series came to reside at Tucson’s beloved miniature museum after, years ago, Kelly’s U-Haul miniature went viral on social media, catching the eye of Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures Curator Emily Wolverton.
“I think it’s great because it really strongly shows that idea of how we get so attached to our physical objects,” said Wolverton. “I saw that one and that led me down the rabbit hole into her MFA thesis, and I was like, ‘This is really good.’”
Hoarding is an intimate and familiar topic to the miniaturist, and crafting these scenes — ones of isolation, overconsumption, nostalgia, and mental illness — provided some catharsis.
“I’ve lived a lot of this experience with family members and also with friends,” Kelly said.
“It was like therapy for me. I feel like art is definitely therapy, and miniatures can be used as a therapeutic tool.”
“And I think it ties into the actual subject matter of hoarding, too. When I was growing up, I didn’t have control over my environment and now I can actually make something look exactly like I want it to. And that’s the great thing about miniatures.”
Collections like “The Need to Keep” are few and far between in the realm of miniatures. Drawn to the format as a form of escapism, many miniaturists invent ideal, little worlds: dream houses, mythical villages, holiday wonderlands. For that reason, the craft saw a massive surge in popularity during the pandemic.
“There is this wonderful mental health aspect with just creating a world you want to see, like these fantasy worlds, these happier places,” Wolverton said. “But then there’s also this side where you can really navigate more challenging topics. And that also is incredibly cathartic.”
Kelly’s depictions of hoarding couldn’t be further from romantic. An abandoned couch, a bathroom littered with cigarette butts, a buried birthday, a hoarder house made of “Polly Pocket”-style toys, front porch nearly cancelled by clutter. They’re gritty, disordered, dirty, often challenging and always empathetic.
Notably, the artist includes no human figures in her pieces, only belongings. The trash and treasure of those who just can’t let go.
Peeking into one of Kelly’s scenes invokes the thrill, discomfort and shame of being made a voyeur. For some pieces, the artist really forces the viewer to work, to take on an active role. Onlookers might have to squint, come close, peer through windows or holes in walls to see the inner lives that people want to keep hidden.
“It’s like peeking into this private world that you don’t see,” Wolverton said.
It’s clear that Kelly wants to implicate the viewer in America’s obsession with hoarding. The condition is a spectacle that everybody wants a look at, evidenced by the A&E reality show “Hoarders” and its 16-season run.
Kelly points towards those human tendencies in “Goat Paths,” her depiction of the Collyer Brothers’ house, a historical hoarding case of two brothers who collected 140 tons of belongings in a Harlem brownstone. Kelly’s model of the Collyer house is wrapped entirely in New York Times articles about the brothers.
“The Collyers were really famous,” Wolverton said. “I would say they were some of the first documented cases of hoarding in the U.S.”
In the room where “The Need to Keep” is on display, the Mini Time Machine offers information on mental-health resources, as well as an opportunity for visitors to share their own experiences with hoarding.
“This is going to hit pretty hard for some individuals,” Wolverton said. “So we really wanted to have an outlet for those stories and those reactions.”
According to Wolverton, Hosting an installation like “The Need to Keep” is a fairly new experience for the museum, which has been somewhat pigeonholed as a Tucson hub for whimsy and fun.
“I really love having this to remind folks that miniatures aren’t just about doll houses and fairy tales, and you can actually really tell some important stories that need to be told with miniatures,” Wolverton said.
