Ky Drennan is an artist based in Sacramento, California whose work dwells on the deepness of the earth and themes of presence, absence, and thresholds. Their practice is further inspired by their membership in the National Speleological Society and the Mother Lode Grotto.
Drennan is currently an MFA candidate at California State University, Sacramento, where they will graduate in spring 2026. They earned their BA in Art from the University of California, Davis, and were awarded the Manetti Shrem Scholarship to study at the Prince’s Royal Drawing School in London in 2017. Their work has been exhibited at the Crocker Art Museum and is collected internationally.
The descent is about the journey and surrender. It’s a collaboration between the caves, the camera, and myself.
My first descent into a cave was last summer, and ever since, I’ve been drawn to these underground places. The cold air that seeps out of these dark thresholds beckons me below. The cave is a liminal space, a portal to a world where sensorial experiences overtake an overwhelmed mind. Your body responds to the caves body. You breathe the caves air, and you contort to the caves winding passages. Every turn of your head reveals something wondrous or ominous. The earth presses in from all sides, and the more you struggle, the more easily you are caught. The earth seeks to claim those who defy and fight it. Each time I descend, I surrender. I surrender to the darkness, to the squeeze, the bruises, the pain, the unknown, the fear, to the adventure, to the journey.
Each path before you in the caves below holds its own magic- these paths could lead you to the past or future, somewhere imagined or forgotten, one could be a path that was never taken or one never realized. Each one has the potential to be filled with awe or dread. The caves stillness and steady breath holds the power to bring forth something within you that only darkness could awaken.
I know very little, and somehow, even less every time I descend.
– Drennan
Check out Ky’s Instagram here
Pop Goes The Easel 
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