The Yonder Cabinet is a collaborative installation project that combines the love of the written word, visual art, and fantastic places.

The Yonder Cabinet is a celebration of the joy of getting lost in a good book, and as an appreciation of the wonderful art of worlds made miniature. An empty card catalog cabinet serves as a call for artists to create dioramas representing an environment drawn from a favorite work of writing. 

Artists Kelley Bell and Melissa Cormier originally conceived of The Yonder Cabinet as an exercise of the imagination in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic. They drew inspiration from the Cabinets of Wonder, or wunderkammer from the 16th century. Just as these collections housed objects and specimens from far off places while telling stories of science and the natural world, The Yonder Cabinet began as an empty cabinet taking on new life as the artists filled two of the drawers with dioramas drawn from their favorite literature, enabling them to “travel” to these literary settings at at time of limited mobility.

Bell and Cormier invited like-minded artists to contribute to the project. They were asked to choose their own texts and interpret them accordingly. The project has since appeared in gallery installations, immersive video projections and other iterations