"subject/matr/mother" a group exhibition curated by Shawna Miller
“Colate” by Maria Teicher (oil on panel)
Carbondale Arts presents “subject/matr/mother” a group exhibition curated by Shawna Miller at the Carbondale Arts Gallery on display April 11 - May 15, 2025. Featured artists include Mya Cluff, Courtney Dudley, Darla Jackson, Shawna Miller (curator) + LUCIA, Erin Morrison, and Maria Teicher. The opening reception will take place Friday, April 11, from 5-7pm at The Launchpad, with an artist talk at 5:30pm.
Matr is the Latin root for material, matter, and maternal. The seven female artists in this show create work that centers the complexity of the maternal experience. The curation aims to celebrate the link between “woman” and “mother,” while interrogating the way we associate them as one-and-the-same, or a preordained linear destiny.
Thank you, Sponsors!
This exhibition is generously sponsored by The Crow and Key and Aspen Power.
The Crow and Key is a small, specialized retail shop that offers a curated selection of unique products in downtown Carbondale, Colorado. Learn more at crowandkey.com.
Aspen Power partners with businesses, communities and industry to develop, construct, and operate renewable energy assets and storage. Learn more at aspenpower.com.
Shawna Miller (curator),
Basalt, Colorado
Shawna Miller is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Basalt, CO. Her artistic interests range from figurative painting to site-specific installation and immersive virtual reality. Her most recent work is figurative oil painting focused on the bittersweet beauty and weight of motherhood. Shawna began oil painting in 2015 and has studied in the studio of Michelle Doll in Hoboken, NJ. She has a Master's Degree in International Political Economy and her artistic background includes a year of film school in Madrid, Spain, and work in advertising and marketing in Miami, FL. Now committed full-time to her fine art practice, she was a 2022 Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellow and had her first solo show at The Art Base in Basalt, CO in November 2022, as well as a two person show in Oslo, Norway in October 2023. In addition to curating subject/matr/mother in Carbondale, she has an upcoming two-person show, Resonance, with light projection artist LUCIA, opening May 2025 at Helm Contemporary in NYC.
Learn more about Shawna at shawnamillerstudio.com
LUCIA
Denver, Colorado
LUCIA is a new media artist + designer whose work utilizes a vibrant blending of light + technology to create immersive, generative, and interactive art installations. Influenced visually by nature, her pieces explore themes of healing, the supernatural, our human condition, and the profound experiences of womanhood + motherhood. Based in Denver, CO, Lucia’s installations invite exploration + ignite the imagination.
Learn more about LUCIA on Instagram @luciavisuals.
Mya Cluff
Belgrade, Montana
Mya Cluff is a studio artist living and working in Belgrade, Montana. Born and raised in Oregon, she moved to Montana in 2017 after graduating from the Oregon College of Art and Craft where she received a BFA in Craft with an emphasis in Ceramics.
The birth of Mya’s firstborn daughter in the middle of her BFA was the catalyst of her investigation of the maternal through her art practice. Mya is intrigued with the psychological, political and interpersonal ramifications of motherhood, and uses her own experience as inspiration, as well as the stories of her peers, written accounts of motherhood, and maternal feminist theory to inform her work. Mya strives to give visual form to the intimacy and complexity of motherhood that is often lost through essentializing archetypes.
Mya completed a short term residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center in 2019, and Pentaculum at Arrowmont in 2023, and in 2021 debuted the show “Where Do I End and You Begin” at the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture in Bozeman, MT as her first solo show. She has since exhibited both nationally and internationally in group exhibitions, and has work in various private collections.
Learn more about Mya at myacluff.com.
Erin Morrison
Basalt, Colorado
Erin Morrison (b. 1985, Little Rock, AR, USA) is an artist based in Basalt, Colorado. She Currently works as Gallery Manager at the Art Base. Her work is informed by the body, labor, and capital, often spanning the languages of abstraction and representationalism. Her work often embraces analog methods of production, including gypsum cast bas-relief, painting, printmaking and ceramics.
Morrison has curated several exhibitions and events, including Collect For Choice, fundraiser for The Brigid Alliance (2022); LAMMAHOUSE, hosted by The C.A.D, Hong Kong (2021); Binder of Women exhibitions (2018), and Keep in Touch, UCLA Wight Gallery (2014). Her work has been featured in international publications including: Hyperallergic, The Hong Kong Economic Journal, The Contemporary Art Digest, Juxtapoz Black and White, LA Magazine, FLAUNT Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and New American Paintings.
She studied painting and sculpture at Memphis College of Art and UCLA where she received her MFA in Painting in 2014.
Learn more about Erin at erinmorrison.com.
Courtney Dudley
Kingston, New York
Courtney Dudley (@courtneydudleyart) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kingston, NY with a specific interest in natural materials, biologic forms and the domestic sphere. Her practice includes research in earthly archaic processes that underscore the brevity of current power and social structures. She aims to make objects that encourage a culture of mindful collectivism. Courtney received a MFA from Pratt Institute in 2018 and has attended residencies including The Wassaic Project and The Studios at Mass MoCA. She mounted her solo show at Hinterland in March and exhibited at Headstone Gallery in Kingston in October of 2024. In 2025 she will be attending a fully funded family residency at Kinhouse Arts in Fort Wayne, IN followed by an exhibition of work. She will also be exhibiting at Carbondale Arts in Colorado and featured on the Artist/Mother podcast.
Learn more about Courtney at courtneydudley.com.
Maria Teicher
West Chester, Pennsylvania
Maria Teicher, born 1983 in New Jersey, is a fine art botanical, portrait, and figurative artist. Using historic and personal symbolism, her works blend together contemporary concepts and an honest connection with those around her, currently filtered through her experiences in motherhood.
Maria received her BFA in 2007 from Rowan University and her MFA in 2013 from the New York Academy of Art. She exhibits regularly in Philadelphia, New York, and California. She finished her third solo show with Arch Enemy Arts Gallery in 2023 and followed that up with a duo show in Oslo, Norway - both shortly after the birth of her second child. Maria is currently continuing that body of work for two upcoming shows in Texas and Colorado.
Learn more about Maria at mariateicher.com.
Darla Jackson
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Darla Jackson (b. 1981) is a sculptor living in Philadelphia. She received a BFA in Sculpture from Moore College of Art in 2003, and after receiving a John S. and James L. Knight Arts Challenge Grant in both 2011 and 2013, founded the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, a membership based community sculpture studio.
Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions locally, including galleries and museums such as the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Seraphin Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Woodmere Art Museum, and a Wind Challenge exhibition at the Fleisher Art Memorial, and across the country at museums and galleries such as the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City, California, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, Delaware. She has shown internationally in Belgium and Germany and has lectured about her work at venues including The Barnes Foundation. Jackson has taught sculpture at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Tyler School of Art, Fleisher Art Memorial and various workshops across the country.
Jackson is currently a Medallic Artist for the United States Mint in Philadelphia, PA.
Learn more about Darla at darlajacksonsculpture.com.