Gallery Watch: A new art installation and collaborative event coming to Liminal Space Gallery in September brings feminism and the evolving role of “domesticity” to the forefront
You may think you know the history behind the Women’s Rights movement and the long road that feminism had traveled before women gained the right to vote in 1920, but for poet and author Kathleen Willard and Fiber and Mixed Media artist Bethany Economos, it doesn’t end there. On September 5th in Liminal Space Gallery at Pueblo Arts Alliance, these artists along with mixed media artist Cheryl Scott of Pueblo, will bring a collaborative collection of hand embroidered textiles and upcycled pieces paired with poignant poetry together for a narrative that is steeped in the history of domesticity and the struggle of women to break out of this role in contemporary culture called “Chosen Canvas”. This immersive and interactive show hopes to inspire the viewer as well as challenge the traditional stereotypes that no longer align with contemporary roles for women.
In a chance meeting in 2023 at the Museum of Art Ft. Collins, Kathleen Willard attended the “Bursts of Brilliance Salon” event, She was instantly intrigued by Bethany Economos’ talk about her work with repurposed textiles emblazoned with embroidered messages that harkened back to Suffragest era America, but with a twist. Afterwards Willard approached Economos and said, “I am a poet and I would love to collaborate with you on your next project. One of the first pieces that Economos created for the new project was “Life’s Not Fair, Honey” which she showed to Willard at their first planning meeting. Paired with hand embroidered honeycombs against a backdrop of pages of poetry, the work began to take shape. A friendship was instantly struck between them, and the idea behind the installation of “Domestic Bliss”, a collaborative installation piece, was born.
For Kathleen Willard, the activated path of feminism began in 1972 when she was a college student in Vermont and traveled to New York to walk among demonstrators alongside Gloria Steinem. Willard says, “this was an incredibly poignant era for young women who wanted their voice to be heard”. That same year Gloria Steinem would start Ms. Magazine in New York and would lead a revolutionary group for workplace rights that reflected Steinem’s broader commitment to the women’s rights movement and her dedication to achieving gender equality. Her father always told her that she could be anything she wanted to be, so she found her voice as a writer in college and later as an English teacher and poet. I first met Kathleen Willard 4 years ago when I was planning the “Living with Wolves”, exhibit and book feature at the Pueblo Library District. Her enthusiasm for teaching, for conservation and for sharing her poetry with people was infectious. She had just released a book of Eco-poetry that centered around the re-introduction of Yellowstone wolves to North-Western Colorado. Now with 5 books of Eco-poetry, published through local house Middle Creek Publishing, located in Beulah, Colorado, she is exploring new pathways for her work. Her forthcoming book in Spring 2026 by Nirala Publishing in Delhi, India is a departure from her oeuvre and speaks about desires, particular female desires, called World on Fire.
Heavily influenced by her collaborative work with Economos, she follows the evolution of desire from the onset to being extinguished. Her insertion of writing poignant feminist phrased moments on textiles will be a featured highlight on the clothes line piece for Chosen Canvas. Additionally Willard will share her poetry in a reading during the First Friday opening as well as hold a workshop on First Saturday called “Looking in the Mirror: Writing Your Self Portrait.
Mixed Media Artist Cheryl Scott has been a Pueblo resident for over 50 years and a fixture of Pueblo Galleries for over 17 years as a member of Steel City Gallery, so it was no surprise that curator Katie Magby included her in the trio of artists featured in the Chosen Canvas debut in September. She has been an artist for most of her life weaving her art into her full time job, from painting to reimagining art furniture to upcycled assembly art. As a Girl Scout executive, she used art in many ways, especially as a camp director designing program booklets and activities.
After retiring, she stretched her artists’ wings at Steel City Art Works, where she was a resident artist for over 15 years. There she found many ways to express her artistic nature, including recycled art. First starting with furniture then clocks. Later “Scott’s Bots” came marching in. Cheryl says, “Recycling provides many surfaces and materials to create art from. I’m so glad to share them because they make people smile. Including myself”. Some of the found objects used in her work are reflective of “domestic” life but re-imagined in creative and expressive ways.
For fiber and mixed media artist Bethany Economos who employs embroidery, beading, and other hand embellishment techniques in her mixed-media works, keeping these techniques alive and passing them on to the next generation is essential to her work. With a BFA in Fiber Art from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia she aims to push the boundaries of ingrained perceptions and reframe this stereotype. Her newest work, as a part of Chosen Canvas, explores the concept of ‘women’s work’ and the ‘feminine arts’. These craft forms have been systematically deemed lowly compared to their male equivalents.
Through the collective work of Economos, Scott and Willard featured in “Chosen Canvas” new ideas behind re-claimed textiles, found objects and adaptive poetry bring an opportunity to interact with what we know about feminist history in a new perspective. The main idea that the artist’s wish for the viewer and participant to take from the show is to recognize that the domestic work of women, often undervalued and unappreciated, fuels the world, and if not for the tireless and invisible labor of women, what would our lives be like?
“Chosen Canvas” opens on First Friday in September (Sept. 5) from 5-8 p.m. in the Liminal Space Gallery at Pueblo Arts Alliance Studios located at 107 S. Grand Avenue, Pueblo Colorado. Please follow www.puebloarts.org for more information about workshop events and special features of this show during the month.
For our observed element of FIRE for August, we offer a poem from author Kathleen Willard’s forthcoming release, “World on Fire”
Accelerant as Ecosystem
In your presence, I mutate. My body transubstantiates and breaks the evolutionary cycle. You make me wild. I want to stop thinking of you, or the moment you pulled me into your place of business on the busy plaza and kissed me even before you knew my name. I want to stop thinking of you, you naked, you looking into my eyes, you at my threshold before the first bird sings, before the stars disappear. You come to me, battered cowboy boots singing on the wooden steps. My body destabilizes. How quickly we unclothe. You are my accelerant, my flash point, our kisses, flint strikes, spontaneous combustion. We are wildfire and in an instant incinerate the entire Rocky Mountain West. Skin on skin, the sky ignites into a delirium of orange brocade. Unleashed, I am untamed, undocumented by naturalists, a surprise to scientists. I cannot stop thinking of you, our bodies touched deep and brief, a collision of molecules. We erupted and created an ecosystem of rapture. I am still ravenous. Ours is scorched earth. I am forever altered and shape-shift into an animal of fire.
A closing reception for Chosen Canvas on September 26th from 5-8 pm and Embroidery Workshop with artist Bethany Economos on September 27th at 11am at Pueblo Arts Alliance. Register at http://www.puebloarts.org