Call open August 3 – October 11, 2026
Seen + Heard is a regional exhibition that brings together women and people with diverse experiences of femininity to share their stories through visual art and traditional craft. Representing a wide range of backgrounds, and life experiences, participating artists challenge stereotypes, confront marginalization, and celebrate the richness and complexity of women’s lives, feminine identities, and gendered experiences in Appalachia. Through collective artistic expression, Seen + Heard creates a space where the power of the feminine is recognized through a depth of experiences, creativity, and humanity.
JURORS
Aubrey jo Blue
Aubrey jo Blue (they/them) is an artist working in textiles, ceramic, and wood. Archival research and land-based stewardship are essential parts of their work which is rooted in place and community within the more-than-human world. Plant dyes, work with natural fibers, spinning, and other meditative processes form the physical landscape of their work that takes the form of weavings, quilts, sculpture, and assemblages. Fundamentally, their work seeks to tend the land around them through mutually beneficial relationships with invasive plants and animals. In addition to their material work, Blue is a scholar of craft history, researching the intersection between craft and ecology. They are also a gardener, builder of houses, cloth mender, teacher of craft, and play in a band called Ah the World.
Beth Nash
A mixed media artist with a diverse career spanning drawing, portraiture, printmaking, fabric and clothing design, digital art, and teaching, Beth Nash served as an instructor in the Art Department at Marietta College from 2002 to 2022. Since 1976, she has exhibited work in galleries and fine art festivals throughout the United States and have led workshops in painting, felting, portraiture, and other media. Recent honors include Best of Show and Best in Category at the Boston Mills Art Festival, as well as recognition from The River at the Parkersburg Art Center. Recent exhibitions include The Women’s Show at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University, OH+5 at The Dairy Barn Arts Center, and numerous regional exhibitions. They have also served as a juror for the Boston Mills Art Festival and American Craft Enterprises. Their current work focuses on acrylic painting, collage, and large-format drawing with collage, creating narrative compositions that weave together the human figure, animals, and flora in a dreamlike vision.
Robyn Moore
Robyn Moore is a photomedia-based artist living and working in eastern Kentucky. Her work explores how alternative and experimental photographic processes can reveal the unseen worlds and beings around us. Robyn’s research interests include deep time, biosemiotics, geology, paleontology, phenomenology, empathic imagining and the ways in which images can help us facilitate understanding of and solidarity with other forms of life.
Robyn’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Yerevan Fifth International Print Biennale, the South Australian Museum, Gold Street Studios Gallery in Victoria, Australia, FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona, the Centre for Print Research in Bristol, England, Houston Center for Photography, Soho Photo Gallery, Texas Woman’s University, and Manhattan Graphics Center. Honors include selection as the 2024 South Arts Southern Prize and State Fellowship recipient for Kentucky, the Uncommon Art Residency Award at the Teton Art Lab, and winner of the professional series alternative processes category at the 23rd Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for Women Photographers.
Robyn holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney and an MFA in photography and experimental film from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Robyn is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky.
EXHIBITION PERIOD: January 23 – March 21, 2027
ELIGIBILITY
- This call for entry is open to artists and makers whose work explores the power and complexity of womanhood, femininity, and gendered experience in Appalachia.
- All entries must be completed on or after January 1, 2024
- Each artist may submit up to 3 works. The submission fee for this exhibition is offered on a sliding scale of $15 – $65.