TCA Exhibits: elemental ephemera (opening reception)

TCA Exhibits 

elemental ephemera

Works by Kayla Powers and Gillian Moore

June 18 – August 2 

Opening Reception: THU, June 18, 4-6pm 

Free & open to the public

elemental ephemera is an ecosystem of works deeply rooted in particulars of place by New Mexico-based artists Kayla Powers and Gillian Moore.

elemental ephemera is an ecosystem of works deeply rooted in particulars of place. Through material acts of dyeing, painting, sewing, and manipulations of photographic foraging, New Mexico-based artists Kayla Powers and Gillian Moore create forms and surfaces that embody the temporal mutability of the living world grounded upon the relative permanence of geologic place. 

 Installed in symbiosis, the chromatic and material sensibilities of each artist invite meditations on the natural world and our role within it. The quiet, accumulated layers of Moore’s paintings are sedimentary, erosional—simultaneously invoking the qualities of desert soils and vast landscapes in intimate proximity and expansive distance. Her works observe the land as a primal repository of psychological significance and metaphor. The haptic qualities of Powers’ quilted constructions are exaltations in detail and tactility. Her pieces entwine the documentary allure of photography with the touching, hand-worked softness of aggregated thread and woven surface. Hue, texture, and rhythm transport experiences of the works’ natural origins to the gallery. They implicate the viewer’s attention, unfolding elusive features of the world around us and prompting a reverence for the places we inhabit. 

 Artist Bios 

Kayla Powers (b. 1988) is a place-based artist and naturalist whose textile work is rooted in ecological connection. Working with traditional practices of foraging, dyeing, weaving, and stitching, she explores the common threads of our shared humanity with the aim of fostering deeper connections—to the earth, to craft, and to one another.

She holds an MFA in Fiber Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in Art History from Western Michigan University. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, Stetson University in Deland, Florida, and Simone DeSousa Gallery in Detroit, Michigan among others. Powers has been awarded artist residencies across the U.S. and abroad, including AiR Green in Norway, the Icelandic Textile Center in Iceland, and Breck Create in Breckenridge, Colorado. She was the 2025 International Artist in Residence and Hancock Fellow at the Australian Tapestry Workshop and a 2025 recipient of an Environmental Artistic Activism Grant from the Puffin Foundation. She has also received the President’s Award for Sustainability from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a Windgate Fellowship at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and is a 2026 Fulcrum Foundation Grant recipient.