Elusive Balance + Sale | Summer News!

Quarter 3 (July - September) theme is CREATE!

Catherine Reinhart

Jun 26, 2025

Elusive Balance | Group Traveling Exhibition

Presented by Iowa Artist/Mother Group

Location: Octagon Center for the Arts, 427 Douglas Ave, Ames, IA

Exhibition Dates: July 21st - August 9th, 2025

Public Reception: Saturday, August 9, 2 - 5 pm

“Elusive Balance” is a traveling exhibition from July 21 - August 9, 2025, at Octagon Center for the Arts, 427 Douglas Ave, Ames, IA. This group exhibition explores the challenges of finding balance within artist and mother/caregiver identities. In an effort to be inclusive of the family needs that coincide with making work, there will be a family-friendly closing reception on Saturday, August 9, from 2-5 pm.

This exhibition embraces the dichotomies found in motherhood: ideas of rest and productivity, contentment and overwhelm, stability and transition, responsibility and absurdity/play, and societal expectations vs. personal intuition. The pieces visually explore how one finds personal balance, or simply lets go of this elusive state, celebrating imbalance within life and art.

Featured Iowa Artist/Mothers include: Amenda Tate, Kelly Devitt, Catherine Reinhart, Allison Rowe, Jill Wells, Ramona Muse Lambert, Kay Irelan, Stephanie Brunia, Hope Spragg, Emily Jalinsky, Sheena Daugherty, Alex Ackerman, Jamie Elizabeth Hudrlik, Genevra Daley, Emily Newman, Kristin M Roach, Alicia Wilkinson, Mirzam Perez, Akwi Nji, Astrid Hilger Bennett, Julia Franklin, Lauren A. Ross, Larassa Kabel, Bailey Fry-Schnnormeier.

Works include fiber art, painting, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture, and photography. Showcasing the voices of Iowa artist mothers who represent a range of diverse backgrounds, ages, motherhood stages, and mediums.

Please join us for this celebration of art and mothering!

Want to join our Iowa Artist/Mother group?
We are an warm, inclusive group of artist/mothers of all ages, stages and working mediums, stren across the state of Iowa. We would love to have you!
Sound like something you would be interested in?
Fill out this Sign Up For

Here we are, almost 1/3 of our way through Summer (how did that happen?!)

I enjoy an AMAZING trip to Boston for the IAMAS 2025 Conference called (Re-)Producing Mothering, Motherwork, and Motherhood. It was a great experience, where I learned about Matricentric Feminism, connected with scholars, artists, and researchers within the interdisciplinary field of Motherhood Studies, and even cried a few tears.

While in beautiful Boston, I also ate my weight in Lox and egg sandwiches. Divine!

However, the conference costs + plane tickets + housing + food for 6 days have my pocketbook feeling too light.

So I am having a studio sale!

This will be taking place on my Instagram Stories @catherine_reinhart_studio

Get 10% off using CODE: TAKECARE

See more items listed on WEBSHOP ……………….. Stay Tuned!

To be real, almost 1/3 (you read that right) the way through Summer has me in tatters. I am exhausted, and sitting down at my computer to write to you takes Herculean efforts of will. To be real, I want sun on my skin and chlorine clinging in my nostrils. I want barbeques, I don’t have to organize, and nothing but summer salads. I want books, flowers, and earned sweat. Mostly, I want friends to breeze on by.

Mostly, I want time to make art and go swimming.

So if you have time between running your kids to yet another camp and double-checking your calendar, I would love to see you. I will try to escape my never ending TO DO list to meet you where you are

In real life.

Drop me a line.

Also………….

EVERY FRIDAY. CALL ME at the KELLY, IA PHONE BOOTH. 12 - 1 pm.

I will read you a poem. (515) 769-9481

Later, when I work up the fortitude and am fueled by more caffeine, I will write to you of my love of Annie Dillard, art from cast-offs, and my latest granny fits. This Summer season will be filled with making art, as I prepare for a solo exhibition at Grand View University in the Fall (September 1 - October 17). But for now, I hope you are feeling treasured and honored between the griefs, large and small, unknown to me.

Thanks for listening.

- Catherine Reinhart, Topography of Dwelling

What I have: been reading, been traveling to, and been seeing.

Flowers at the Grand Tetons for our Family vacation.

Moccasins with beaded soles. Crow Agency, MT. Seen on our Family Vacation. Imagine the gesture of care and reverence these objects communicate. Often, you will also find children’s moccasins with beaded soles; a gesture of protection, devotion, prosperity, and love.

Egyptian beaded dress. Museum of Fine Arts-Boston.

Lakota (Sioux) artist, once known, pair of ‘possible bags’, 1890. Tanned hide, lane-stitch beadwork embroidery, sinew, and tin come with tufts of dyed red horsehair.