Good Luck Gallery presents exhibit exploring motherhood

A group exhibition exploring motherhood, artistic practice, and the evolving nature of identity is being featured at Good Luck Gallery in downtown Kalispell. 

Falling Through the Spiral features Portland-based artists Anya Roberts-Toney, Claire Elliott, Melissa Monroe, and Claiborne Colombo, Tessa Heck, original poem by Morgan Ritter, curated by Ashley Gifford of Art & About. 

The exhibition opens with a public reception on Friday, July 31, from 5–7 p.m. and remains on view through Sept. 11. 

Falling Through the Spiral brings together four artists whose practices have been shaped, challenged, and expanded through motherhood. Rather than presenting motherhood as a singular experience, the exhibition embraces its contradictions — creation and exhaustion, tenderness and grief, routine and transformation. The works reflect the ways parenting reshapes perception, time, memory, and the creative process itself. 

The exhibition title references the nonlinear experience of motherhood: a life that rarely moves in straight lines, but instead circles, repeats, deepens, and continually returns us to ourselves from new perspectives. Like a spiral, each season revisits familiar emotions while revealing unexpected growth. 

Curated by Portland-based writer and curator Ashley Gifford, Falling Through the Spiral marks a collaboration rooted in community and shared experience. Notably, every person behind the exhibition — including the participating artists, curator, and Good Luck Gallery founder Tessa Heck is a mother, bringing an uncommon level of lived perspective to the project. 

"Motherhood has fundamentally changed the way I understand creativity," says gallery founder Tessa Heck. "This exhibition isn't simply about being mothers — it's about what happens to an artist's practice when life is divided into before and after children. These artists have created work that feels deeply personal while speaking to something profoundly universal." 

Featuring painting, sculpture, and mixed media, the exhibition offers a nuanced conversation around identity, labor, memory and making. While rooted in the experiences of motherhood, the work resonates beyond parenthood, inviting viewers to consider the ways we are continually remade by the relationships and responsibilities that shape our lives. 

Good Luck Gallery is located at 127 Main Street in Kalispell. The opening reception event is free and open to the public. Curator Ashley Gifford and gallery founder Tessa Heck will be in attendance. For more information, visit goodluckmt.com

    Milkweed by Anya Roberts-Toney.