"The Way Is Not A Way But A Place" by Chloe Wilwerding
“There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way but a place.”
Thank you to our generous exhibition sponsor!
Wilderness Workshop is a nonprofit organization protecting the wilderness, water, and wildlife of Western Colorado’s public lands. They have worked across more than 4 million acres of public lands to ensure their ecological integrity. They have led efforts to designate more than half a million acres of Wilderness and hundreds of thousands of roadless areas in Western Colorado.
Learn more at WildernessWorkshop.org.
Carbondale Arts presents “The Way Is Not A Way But A Place”, a solo exhibition by Chloe Wilwerding at the Carbondale Arts Gallery, on display July 9 - August 13, 2026. The opening reception will take place on THURSDAY, July 9, from 5-7pm at The Launchpad, with an artist talk at 5:30pm.
Note that there was another exhibition running concurrently (April 17 - May 21, 2026) in the gallery space:
“GEOart Collective: Cracks, Layers, Water”
In our fast-paced, achievement-oriented outdoor culture, a hiking trail can be a means to an end—towards a step goal, collecting mountain peaks, or conquering summits. The Way is not a Way but a Place proposes a shift from achievement in nature towards wonder, intimacy, and attention to the landscape.
The exhibition blends photography, embroidery, and quilting into mixed-media textile portraits of places. Each piece begins with an iPhone photo taken on a hike. More like candid family photographs than idealized, heavily edited nature images, the immediacy of the photos creates intimacy with the places. Digitally printed on canvas, the photos provide the foundation for textured, mixed-media landscapes.
Wendell Berry writes of a day when the way becomes a place. That day might describe an occasional oceanic feeling of oneness with our natural surroundings. Or it might imagine a future when our relationship to the environment values each place as an awe-inspiring intersection of living organisms and miraculous planetary conditions, rather than a means to any human end. By intimately knowing a place, Chloe hopes to build the kind of trusting, reciprocal relationship where I can ask it, “Are you okay?” and recognize the answer. When the answer is “No,” she hopes to draw from our relationship to advocate for those places in human spaces and languages.
Chloe Wilwerding
Steamboat Springs, CO
Chloe Wilwerding is a mountain-loving, book-devouring, community-oriented, mixed-media artist. She holds her MFA in Printmaking from RISD. She has been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Taleamor Park, and scholarships from Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She has taught for RISD’s Continuing Education program, Middlebury College’s winter term, and Montserrat College of Art. She will be teaching at Anderson Ranch in Summer 2026.
Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include A Way In at Colorado State University, Nature Lover at Southern Vermont Arts Center, and The Landscapes Between Us at Frame 301 Gallery at Montserrat College of Art. In the Roaring Fork Valley, she also has work on view at Aspen City Hall as part Red Brick Center for the Art’s Aspen Public Art program.
Learn more about Chloe at chloewilwerding.com.