Exhibition Dates: August 13 – September 11, 2026
Opening Reception: August 14 (6-9 PM)
Artists’ Talk: August 23 (2 PM)
Spruill Gallery is pleased to present Ancestry of Belonging, featuring work by Rose M. Barron, Colleen Maria Casey, and Dayna Thacker.
This exhibition brings together three artists whose works merge the tradition of their chosen media with their contemporary aesthetic practices. Working with materials commonly associated with craft, their works explore the gifts of understanding and growth bestowed on active participants of a cultural lineage. Collectively, through ceramics, fiber, and collage, these artists explore how traditions continue to provide relevant insights in a modern world.
The work of Colleen Casey is sponsored in part by a grant through Atlanta Contemporary Nexus Fund from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
About the Artists
Rose M. Barron
Rose M. Barron creates fine art photography and ceramics. Barron holds an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, an MA from Georgia State University, and a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Georgia.
Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally, including at Espacio Común in Panama City, Umbrella Gallery in New York City, the Athens Center for Contemporary Art, Blue Heron Nature Preserve, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, Whitespace Gallery, Art on The Beltline, Spruill Gallery, Poem 88 gallery, Fe Gallery in Pittsburgh, Coloriad Galeria de Arte in Lisbon, Georgia State University, and the Art Center in Xi’an, China.
The Four Seasons in Morocco, Fulton County Arts and Culture Fine Arts Acquisitions Program, the Marriott Courtyard in Nashville, the March of Dimes Corporate Office Collection, and the APG Collectors Portfolio hold her work within their collections.
She received the Bill Nixon Distinguished Fellowship for Georgia Ceramicists, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, 2024. She is a past resident with The Creatives Project and has completed numerous artist residencies including Taller Portobelo, University of North Texas, the Rensing Center, and Straw Hat Press.
Colleen Maria Casey
Colleen Maria Casey is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and curator with over three decades of experience in the arts. Casey holds a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in photography, with minors in fiber arts and art history, and an MA in art education from Georgia State University. Her early work, which included the nationally exhibited series Family, established her as a prominent figure in Atlanta’s photography scene in the 1990s, where she was a Fulton County Arts Council Individual Artist Grant Recipient and a studio artist at the Nexus Contemporary Art Center.
As an educator, Casey has shared her passion for art across diverse platforms, from teaching at The Lovett School and Joseph Wheeler High School to leading workshops at the John C. Campbell Folk School and Earthskills Rendezvous.
Casey’s artistic journey now expands beyond photography to a deep-seated practice in fiber arts, including weaving, surface design, and natural dyeing. She is also the founder of Some Art Fabric, LLC, a company born from her passion for textiles. This blend of teaching, making, and community-building demonstrates her enduring commitment to the arts.
Dayna Thacker
Influenced by contemplative spiritual traditions, theoretical physics, and the natural world, Dayna Thacker explores the frameworks we use to understand the world and our place within it. She creates collages, cut paper installations, and ikebana-based sculpture using precise, meditative methods. Her practice reflects an ongoing inquiry into impermanence, systems of meaning, and the interconnectedness of all things.
Raised in the American South in a family rooted in self-reliance, Thacker has moved frequently throughout her life. She earned her BFA from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville and lived in Atlanta from 2006 to 2014, where she was a studio artist at Atlanta Contemporary and a finalist for the Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award. From 2007 to 2010, she curated and managed Gallery Stokes in Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill arts district, supporting emerging and mid-career artists.
Thacker’s work has appeared in Art Papers, New American Paintings, ArtsATL, Burnaway, and The Atlantan Magazine, among others. From 2010 to 2024, she served on the staff of the Hambidge Center, a creative residency and workshop program in Rabun Gap, Georgia. She currently lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama.
