THE SHARON PRIZE FOR COLORADO

Sep 10

The Sharon Prize For Colorado is honored to announce the winners of our inaugural grant supporting womxn and non-binary artists throughout Colorado. The jury has awarded $5,000 to Tya Anthony to help fund her new art exhibition, Muscle Memory, and $5,000 to Libby Barbee to help fund her new project, Coalescence.

In his groundbreaking book, Deepening Community: Finding Joy Together in Chaotic Times, Paul Born describes the four pillars of deep community: sharing our stories, taking the time to enjoy one another, taking care of one another, and working together for a better world. Born says “It’s up to us to create community.” Tya and Libby’s projects beautifully incorporate these pillars throughout their new interactive, art-based experiences.

The Sharon Prize co-founders, Denise Horton and Kathleen Economos, and the Sharon Prize Jury were impressed with Tya and Libbey’s vision, creativity and passion. Their two projects — as well as their talent and artistic gifts — exceeded our expectations on multiple levels.

Muscle Memory

Muscle Memory is an interactive performance, photographic and sculptural exploration intended to offer communal relief, healing and catharsis in honor of those who have lost their lives due to civil unrest, police violence and those incarcerated in the preschool to prison pipeline. The show will premiere in mid-November at the Leon Gallery in Denver.

While reflecting on Black and African-American experience, healing practices and traditions, hand plastered white flowers and framed white plastered bouquets that look like the plaster is still dripping, float along wall papered walls encasing the space with images of the black body in movement, rest and play.

Muscle Memory is designed to be an ark of togetherness for our community. It will create space for necessary dialogue among the community, a space that states all are welcome through the community local artisan market, celebrates community as a resource for one another emotionally, financially, and visually to inspire connecting to one another. As well as creating a space to process feelings around grief and healing. Muscle Memory will engage the senses and uplift and invigorate the nervous system through essential oils, herbal teas and reading spaces. Essentially Muscle Memory will care for the body and mind, leaving room for acts of random kindness and joy.

Tya Alisa Anthony

Tya Alisa Anthony is an American artist, photographer, writer, and independent curator whose work explores memory, mythology, ancestry, and the quiet ways people leave themselves behind in the objects they touch. For more than twenty years, her practice has existed at the intersection of visual research, education, and cultural storytelling, investigating resilience through the body, the landscape, historical archives, and the natural world.

Working across photography, collage, cyanotype, botanical collections, handmade books, and mixed media, Anthony approaches each body of work as an evolving archive rather than a finished statement. She is drawn to weathered photographs, heirlooms, medicinal plants, folklore, ritual objects, forgotten architecture, and the symbolic language that connects cultures across time. Her work asks how identity is preserved, transformed, and remembered.

Alongside her studio practice, Anthony has spent more than two decades building educational programs, exhibitions, and community-centered initiatives that expand access to the arts. Her leadership has helped shape institutions, mentor emerging artists, develop sustainable systems, and create spaces where creativity becomes a lifelong practice rather than a privilege.

Anthony’s artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver’s Octopus Collection. Her work has been exhibited nationally and is held in numerous private collections.

She is currently creating Organic Tarot, a 78-card hand-collaged tarot deck and accompanying memoir that intertwines mythology, autobiography, botanical symbolism, and the archetypal journey of transformation. The project reflects the central thread running throughout her career: that art is not simply something we make—it is a way of understanding ourselves, preserving what matters, and leaving a map for those who come after us.

http://www.tyaanthony.com

THE SHARON PRIZE FOR COLORADO

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