In this episode, Mother And …, artist and mother Althea Murphy-Price discusses how her multidisciplinary practice - spanning printmaking, sculpture, photography, and installation - explores perception, appearance, and the cultural narratives that shape femininity. Althea reflects on how printmaking’s inherent metaphors of replication, mirroring, and generative matrices resonate deeply with her interests in womanhood and with her own experiences as a mother to two daughters. Her interactions with her daughters, especially those surrounding hair, adornment, and self-presentation, have increasingly infused her studio work with new materials, colors, and questions.

Althea discusses her pieces First Aid and Bed of Needles, both of which transform familiar objects, such as Band-Aids and bobby pins, into reflections on care, vulnerability, caution, and the tools women use to navigate the world. She also speaks candidly about balancing professional identity with caregiving, the importance of role models for Black women artists, and the ongoing evolution of her daughters’ creative lives. For Althea, motherhood has not constrained her practice; it has offered new metaphors, new rhythms, and a deeper understanding of the “and” that defines an artist mother’s life. This conversation is part of the Mother And … exhibition, on view at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City from September 5 through November 21, 2025.