Every few steps, there is something to be found at your feet: a tiny yin yang bead, a tattered piece of paper bearing the definition of the word artist.

Those little discoveries sealed in resin were owner Carrie L. Kellerby’s way of filling in holes in the quarry tile bequeathed during the downtown building’s past lives at 660 White Ave. It has been a fountain diner, a bookstore, a law office and now an art gallery and studio.

Confluence’s walls and floor spaces in December and January were filled with its Member Show featuring a variety of pieces and styles by the gallery’s more than 50 members.

“We have a lot of talented people in the valley,” said Kellerby as she walked through the gallery, pointing out various details.

While the paintings, collages, sculptures and fiber pieces speak for themselves in that regard, they also speak in a way about Kellerby.

“She’s awesome. She’s got so much energy and just an abundance of intelligence,” said Caole Lowry, a local artist with a keen appreciation of what it takes to run a gallery in the Grand Valley.

Lowry owned the Planet Earth and the Four Directions Gallery, which closed in 2014. During Planet Earth’s 18 years downtown, Kellerby was one of Lowry’s contributing artists. That switched when Kellerby opened Confluence in 2019 as a place for artists and art appreciators to come together.

“Bring what you have,” Kathy Burbank said Kellerby told her when Burbank moved to the Grand Valley several years ago and discovered Confluence on Main Street and followed it to its current spot on the corner of White Avenue and Seventh Street.

“This has been my heart home,” Burbank said.

Lowry agreed, noting that Kellerby’s work ethic and community spirit are contagious.

Kellerby offers a smile when conversation turns to her incredible energy and creative capacity to teach art classes, create her own work and run a gallery while also putting in long hours at a different day job.

Kellerby might deflect and bring up people she finds amazing. But in listening to her talk, it’s apparent Kellerby is passionate about learning, spending time with art, ideas and fostering community.

“Here’s one of my philosophies,” she said as the gallery became quiet on a weekday evening. “If you’re feeling root bound, you need to be repotted. And every 10 years or so, I need to be repotted.”

She turned an undergrad degree in art history into nearly 20 years in the culinary realm. She went from consulting in London to visiting her mother in Grand Junction “and I just didn’t leave,” she said. “It just seemed like a good place to raise my family.”

She owned a restaurant and catering business and then switched to interior design for a while. She loves to write — “I had always wanted to be a writer. … I write every day” — so she decided to get an English degree at Colorado Mesa University.

Despite being well into the computer age, when she began “I still had a manual typewriter and carbon paper,” she admitted.

She went on to get a masters degree in creative writing from Antioch University—Los Angeles and taught for awhile at CMU.

And then, because “I have always been interested in getting my phD,” she did started that, too.

While working on a dissertation that blended philosophy, aesthetics and art theory, she had a dream about opening an art studio. She woke up from the dream “and I was so happy. I felt so called that I had to do this,” she said.

So she opened Confluence on Main Street as a creative space for writing and creating visual art.

“But as soon as I got in there, art wanted to go on the walls,” Kellerby said.

She reached out to local artists and things organically grew from there, including a move in 2022 to White Avenue. “This community stepped up,” Kellerby said.

Confluence hosts a new show nearly every month of the year, most with a theme and curated by Kellerby. There frequently are gatherings or classes to foster creativity through visual art or writing.

However, owning a gallery “is a challenge,” Kellerby said. “It’s not paying for itself.”

Since getting her doctorate — she defended her dissertation in February and graduated in April from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in Portland, Maine — Kellerby started with KLJ Engineering as a government funding specialist doing grant writing, tracking legislation and funding sources.

The projects Kellerby has worked on through the firm have impacted her own artwork just as the job has helped her financially keep Confluence’s doors open, she said.

Kellerby has an ongoing series called “Atmospheric Conditions,” in which she creates mixed media pieces in response to various climate change topics. One of those pieces, featuring a greater sage grouse and part of Confluence’s Member Show, came about because of research for the firm, said Kellerby,

“Making something is what I think is one of the greatest human gifts,” she said, appreciative of how ideas can be processed and engaged with through art.

Her work for the firm is rewarding, but “this is rejuvenation,” she said, looking around Confluence. “It’s joyful.”

She loves watching when someone walks in Confluence’s door for the first time and their facial expression becomes “one of delight. And that’s a lovely thing to behold,” she said.

She is hopeful Confluence will continue as an asset to the community in bringing artists and art appreciators together. “If ever it’s not, then it’s time to move on,” she said.