Join us October 15th | 6:00-8:00 PM for the opening Reception of DOING TOO MUCH featuring new paintings by Buck Hasting and ceramics by Athena Witscher.
Please note: this show takes place at WaterFire Arts Center*
Of the Essence: A solo exhibition of artist + curator Willa Van Nostrand
On view in the Gallery at the WaterFire Arts Center
475 Valley Street, Providence, RI 02908
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, June 4 – Sunday, June 21, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 4, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
RIFT Elixir Experience: Tuesday, June 9, 5:00 p.m.
MUSCLE MEMORY Live Performance: Thursday, June 11, 7:00 p.m.
Gallery Night Providence | Film Screening: Thursday, June 18, 8:00 p.m
Waterfire Arts Center is pleased to present Of the Essence, a solo exhibition by Willa Van Nostrand. Bringing together a collection of energetic watercolors, large-scale colorfield paintings, ceramic vessels, video, songwriting, and an archival installation of honey, Van Nostrand traces the threshold where memory, embodiment, and material presence coalesce.
Of the Essence is a distillation of Van Nostrand’s multidisciplinary language. Her paintings move with rhythmic intensity, reading as gestural traces that run through her broader practice. Across canvas, writing, ceramics, sound, and botanical material, each medium functions within a shared sensory vocabulary where paint, voice, movement, and taste blur together.
At the center of the exhibition is a collection of watercolors titled Flavorites that chronicle her unique painting style. Divine Feminine vessels and handmade masks appear throughout the exhibition as forms that nod to the ceramic tradition through a gender-expansive lens. The works pull together references to twentieth-century cultural icons and the formal structure of ancient sculpture. The works draw from Van Nostrand’s research at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and from her residencies at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and Stamperia Del Notaio in Sicily. The gallery is further activated through an album of never-before-released songs, documenting two decades of Van Nostrand’s poetry and music.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.; Thursday until 9:00 p.m.
Admission is free and open to all! Donations are encouraged.
Join us for a special artist reception celebrating Of the Essence. This informal gathering offers an opportunity to experience the exhibition, connect with fellow supporters, and learn more about the works on view.
Join the opening experience of Yuval Gur’s RIFT to enjoy live music while tasting a special Beverage / Elixir Performance designed by Willa Van Nostrand.
Share in a live performance rooted in voice, body percussion, and site-responsive movement. Van Nostrand’s new performance piece extends her exhibition’s logic into real time, where repetition, breath, and physical rhythm become structuring materials.
Jump on a trolley from the WaterFire Arts Center, explore multiple local partner galleries, and then return back to the WFAC to check out Of the Essence and witness a special screening of Van Nostrand’s film creations. Check back for more information about how to secure your spot on the trolley.
Sometimes There’s Cake!
Join us for a reading with the authors & artists:
Yanara Friedland reads from Thanatographies
Danielle Vogel reads from A Library of Light
with poetry reading by Chanelle Allesandre
Danielle Vogel is a poet and interdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of queer and feminist ecologies, somatics, and ceremony. She is the author of the hybrid poetry collections A Library of Light (Wesleyan University Press 2024), Edges & Fray (Wesleyan University Press 2020), The Way a Line Hallucinates Its Own Linearity (Red Hen Press 2020), and Between Grammars (Noemi Press 2015). Her installations and site-responsive works have been displayed at RISD Museum, among other art venues, and adaptations of her work have been performed at such places as Carnegie Hall in New York and the Tjarnarbíó Theater in Reykjavík, Iceland. Her work has been supported by the Poetry Foundation, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and The Nordic House in Reykjavík, among other arts and ecology organizations. Vogel is Director of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University where she teaches workshops in innovative poetics, memory and memoir, and composing across the arts. She makes her home in the Connecticut River Valley where she also runs a private practice as an herbalist and flower essence practitioner through with/in herbals. Learn more at: danielle-vogel.com.
Yanara Friedland is a writer, translator, and educator born in Berlin. She is the author of Uncountry: A Mythology (2016) winner of the Noemi Press Fiction Book Award and Groundswell (2021) selected by Jill Magi for Essay Press's Book Award. Both books have recently appeared in German translation with Matthes & Seitz Berlin. Her third book Thanatographies is forthcoming from FC2/University of Alabama Press. She is the recipient of research grants from the DAAD and Arizona Commission on the Arts. Her work explores the effects of dislocation on memory and language, engaging with multilingual and transhistorical spaces through archival research, nocturnal imagination, and in collaboration with other artists. She teaches creative writing and literature at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies and co-runs the reading series Mutter Courage in the Pacific Northwest.
Chanelle Allesandre is an experimental musician, écrivaine, and flower essence devotee. She makes spatial and atmospheric soundscapes with various pedals, field recordings, instrumentation, cassette tapes, and a mixer. She is always writing, mostly poems and sometimes prose and oftentimes, letters. All of her work relies heavily on chance and channeling and mystery and devotion and translation. She currently resides near the Long Island Sound in the Northeastern United States.
@chanelle.allesandre on instagram
Yanara Friedland (portrait of artist)
Danielle Vogel with Arctic Angelica
Chanelle Allesandre - Martime Skin,
Chanelle Allesandre, self portrait
iHappy: Painting + Sculpture Right Now
New Work by Arne Asaumi, Joshua Boulos,
Baijun Chen, Maxime Belykh, Garrett Davis,
Brittni Ann Harvey, Harry Gould Harvey IV,
Dan Talbot, Fiona Walther & Lindsay Weitzman
Vessels by Eva Goodman + Natalie Squillante
We’ll celebrate Josh before he heads to the Whitney Biennial in early March!
Curated by Joshua Boulos & Beijan Chen, Apartment 13
Thursday, February 19th | 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Tonight is Still Life Aperitivo at WFG.
We’re setting a candlelit table with a giant wedge of French country bread, triple-crème brie, honey-pearl champagne grapes, a mountain of alliums, and a bouquet of spring blossoms. There will be hot cider from the bar and I’m thinking we’ll pop a bottle of ‘Chaos’ from Oyster River Winemakers... Feels apt, right?
First, we draw or paint the still life.
Then, we eat it.
Prefer figurative drawing?
Draw us eating the installation!
No experience necessary; this will be a casual and fun activity.
Supplies and paper are included, or bring your sketchbook and favorite pen.
Come hang at the table!
Come out of hibernation for this one!
Join us tonight at WFG from 7-9 PM for a Valentine-making session, amaro tasting and Tarot readings with Emily of Queen of Bones Tarot. Celebrate the release of a new collection of “LOVE” glasses by @evagoodmanglass created for the occasion. Tasting starts at 8 pm. Yes, there are fruit-scented glue sticks and glitter pens. Bites + Sips available by Bitte.
Make something with your hands. Sit across from the cards. Taste what lingers. Let what has been quiet all winter rise to the surface. Will your heart decide to stay guarded or open?
Tonight, we open.
♡ Willa + World's Fair Gallery
Ceramicist Natalie Squillante will join us from Colorado for a pop-up in support of her new series, Shed & Return. World’s Fair Gallery will present a live, experiential performance with curator and artist Willa Van Nostrand activating the vessels through vocal score, movement, and a tasting, bringing the collection fully to life.
Little Bitte will be warming up the space with the classic hot toddy, you can make your own holiday wreath, and shop the current holiday exhibition, FERVERE. What more could you need?
$20 WREATH BAR (while supplies last)
What’s included:
- Evergreenery from Osamequin Farm
- Wreath rings and wire
- A selection of Victorian ribbons to adorn your wreath
The ceramic artists of Anyhow Studios will be presenting their work for our annual Holiday Show!
Additional works by:
Jacob Berendes
Juan Ferrer of Spoon & Board
Emily Shapiro of Night Garden
Join us for an evening of warm acoustic melodies performed by our dear friend Sage.
Drinks by Little Bitte Cocktails.
Join us for the opening reception of LATTICEWORK, featuring illuminated installations by Wes Sanders. Vessels by Emilia Schonthal. More info on additional programming and gallery hours to come.
This event is free and open to the public.
Tarot readings by Queen of Bones
Tea blends and hydrosols by Botanic Providence
Crafted elixirs by Little Bitte Cocktails
Etchings and tarot cards by Michael Ezzell
Delicious Sips & Bites by Little Bitte
This event is free and open to the public.
We’re honored to host the Celebration of Life & Work of Katie Greenwood Ross. Join us for the opening reception on October 13th, 6:00–8:00pm. Additional gallery hours will be hosted throughout the week.
Please join us Friday, September 12th, from 6:00-9:00 PM at World’s Fair Gallery for the OPENING RECEPTION of FROM THE HEADWATERS. We’re delighted to present paintings, prints, and installations by Martin Smick, along with sculptural works by Taylor Baldwin.
Delicious Sips & Bites by Little Bitte.
This event is free and open to the public.
