Event

QUIET URBAN RESIDENCY
August 22–24, 2025

Three days of immersive art-making — an improvisational experiment in shared creative solitude.

Exhibition

A CANVAS FOR THE ART COLLECTOR
Featuring the Artwork of Jessica Abbott Williams

Opening Reception
Tuesday, April 29 • 5-7 pm

Weavings, watercolors, and ceramics set in a beautiful Berkeley home. A big thank you to Tracy Sichterman of Berkeley Hills Realty for making this possible and for hosting a party to show the art and showcase the house.

Exhibition

New Work by Jessie Williams (November 2024-January 2025) at Erica Tanov

Opening Reception
Thursday, November 14 • 6-8 pm
Erica Tanov Berkeley, 1827 Fourth Street

New work includes large-scale weavings, small ink and watercolor paintings as well as elegant ceramic vessels. Come celebrate the holiday season with colorful textures, materials and compositions.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Ceramics and weaving are the most basic art forms — to eat from and to wear. Food and warmth. For the maker, there is delight in the material and meditative hours of labor. I made these “Emergency Blanket Weavings” over the course of a couple of years, time spent with the metronomic mechanics of the loom while thinking about the inherent poetry of the material.* A blanket to save your life. The shift from crisis time to craft time. A hopefulness for the future. The connections and kindness that can emerge in times of crisis. Someone wraps a blanket around you.
There are two distinct rhythms in my art making practice — moving fast and moving slow. Being thoughtful and being instinctive. “Confluences” is a series of small paintings in response to the long hours of weaving — making connections in the wet channels of watercolor and ink that flow into each other as fluid warp and weft. A sense of play and discovery and endless possibilities within the limit of 3”x3" pieces of paper collected in an old wooden box. Larger paintings grew from there as well as Confluences on ceramic vessels, as relief ceramic wall pieces and small sculptures in clay.
In the process of experimentation, I created a series of “Wands” to sample glazes. So satisfying to stir these in pots of color and see them transform in the alchemy of the kiln. It reminds me of the childhood joy in a new box of crayons or a new tin of color pencils. These Wands became keys or teeth or chimes, all of which I felt I needed right now.

*mylar emergency blankets, cut into strips and woven on a loom