This event is part of a series – see below for details.November 14, 2025 10:00 a.m.
2025 BuyArt [small works holiday show and sale]
Event Details
Thursday, November 13, 2025 – Sunday, January 4, 2026*
WaterFire Arts Center Gallery
Give the gift of art! Back for the holiday season, BuyArt invites visitors to support Rhode Island-based artists by purchasing affordable, original small works in a curated gallery sale. With hundreds of pieces on view across a variety of media, BuyArt is perfect for meaningful holiday gifting—or for growing your own personal collection—while investing in our local creative community.
As work sells, more will be added, so stop by often to see what’s new!
Keep up-to-date with the WaterFire Arts Center happenings and follow us on Instagram: @waterfireartscenter.
Visit to enjoy and shop the hundreds of works displayed. The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
*Holiday Closures on Thanksgiving Day and Friday, November 29th and from Christmas Day through New Years Day.
BuyArt coincides with several weekend markets held in the Main Hall, featuring additional opportunities to shop from local artists, makers, and vintage vendors—including:
- Providence Artisans Market Holiday Show, November 15th + 16th
- Good Trade Makers Market, November 22nd + 23rd
- Providence Artisans Small Business Spectacular, November 29th
- Holiday Arts Market, December 6th + 7th
- Providence Artisans Holiday Shows, December 13th + 14th
- Cultural Survival Bazaar, December 20th + 21st
Participating Artists
Anne Manera
My work explores colors, shapes, textures and contrasts which represent this ever changing world in which we live. As an Artist, my goal is to convey a message from my heart and soul in a subtle manner, allowing the viewer to interpret the artwork on a personal level. As colors emerge, morphing into shapes and forms, the view is left with an insight into how beauty truly exists in the eye of the beholder. Each piece I create is representative of my past, present and future while simultaneously striving to engage the viewer.
Ariel Tavares
Ariel is a multimedia artist and performer who uses a range of mediums, including poetry, photography, collaging, crafting, event curation & digital art. Her work explores the question of “What If?” a question that drives her artistic practice, sometimes outfit choices, and most importantly, her spirituality, which is the source of her inspiration. For Ariel, art & creativity are a means of personal and collective liberation.
Ariel is a past alum of the 2024 Graduate Hotel Sweet Dreams Society Residency, where her Garden of Dreams Exhibition received an official citation from the State of Rhode Island. She completed the Creative Reuse Center of RI’s Barbara Grandis Artist Residency, the 2024-2025 WaterFire Accelerate Program and recently won the Motif 2025 Spoken Word: Free Verse Poet Award.
Cali Almy
My work explores collecting, order, and nature. These images include some of the found objects, drawings, gifts, and stencils I have gathered, created and held onto throughout my life. I have been making professionally for decades, and this body of work is intended to honor some of what has inspired me along the way.
Caterina Maina
Caterina Maina is an Italian-American artist based in Providence, Rhode Island, whose work spans fine art, installation, and fashion and portrait photography. Her practice centers on preserving personal histories and capturing the emotional depth within everyday moments. Through her work, she explores storytelling and human connection, using image-making as a way to bridge personal and collective experience. Caterina’s art has been exhibited in galleries across the United States, including Susan Eley Fine Art (New York, 2021), the Delaplaine Arts Center (Maryland, 2022), the Fitchburg Art Museum (Massachusetts, 2025), and Axis Gallery (California, 2025). She earned her BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she received multiple awards recognizing her creative vision and artistic excellence.
(@_4x5junkie / @caterinamaina.studio)
caterinamainaphotography.com
Christian Podzon
Hi, my name is Christian Podzon! I’m a photographer in Rhode Island. I love photographing architecture, streets, and events! Ive contributed with WaterFire the last two years photographing the lightings, and it’s been a amazing experience meeting the people who work hard in creating these events and made many new friends overtime! This year I wanted to share my experience to everyone of my adventures I went all around in New England including outside the US like Portugal! Anyways, I hope you enjoy my photos!
Dorian Epps
Dorian employs traditional making techniques to construct experimental mixed-media compositions rooted in the culture of sport. Through the reuse of reclaimed materials, his work transforms remnants of the everyday into vessels for narrative, memory, and motion—inviting viewers to consider the poetics of the athletic world beyond the court.
Emily Gray
Emily Gray is a Providence, RI-based artist and curator working in painting, printmaking, textiles, sculpture, and performance. Her work explores themes of care, identity, and transformation through personal mythology, spiritual symbolism, and familial lineage. She earned her BA in English and History of Art from Wheaton College, MA, in 2022. Gray is a recipient of the 2022 Rhode Island Foundation’s Michael P. Metcalf Memorial Fund which allowed her to conduct interviews with contemporary artists in Ireland on intersections of gender, religion/spirituality, and nature in their work and create her own work inspired by her travels. In 2023, she was selected for the year-long WaterFire Accelerate fellowship. In her role as the Exhibitions and Art Center Coordinator at WaterFire Providence from 2021-2025, she was a curator and arts administrator, focusing on community arts programming and exhibitions at the WaterFire Arts Center. She is currently a Master of Fine Art candidate, with a concentration of Museum Studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Art at Tufts University, MA.
James Messina
Local photographer with a passion for capturing the natural world, and the unseen stories that unfold all around us.
Jeremy Schilling
Jeremy Schilling has been an independent artist since 2016 working in a range of mediums from charcoal and graphite, watercolor, to oil paint. Maintaining an ambitious exhibition schedule, you can find his work as part of the selection at juried fine art festivals across several states including Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.
Jeremy grew up in Connecticut where he was trained as a landscape painter before attending the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied Illustration.
Jenny Simpson
Jenny Simpson is a student at Roger Williams University, currently studying Marketing and Graphic Design. She creates digital works of art and the occasional watercolor piece. Her love of graphic design started as a kid while watching her dad use photoshop to edit photos. She credits him as the catalyst and inspiration to pursue her passion in design and art. She dedicates her work to her loving family and support team.
Julia Samuels
Julia Samuels is a printmaking artist and works across multiple techniques. Her series of color grid prints investigates the properties and possibilities of mixing colors through layering within a given technique of printmaking (screen printing, etching or relief printing).
Justin DeGraide
Justin DeGraide is a film photographer from Providence, Rhode Island. Throughout the last 10 years, Justin’s passion for film photography has grown naturally. Film has a certain magic, a sense of atmosphere, depth, texture, and realness that can’t be emulated with digital. The imperfections, the snapshots of real life, the way one must slow down to properly capture the shot are just some of the things I think about while taking the shot. Through practice, patience, and understanding, he has come to a point where he truly knows what this form of art is to him. He hopes to provide a collection of work that truly represents who he is and what he sees in life.
Kyle Machado
My drawings are part of an ongoing series for metaphorical and personal thoughts that, thanks to the convenience of sketchbooks, can be cataloged in the moment. Dozens of different ballpoint pens were used in collaboration with watercolor, gouache, ink and pastel. Shine your phone flashlight on some of these works and you can discover all that is hidden. I like to think of these drawings as illustrated diary entries. This is why many concepts are improvised as I sketch through the emotions of each page. My sketchbooks have survived the elements and are proof of resilience while being inspired by weird dreams, surrealism, and a bit of humor!
Larisa Martino
An ethnically Russian artist who was born, raised, and educated in Central Asia (a former part of the USSR), Larisa dates her passion for art from an early school age when she attended drawing classes in afterschool programs.
She developed a fusion of art styles growing up in a multicultural environment. Larisa graduated from the University of Textile Industry (Tashkent, Uzbekistan) in 1993 with BS in Design & Art. There, she was part of the costume design committee for participants in the Independence Day Celebration of Uzbekistan in 1992.
She also was a featured designer and participant in numerous fashion shows held at the University’s Fashion Theater. Larisa came to the U.S.A. in 1995. She worked in the business world for several years while raising young family before deciding to go back to her true passion: Art.
Larisa is primarily an easel painter. Her art style is focusing on fantasy themes, illustrative ideas, and fashion sketches in acrylics, ink pen, oil pastels, color pencils, fabrics, faux finishes, and often a combination of the above for different effects. Many of her pieces are representations of women – the feminine forms of emotions, moods, and characters. Recently, Larisa started creating artworks in abstract style for corporate, hospitality, healthcare, and residential spaces. Her art has appeared in numerous galleries including international gallery in Miami, FL, Natick, MA, Rhode Island galleries and graces the walls of many private residences and commercial spaces. Larisa has national and international collectors. Larisa and her family reside in the state of Rhode Island, U.S.A.
Laura J Michaud
Photography helps me see the world in a more meaningful way, capturing moments that might otherwise slip by. Inspired by everyday beauty, my work blends Rhode Island’s coastal energy with Utah’s wide-open landscapes. I hope my photos encourage people to pause, look closer, and connect with the world around us. This collection is a journey through places I love, sharing moments that highlight the beauty and variety in our surroundings.
Laura White Carpenter
I am a sculptor of ceramics, metal and found objects, as well as a painter. I love exploring the relationship between humans and nature through abstracted forms. My Raindrop series explores hand building and different surface techniques, stemming from living in a very arid area of Africa where rain fell only a few times a year.
Logan Firestone
Logan Firestone is a student at the University of Rhode Island currently pursing a Studio Art degree with a concentration in photography. He works with both digital and film photography. He is a photographer who explores the beauty and tension within forgotten spaces. Through vivid color and texture, he documents places that have been reclaimed by expression and time.
Mike Hayes
Michael Hayes is a Providence based photographer focusing on automotive, street and documentary-style work. His work highlights the people, places and small details that define life. From city corners, to car culture and beyond.
Pamela Fernández
Pamela Fernández is a Providence-based interdisciplinary artist. Immigrating at a young age from the Dominican Republic her cultural identity and idea of home have been created from fragments pieced together from her own lived experiences, familial stories and media. Her work embodies trying to put these fragments together to answer and explore her questions about her ancestry, culture, personal identity and ideas of home.
Patricia Jurkowski
Patricia Jurkowski is a painter and illustrator currently living and practicing in Providence, Rhode Island. She received her BA in Studio Art from Salve Regina University in Newport, RI, in early 2023. Jurkowski has been exhibiting her works locally around New England. She currently works as a paint and sip instructor in downtown Providence.
Rachel Turner
Rachel Turner is a photographer from Providence, Rhode Island, with an education background. Her work aims to capture the beauty of everyday moments through both film and digital photography. For Rachel, photography is a way to slow down and connect with her surroundings. Inspired by her hometown of Providence and her travels, she uses her lens to tell stories that evoke a sense of place and emotion.
Sara Breslin
Sara Breslin has made a name for herself as a Symbolist Figure Artist with colorful, feminine work informed by the late 19th-century Art Nouveau style and the early 20th-century Surrealism movement. She obtained her BFA in 2014 from the University of Rhode Island, having majored in Fine Arts, and has continued her studio practice in Rhode Island ever since.
Breslin’s watercolor and mixed media paintings meld reality and fantasy to create empowering images of the Divine Feminine. These images employ strong narrative concepts, incorporating elements from nature, ancient symbols, and dynamic colors to breathe life into her mesmerizing figures. Through her work, Breslin explores the power of womxn and femininity while delving into the complexity of human emotions. Her own experiences deeply inform Breslin’s work, and she uses her paintings to express and affirm her own gender identity and mental health.
Sarina Mitchel
Every piece on display here includes Ms. Proboscis in some way. She is a character that I have been drawing and doodling for almost 10 years (and she was even the subject of a solo show in 2018!).
People often ask what and who she is…but she is not about me. She’s whatever you need her to be – whether that’s a fun character that makes you smile or an embodiment of a deep feeling you can’t explain in words (or maybe you just really like elephants!).
Please pull out your phone flashlight and view the pieces from different angles so that you don’t miss out on the glittery spirals shimmering up through the darker layers. Like hope in times of darkness, sometimes you just need to take a second look.
Skylar Gould
Skylar Gould is an experimental printmaker and textile artist who creates art using found and discarded objects. As a Senior at Connecticut College, she is completing an Honors Thesis centered on storytelling through craft, with a focus on cheap and sustainable art-making practices. Always ready to try a new medium, she has recently been working with old plastic bags that she cuts and fuses back together. The series of monotypes featured in this show were made using hand-cut fused plastic stencils.
Organizer
