WaterFire’s Guide to Visiting Providence

Lost & Found
An Exhibition by the 2026 WaterFire Accelerate Cohort
On view in the gallery at the WaterFire Arts Center through October 11, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 6:00–9:00 p.m

Lost & Found is the culminating group exhibition of the 2026 WaterFire Accelerate cohort, featuring six artists under 30: Aja Delgado, Pamela Fernández, Leia Fifer, Yasmine Hassan, Amelia Rozear, and Rachel Turner.

Through a diverse array of mediums spanning film photography, printmaking, wood marquetry, fibers, mixed media illustration, and more, this exhibition invites viewers to lose (and find) themselves in the minds of the artists.

Each artist grapples with the theme of “Lost & Found” in their own way, sharing meditations on self-discovery and abandonment, personal and imagined mythologies, forgotten and violently obscured histories, displacement in relation to identity, the conscious and subconscious, and the interplay between nature and the divine. Despite sharing many of these throughlines, the works each oscillate between boldness and tenderness, dwelling in nostalgia and embracing the future, and finding healing both within and in the most unexpected everyday places.

PROGRAMMING

• Valley Vibes Roof Deck Preview: Lost in the Valley
  Thursday, August 27, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
  Get an early look at Lost & Found at this special summer preview on the WFAC roof deck, featuring a DJ set by YLSANITA and drinks by Hi Bar Lo Bar.
• Opening Reception
  Thursday, September 10, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
  Celebrate the opening of Lost & Found and meet the six artists of the 2026 WaterFire Accelerate cohort.
• Gallery Night Providence
  Thursday, September 17
  A Gallery Night trolley departs the WFAC at 6:30 p.m. for a tour of local galleries, ending at WFAC for a guided visit of Lost & Found.
• Artist Panel
  Sunday, October 11, 3:00 p.m.
  Join the artists for a conversation about their work, creative practices, community, and experience.
• Additional workshops and public programs are currently in development and will be announced as details are confirmed.

The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday until 9:00 p.m. Admission is free and open to all; donations are encouraged.

ABOUT WATERFIRE ACCELERATE

WaterFire Accelerate is a year-long professional development program designed for artists 30 and under. The program creates space for creative and professional growth through peer learning, community building, and opportunities to exhibit their work; helping participants build sustainable creative careers.

Now in its fifth year, the 2026 cohort continues to reflect Providence’s artistic vitality, supporting artists who represent a diverse range of backgrounds, mediums, and perspectives.

waterfire.org/accelerate

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Aja Delgado

Aja Delgado’s practice is a vibrant exploration of nostalgia, emotional vulnerability, and play. Working across printmaking, painting, collage, textiles, clothing customization, and mixed media, she creates layered pieces that honor both vulnerability and joyful experimentation. Color and shapes are central to their work; acting as emotional channels, drawing connections between the playfulness and enjoyment of creating, along with the inner depth of feeling so deeply. Much of her creativity is fueled by emotion. She turns to art as a way to process feeling, to revisit formative moments, and to translate the unexplainable into something physical. Whether through the layering of prints, the gesture of a brushstroke, or the customization of a garment, she approaches making as both a healing act and a playful one. Delgado aims to create work that invites viewers into a space where vulnerability is not only visible but also celebrated.

ajaprint.com
Instagram: @ajaprint

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. She tries to make sense of these puzzle pieces to create one that is authentic to her. Her work embodies trying to put these fragments together to answer and explore her questions about her ancestry, culture and ideas of home and how these have impacted her personal identity and have formed her relationship to the Caribbean-Diaspora at large.

pamelafernandez.myportfolio.com
Instagram: @pamelaamfernandez

Leia Fifer

Liam Fifer, also known as Leia, is a multidisciplinary artist living in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, working in fibers, collage, and printmaking. Their attraction to synthesizing process-based mediums produces expressive artmaking, addressing disability, illness, and gender fluidity; personal symbolism emerges from their connection to rituals of the earth as a part of healing and escaping the limits of the human body with resilience and humor. Fifer is interested in creating work specific to queer and disabled audiences for celebration and connection. They hold an Associates in Fine Arts from the Community College of Rhode Island, and have exhibited work in galleries, community arts centers, and DIY spaces. Their first solo exhibition, No Bodies In Heaven, debuted in March 2026 in partnership with the Flanagan Art Gallery at the Community College of Rhode Island.

leiafifer.com
Instagram: @chernobylstray

Yasmine Hassan

Yasmine Hassan is an interdisciplinary artist and designer who was born in Brooklyn, NY, raised in Columbus, OH, and has been based in Providence since 2013. She comes from a working-class, “tri-cultural” household of African immigrants–her father is Sudanese and her mother is Sierra Leonean-born Lebanese. Trained in both mechanical engineering and industrial design, and with significant professional experience as a youth design/build educator, her work as an artist ranges from large-scale carpentry and fine woodworking to physical computing and digital illustration. Through these diverse media, she is interested in uncovering forgotten histories, empowering marginalized people to reshape their environments, and collaboratively creating “for us, by us” spaces where youth are able to thrive while still being themselves. She also draws thematic and visual inspiration from a fascination with music of all sorts, Black and brown pop culture history, animation and narrative fiction, D.I.Y. and counter-culture, and assemblage and readymade art. 

Yasmine has logged nearly as many hours working in the woodshop as she has spent thinking about her family in Sudan these past few years. She believes that Palestine will be free in our lifetime.

ysmnhssn.com
Instagram: @ysmnhssn

Amelia Rozear

Amelia Rozear (b. 2000, Branford, CT) is a visual artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2022. Interested in the divine nature of artmaking, she crafts narrative paintings that play with the great unknowns of the universe, inventing personal mythologies based on subconscious thought, memory, and compulsion. With a background in illustration, she is fascinated by the many ways visual language has shaped history, and often finds inspiration in medieval manuscripts, medical textbooks, and devotional iconography. As the painter of such scenes, she places herself in the role of an absurd prophet– one that delights in liminality, fate, and the endless rumination of what’s to come.

arozear.com
Instagram: @arozear

Rachel Turner

Rachel Turner is a photographer based in Providence, Rhode Island whose work explores the intimacy of everyday life. Rachel tries to slow things down, to notice what’s right in front of everyone and to bring a sense of presence to the world around her. Rachel works primarily in photography shooting with 35mm and 120mm films. Painting has recently become another way she translates what she sees, using color and line to express emotion and movement.

rachelgturner.com
Instagram: @rachelturner2

Go, Figure!

A special exhibition developed for the Gallery of the WaterFire Arts Center, curated by Judith Tolnick Champa

October 15-November 8, 2026

Go, Figure! brings together six contemporary artists—Gabrielle Barzaghi, Leslie Fry, Claudia Olds Goldie, Zhexing Huang, Jazzmen Lee-Johnson, and Entang Wiharso—who share a fascination with the human figure as a way of thinking through identity, memory, and unease. Working across pastel, stoneware, ceramic, mixed media, and layered silkscreen, each artist treats the body less as a subject to depict than as a question to investigate.

Lee-Johnson excavates the layered history of the African diaspora and its bearing on Black communities today; Wiharso’s figures move mythically between his homelands of Java and Rhode Island; Barzaghi conjures invented characters rooted in her family’s White Russian heritage, and Fry’s fragmented ceramic limbs and Olds Goldie’s fragile, crack-prone forms both explore how bodies hold up under pressure — natural, constructed, and otherwise. Huang’s seated figures round out the show with quiet studies of resistance and defeat.

Together, the six artists don’t offer a single conclusion about what it means to be embodied right now — they’d rather contemplate uncanny tensions and, as the curator puts it, provoke you to debate, wonder, ponder and ultimately to “go figure.”

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 15, 6:00–9:00 PM
Performance-Lecture: 8:00 PM — A Speculative Jurisdiction (Part I), a performance-lecture by Hyperion Yvaire lo Saga, appearing in the invented persona of “Prof. Omeros Quinn”

Go, Figure! is the first half of a two-part project: the same six artists return this fall with an entirely different body of work in The Body Politic: Defiant Figuration Today, on view at the Nancy Devine Gallery in Warren, RI, November 21, 2026 – January 3, 2027, also curated by Tolnick Champa.
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 21, 4:00–7:00 PM
Performance-Lecture: 6:00 PM — A Speculative Jurisdiction (Part II)

Artist Statements

Experience the colors, creativity, and traditions of Guatemala with the Guatemalan Center of New England.

Join us on November 1, from 12–6 PM at the WaterFire Arts Center for an afternoon celebrating Guatemalan culture.

Be inspired by our Giant Kite Installation, honoring Guatemala’s beloved Barriletes Gigantes tradition, and explore our Mercadito Artesanal, featuring handcrafted goods, unique gifts, cultural treasures and delicious food. 

Free admission and open to all. Bring your family and friends to shop, discover, and celebrate the richness of Guatemalan culture with us.

We look forward to welcoming you!  

Fine Furnishings Show, November 7-8, 2026
WaterFire Arts Center, 475 Valley St, Providence, RI

A three-day show offering American made, handcrafted furniture, accessories, home decor, and art for the home, office, cottage and cabin. The show also includes work from students in furniture making programs at the Rhode Island School of Design and the North Bennet Street School. A select group of craftsmen also offer jewelry, fiber arts and clothing. Open to artists & craftsmen to show and sell their work and to the public to attend and buy. Tickets are available at the door for $10 per person.

Hours:
Saturday, 11/7 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, 11/8 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Free Parking

The Fine Furnishings Show Management Winning Formula:

• The WaterFire Arts Center is a spectacular venue with amazing amenities including 500+ free parking spaces
• Our Show and Markets present amazingly talented artists & craftsmen offering thousands of handmade pieces
• In addition to the work offered at the show, many exhibitors are happy to do custom and commissioned work
• Food trucks on the premises, spotless restrooms, state-of-the-art HVAC system, and many windows
• No Sales Tax on purchases of handmade items at the show
• We proudly support sustainability, recycling, artist/craftsman-made, handmade, and small business

Planful Event Kits Presents: Intentional Celebration

The Intentional Celebration: Holiday Edition
December 5 & 6, 2026
VIP Early Access: 11:00 AM | Free General Admission: 12:00–5:00 PM

The WaterFire Arts Center welcomes Planful Event Kits for the inaugural Intentional Celebration: Holiday Edition: a two-day immersive experience designed to inspire how people gather, gift, and celebrate during the holiday season.

Part curated market, part hands-on workshop destination, The Intentional Celebration invites guests to slow down and engage with the holidays more intentionally. Explore a curated selection of unique gifts and host essentials, participate in interactive Experience Studios, and take part in ticketed workshops led by local experts, all beneath the soaring roof of the Arts Center’s 15,000-square-foot main hall.

Experience Studios throughout the event include a Holiday Tablescape Studio, Gift Wrapping Studio, Cocoa and Cocktail Chalet, Kids Craft Studio, and Seasonal Styling Installations designed for photos and inspiration. Ticketed workshops offer hands-on sessions in wreath making, charcuterie board styling, holiday baking and decorating, tablescape design, and seasonal DIY projects.

General admission is free and open to all. A limited number of VIP preview tickets are available for early access beginning at 11:00 AM, with exclusive perks included.

Providence is the first stop for what Planful Event Kits envisions as a national series: making the WaterFire Arts Center the launch venue for a new kind of holiday tradition.

For more information, VIP tickets, ticketed workshop reservations, and vendor information, click below:

For vendors:

December 12 and 13 – PVD Artisans Holiday Show

Join PVD Artisans Market for their 14th year of the Providence Artisans Holiday Show! There will be over 90 local artists displaying their handmade works for all your early Holiday shopping needs! Jewelry, paintings, ceramics, glass, clothing and accessories, mixed media and more! Coffee and Food trucks too!

Thursday, December 31st – Starts at Sunset
Supported by Providence Tourism Council

Starts At Sunset is a community gathering on the Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Pedestrian Bridge supported by the Providence Tourism Council (PTC). This unique activation invites artists and observers to experience a night of immersive placemaking set against the backdrop of a picturesque sunset. WaterFire volunteers will be illuminating the bridge with the glow of five braziers.