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Lydia Watson

@lydiawatson.art

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CA Bay Area
mixed media artist
visual and performing arts educator
UC Berkeley BA ‘25

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🐠👀 #sketchbooktour by @lydiawatson.art

This marks my fourth summer of teaching at San José Museum of Art where campers aged 6-14 come to learn new art-making techniques, experiment with materials and processes, meet new friends, and gain exposure to contemporary artworks in our museum. I am always inspired by my students’ resilience: through projects that challenge them conceptually or technically, through interpersonal communications with peers or class conversations where different perspectives are shared and empathy is required, and, most of all, through the era that we currently exist in—a terrifying, unjust, and truly enraging era of violence, targeted hate, fascism, genocide, xenophobia, families and neighborhoods being torn apart, homophobia, transphobia, widespread misogyny, the list goes on. What constantly surprises me is how attuned these kids are to the issues in our world and how willing they are to initiate and participate in conversations about the hard things they see and learn every day. They are visionaries, they are embodied, they are authentically and innately compassionate, and they question everything. There is so much more I can say, but for now: Listen to children. Learn from children. Be more like children. Access and honor your inner child.

Feeling lucky to have met many awesome young creatives this summer and to have reunited with the fabulous and familiar students who I met during previous summers! I think I learn just as much from them (if not, more!) as they learn from me. 💌🎨⭐️ by @lydiawatson.art

Today I finally took the time to put stud backings on my favorite pairs of clip-on earrings that I inherited from my Mimi when her home sold a few years ago. I feel so special to be able to wear things that belonged to her, especially since her passing earlier this year. ♥️ by @lydiawatson.art

This semester I invested more time to a collection of work I call “To Sell A Home”. Thank you to @ssyjuco and Art + Archive for granting me the space, time, and critical feedback to return to this content and further develop this body of work, this time with new methods and many learnings along the way.

To Sell A Home expands upon an ongoing series of works dedicated to processing the sale of my grandparents’ home of 56 years. A destination for family reunions, impromptu social gatherings, holiday traditions, shared drinks, desserts, and laughs, neighborhood barbecues, grandkid sleepovers and treasure hunts, loud game nights, extended stays for international traveling relatives
and friends, the house on Omar Street was a magnet for people, stories, and occassions both simple and grand. I juxtapose photographs of the house we said goodbye to in August 2022—its walls painted stark white, blue and white linoleum floors replaced with grey laminate, vintage light fixtures supplanted by basic industrial ones, and no evidence of life—with photos of the home when it was full of us. The sitting area invites viewers to share space
with and handle some of the few objects that I kept from the home after its sale. Grappling with grief and gratitude, the marvels and limitations of remembrance, and what defines “home” from “house”, I explore human attachments to place, stuﬀ, and the memories made in proximity to it. by @lydiawatson.art

Research, thought experiments, processes, inspirations, and other tidbits from this semester including but not limited to…

🏡 Expanding on “To Sell A Home”: compiling and collaging photographs from different eras inside of my grandparents’ Fremont home of 56 years before its sale in summer of 2022

🚪Doors doors doors as portals, as entrances, as exits, as apertures and openings, as possibilities, as sites of hellos and goodbyes, as pretty decorative things, etc.

🐴 HORSE: the collaborative ASCP project initiated, spearheaded, and executed by @kelceq , @autumnscoinpurse , and @isopropyl_7 !! I was happy to add a few embellishments to this giant gentle creature!

🖨️ Printing and scanning, warping, altering, misshaping, destroying, reclaiming, reimagining photographs

📖 A trip to the Bancroft Library where I learned that Smurfette was the President and also what the “Grand Tour of Europe” in 1848 looked like through the sketches of a young woman artist

🖍️ Reuniting with my childhood drawings in Mimi’s album of “artwork treasures”. If I reuse them am I stealing from/ripping off myself?? How do I recreate and reimagine them? What can I learn from them, from myself? by @lydiawatson.art

process & progress - Divas, Idols, and Divine Sages, 2025 by @lydiawatson.art

This marks the final week of UNDERFED/OVERGROWN at UC Berkeley’s Worth Ryder Art Gallery. Stop by to view my work alongside that of my 8 talented friends and fellow artists in Art Practice’s Advanced Studio and Critique Program. The show is packed with meaningful and spectacularly crafted work that spans across a variety of media including sculpture, ceramics, installation, video, printmaking, drawing, painting, collage, textiles and fiber arts. The show closes on Saturday April 19! 🎀

WRAG hours this week:
- Wed 1-7pm
- Thurs & Fri 12-5pm
- Sat (Cal Day) 11am-3pm
📍116 Anthropology & Art Practice Building, first floor
UC Berkeley Campus by @lydiawatson.art

a peek into my work featured in Underfed/Overgrown at Worth Ryder Art Gallery 🛼🪁🎀🏠🧩🛝🚀🧃⭐️ I am so thrilled to be sharing this exhibition with 8 of my talented friends in the Advanced Studio and Critique Program who all have spectacular work being shown. The show is up for two and a half weeks from April 2-19—you don’t want to miss it!

Come to the Opening Reception on Wednesday April 2 from 4-6pm! 🥂 by @lydiawatson.art

drawings of household objects featured on unmade, 2024

#art #artist #smallartist #artschool #artstudent #artwork #drawing #pasteldrawing by @lydiawatson.art

Thrilling news!!! I have a website! View my work and learn more about my practice at www.lydiawatson.art

Link in bio ♥️💻 by @lydiawatson.art

Details of unmade, 2024 by @lydiawatson.art

unmade, 2024
paper, gouache, pastel, ink, acrylic, thread, childhood bed frame
75”w x 38”d x 30.5”h

Featured in Worth Ryder Art Gallery’s exhibition Fata Morgana, I am thrilled to share my senior thesis project, unmade: a hand-made paper quilt and pillow resting on my childhood bed frame. This project is both a continuation of HomeBody, a series that I began in spring 2024 with three mixed media drawings, and something entirely new for me; I didn’t think my work made sense for sculpture and installation until very recently, and this project proved not only that making in three dimensions was possible for my practice, but it was a powerful and natural expansion of my ideas, concepts, and skills.

As I planned and made this piece, I was thinking about my relationship to home, my mom and her quilting hobby, matrilineal inheritance, gender roles in the domestic sphere, rest and restlessness, comfort and discomfort in the body and home, my own struggles with sleep, and the weight of familial expectations on daughters. I wanted the piece to entice viewers with the illusion of comfort, but when looked at closer, the bed lacks a mattress, its dressings are thick tough paper, and it would all crumble and fall through with the weight of a body. I consider how the body inherits trauma and knows ancestral pain, how that impacts rest, especially for women, as well as how returning to the home and the reinforcement of the family system can amplify the pain of old wounds even when surrounded by care.

A special thank you to all those who helped me with this project, through ideating and decision-making, sourcing materials, keeping me company in the studio during late nights, transporting, installing, critiquing, photographing, and deinstalling.

More documentation to come! 🛏️ by @lydiawatson.art