Alive in Meaning, 2024 Artist: Franklin Williams
Further Triennial 2027: Franklin Williams| Beauty of an Outlier
Exhibition Dates:
March 12, 2027-May 30, 2027
Opening Reception: Friday, March 12th 5:30-7:30pm
In Spring 2027, Petaluma Arts Center is excited to participate in Further Triennial—a celebration of Northern California’s creative and cultural life, bringing together more than 80 arts organizations across the Greater Bay Area. Our exhibition for Further Triennial, The Beauty of an Outlier, is a celebration of the singular artistic practice of Franklin Williams, a multimedia artist based in Petaluma. Williams has spent more than six decades cultivating an idiosyncratic and diaristic approach to artmaking. He has dedicated his life to what he refers to as “beauty, mystery and myth” captured into visual form and defined by deep devotion, invention, and love. Combining figurative and abstraction in a single work, Williams’ deeply personal and often autobiographical work is rich with material and conceptual experimentation.
Participating in Further Triennial is aligned with the Arts Center’s commitment to serve as a vital hub for Petaluma, an inclusive community arts center that cultivates curiosity and open minds. We thank Franklin Williams and Parker Gallery in Los Angeles for their ongoing support.
More to come including events, talks, and workshops as part of this special exhibition.
Franklin Williams’ Bio:
Williams' work defies easy classification, eluding the confines of the Funk, Nut, Visionary, and Pattern & Decoration movements that emerged in the 1960s. His intricately constructed paintings, sculptures, and works on paper combine a range of techniques—often rooted in household craft traditions and ornamentation – that stitch yarn and crochet thread directly onto the surface. Through texture, color, and the repetition of knots, marks and dots, Williams has developed a singular visual language that animates his surfaces. His practice engages elemental themes of desire and fantasy, life and death, and the delicate boundary between the real and the imagined. Combining figurative and abstraction in a single work, this deeply personal and often autobiographical work is rich with material and conceptual experimentation.
