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Wednesday 11am - 6pm Thursday 11am - 6pm Friday 11am - 6pm Saturday 12pm - 4pm

Overlap, 112 Van Zandt Avenue, Newport, RI (2026)

01/25/2026

What a wonderful Opening Reception last night. Thank you so much to everyone who joined us to celebrate the first shows of the year (despite the bitter cold!)
We are especially grateful to our artists .jai and for their incredible hard work and beautiful exhibitions.

Thank you for these opening reception photos - they embody the warmth and creativity of our community last night!

Our exhibitions “Slip” and “The Wall Wanted to Play Too: The Architecture of Tenderness” are on view until March 7th. Join us on February 21 for our Artist Talks, and a closing event on March 8th with readings by poet and essayist Emily Pittinos and poet and visual artist Kylie Gellatly. These readings are curated by Olivia Baldwin. Barbara Owen will also be releasing her limited edition silkscreen, “Underlap and Overlap” developed alongside the two- and three-dimensional works shown in this exhibition.

For the full exhibition, artist bios, and event descriptions visit our website! (link in bio)

01/23/2026

Please join us this Saturday 2-4pm as we kick off our 4th season and celebrate the opening of two new exhibitions!

OVERLAP is pleased to present two concurrent exhibitions that explore intermediary spaces. “The Wall Wanted to Play Too: The Architecture of Tenderness” is a solo exhibition of new works by Boston-area artist Jai Hart, while “Slip” features a selection of works by Rhode Island-based artists Olivia Baldwin and Barbara Owen. Both shows demonstrate affinities for creating relationships between color, shape, and form, embodied through innovative approaches to materiality, depth, and arrangement.

Visit our website (link in bio) to read all about these two shows and the artists exhibiting!

jai

01/08/2026

Opening January 24th: “The Wall Wanted to Play Too:
The Architecture of Tenderness” a solo exhibition of new works by Boston-area artist Jai Hart.jai

(Image) “loves me, loves me not, loves me…”, 2025

January 24 - March 7
Opening Reception: Sat. January 24, 3-5pm
Artists’ Talk: Sat. February 21, 3pm
Closing Event: Sun. March 8, 1:30-3:30pm

Jai Hart’s paintings simultaneously define and defy borders. Her smartly playful works range from precious and pillowy abstract landscapes to larger-than-life hybrids that mix stretched canvases with soft sculptures. Bands of stuffed and painted material partially frame the work, and then take detours. These soft conduits depart from traditional geometry to capture adjoining sections of the wall, floor, and ceiling as integral elements of her compositions. Hart paints layers with vibrant tints of colors in varying opacities. She overlaps and combines fields of broad gestural strokes, with controlled, mesh-like straight lines, and murmurations of dots that weave in, out and between. Many of her works are energetic and dazzling, but she also offers counterpoints with restrained pallets and dreamy and atmospheric areas. “The Wall Wanted to Play Too: the Architecture of Tenderness”, Hart’s first solo show in Rhode Island, introduces a distinct point of view to the ever-growing, always-curious community at Overlap.

01/08/2026

Opening January 24th: “Slip” features a selection of works by Rhode Island-based artists Olivia Baldwin and Barbara Owen.

(L) “Thread Stage” 2025

(R) “Between Structure and Glow” 2025

January 24 - March 7
Opening Reception: Sat. January 24, 3-5pm
Artists’ Talk: Sat. February 21, 3pm
Closing Event: Sun. March 8, 1:30-3:30pm

Baldwin and Owen weave color, shape, and line to create work that slips between painting and sculpture. Each artist has a history of rigorous exploration into non-objective formal relationships that is demonstrated in their ability to intuitively compose even scraps of material into pieces that smartly explore space, create tension and find harmony.

Olivia Baldwin’s recent work uses irregularly shaped remnants of dyed leather as raw material. She interweaves spectrums of these remnants, pulling strips taut as she attaches them to stretcher bars with upholstery tacks. The narrowing and curving of the pieces warp the grid and pull colors through in unexpected ways. In other works, presented in the round, the leather is densely entwined around and through supporting structures of sawhorses and modified box springs. In some areas the pieces are allowed to languidly hang and twist - revealing tonal and textural shifts between the front and back side of the skins.

Barbara Owen also offers works that are enmeshed but, in contrast to Baldwin’s raw edges, Owen’s work often features crisp lines, and bold, flat shapes. She slices collage elements from hand-painted paper to flesh out a visual vocabulary that includes perpendicular bands of color, grids, elongated oval-shaped contours, and irregular solid masses. Arranged on ambiently painted surfaces, the shapes intertwine and overlap, sometimes appearing to defy gravity as they float in and out and near each other. In other instances, Owens recreates these shapes as objects and arranges them on the wall, or on pedestals, creating installations and groupings that mirror these investigations into repetition and space.

Through their divergent approaches to shared interests, Baldwin and Owen’s works enjoy an elevated conversation about process, abstraction, and perception.

12/20/2025

Currently on view: “Six of The First; Yallah, Morandah, Mowoorie, Simboh, Burrah, Yearie” digitally printed textile, by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak. The original metal sculpture is permanently installed outside the in downtown Newport. (Last image)

Jean-Marc Superville Sovak is a multidisciplinary artist whose work critically fabulates around silent histories absent from dominant historical narratives.

“…As an immigrant and a person of mixed race who is always sensitive to the evidence of cultural hybridization that is the result of colonization and slavery, I have been increasingly focused on a reparative form of art by developing concepts for my work that are often participatory, interdisciplinary and site-specific and/or site-responsive.

Six of the First is a monument to some of the earliest recorded Africans to have been brought to the shores of Newport County aboard the slave ship “Jolly Bachelor” as recorded by the Royal Admiralty Court in 1743*. The overall composition is borrowed from an 18th century engraving depicting the flight of Mary of Modena, the illegitimate wife of King James II, eponym of Jamestown. The faces of the figures from the original engraving are replaced with stylized versions of masks traditionally worn by the matriarchs of the Sande Society, an intertribal fellowship of women from Sierra Leone where the six women are thought to have originated. Six of the First is a combination of sculpture and storytelling that seeks to give voice to those who have often remained unheard in a way that they themselves might have recognized…”

This is the last day of our show Forging Freedom: Atlantic Journeys, but you can visit this permanently installed artwork year round outside the Newport Historical Society and visit our website and social media for artwork info and images of the exhibition as well as our live streamed events!

12/18/2025

Currently on view until Dec 20th:
American Bloodwork #2, 2025, acrylic, watercolor, paper collage and mixed media on canvas by Jordan Seaberry.

Jordan Seaberry is a Providence based painter, organizer, legislative advocate and educator and serves as Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and is a professor at Rhode Island School of Design.

“My practice combines painting and policy change in equal measure.

My paintings emerge from collage, mixed-media, sampling, and drawing. My current political work includes a years-long performance of the state (the US Department of Arts and Culture), legislative organizing, and political leadership with local justice organizations.

These threads come alive with one animating fact: if matter cannot be destroyed, then the water, soil, air that is with us now, is the water, soil, air that has always been here. The embers that swallowed my grandfather’s Mississippi home are still here, under our feet. Each bead of sweat he dropped running through the woods soaked into the dirt, the smoke’s carbon monoxide fed the pines that may have been milled into my paintings’ stretcher bars. But if every particle of that fire is still here, so is every drop of water that extinguished it. Every drop of water needed for the fires of the future is already here, moving through me, through you, through a cloud and a sunflower. The tools we’ll need for tomorrow’s fires are already here—- always have been...”

This show is in collaboration with the and is curated by Director at the Center for Black History in Newport.

For the full list of works and artists visit our website! We have live streamed all our events for this show which can be found here on our social media.

12/16/2025

Currently on view: “Ocean Paths” 2025, acrylic on canvas, by Silvermoon Mars LaRose (Narragansett)

Silvermoon Mars LaRose, Narragansett, is the current Assistant Director of the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island. Having grown up immersed in traditional arts, her art is inspired by the traditional stories she grew up hearing, the basket stamping designs of Southern New England tribal communities, and traditions around hair. Hair is powerful and can be a strong connector to cultural roots, as long-held traditions for the maintenance, styling, and adornment of hair are passed down generationally. She seeks to honor the culture bearers who came before her by weaving these traditions into her art.

“For millennia, Native peoples have crossed the ocean on pathways that brought them from their homelands to their relatives in other places. These pathways connected us. Colonization sought to sever these sacred connections, tainting these very routes by using them to steal and disperse generations of our loved ones. Centuries later, these pathways connect us once again, as reconnection gatherings have been binding us together across healing waters. The central design in this painting is a reimagining of a traditional basket stamp design, the curvilinear form of the waves replicating our pathway patterns. It is a homage to those who survived conquest, continually dreaming and creating, and ensuring our ability to thrive.”

This exhibition, “ Forging Freedom: Atlantic Journeys” is in collaboration with and will be on view until this Saturday, Dec 20th.

All events have been live-streamed and can be found on our Social media!

12/13/2025

Currently on view: “When I Remembered” 2016,
acrylic paint, acetate, paper, and cheesecloth, on paper by Bob Dilworth.

Bob Dilworth is an internationally exhibiting painter whose work explores his experience and stories cross- migrating between Rhode Island and Virginia.

“My paintings explore questions that shift from personal to collective memories of time and place. My practice builds on creating strong communities in both VA and RI. Being from the South influences many decisions I make in my art, but living in Rhode Island encourages and pushes my work forward. I share time and space, stories and concerns with people from both places. As I cross-migrate from one location to other, I contemplate the role distance plays. Realizing that I can’t separate myself from where I come, I search for connections between my southern roots and my adopted home in RI…”

Our exhibition “Forging Freedom: Atlantic Journeys” is on view until December 20th in collaboration with

Dilworth has generously donated this piece to the Center for Black History, which opens Juneteenth, 2026!

12/12/2025

Currently on view: Robin S. Spears Jr.
“Beeing” 2025, beehive, deerskin, cedar, laurel, antler, turkey feathers

(Last image)
Stolen Identity 2025
deerskin, antler, wampum, cordage, acorn beads, lobster claw, quartz stone, birchbark, coyote tooth

Robin S. Spears, Jr., Narragansett Indian Tribe, is an award winning traditional artist utilizing items from the natural world to express his culture and identity.

“I work with wood, stone, bone, antler, shells, leather, feathers, and other natural materials to create art that reflects both traditional and ecological knowledge. I gather these elements with care and transform them into useful and artistic items-such as baskets, knives, and adornments-each piece serving as both a practical object and a cultural expression. In my process, I think about the daily lives of my ancestors and reimagine their traditions through a blend of natural and contemporary materials...
...The works I have chosen for this body of art reflect on the freedom once experienced by an Indigenous boy within his own community, contrasted with the unfreedom he endured later in life. They also embody the reclamation of freedom-the freedom of the mind and spirit that he held onto, even when his physical body was not free.

As someone who served in the U.S. Armed Forces, 1 carry the weight of representing a country that speaks of freedom and justice. Yet, as an Indigenous person, I also understand that those promises have not always been extended equally to my people. My art lives in this space of duality-honoring my culture, remembering resilience, and asserting the ongoing presence and freedom of Indigenous identity.”

This show is on view until December 20th and is shown in collaboration with

12/12/2025

Currently on view: Robin S. Spears Jr.
“Beeing” 2025, beehive, deerskin, cedar, laurel, antler, turkey feathers

(Last image)
Stolen Identity 2025
deerskin, antler, wampum, cordage, acorn beads,
lobster claw, quartz stone, birchbark, coyote tooth

Robin S. Spears, Jr., Narragansett Indian Tribe, is an award winning traditional artist utilizing items from the natural world to express his culture and identity.

“I work with wood, stone, bone, antler, shells, leather, feathers, and other natural materials to create art that reflects both traditional and ecological knowledge. I gather these elements with care and transform them into useful and artistic items—such as baskets, knives, and adornments—each piece serving as both a practical object and a cultural expression. In my process, I think about the daily lives of my ancestors and reimagine their traditions through a blend of natural and contemporary materials...

….The works I have chosen for this body of art reflect on the freedom once experienced by an Indigenous boy within his own community, contrasted with the unfreedom he endured later in life. They also embody the reclamation of freedom—the freedom of the mind and spirit that he held onto, even when his physical body was not free.

As someone who served in the U.S. Armed Forces, I carry the weight of representing a country that speaks of freedom and justice. Yet, as an Indigenous person, I also understand that those promises have not always been extended equally to my people. My art lives in this space of duality—honoring my culture, remembering resilience, and asserting the ongoing presence and freedom of Indigenous identity.“

This show is on view until December 20th and is in collaboration with

12/11/2025

Thank you so much to all who came out last night for our artist talk by who shared her materials, process, and the stories and archives behind her work.

Included in our current show is “Flee Plantation” 2021, linocut print with oil based ink on stonehenge paper.
(Detail shown in last image)

“Flee Plantation is part of my series of work re{volt)ing, re-imagining John Stedman’s Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Suriname
(1796) from the perspective of the enslaved, rather than that of John Stedman, a British-Dutch soldier, observing and perpetuating the experiences of the enslaved. I created relief prints redressing Stedman’s text and printed engravings to represent a sense of agency of the maroons’ and those enslaved. Engaging in a very physical process of carving, or digging the image out of wood and linoleum, which is akin to the very raw process of digging through these histories, I attempt to visualize the viewpoint of the enslaved.
Upon Stedman’s arrival in Suriname his host, a plantation owner, gets word that 25 enslaved people on a plantation nearby set it ablaze and journey onward to meet the Maroons. This is my visualization of those 25 people forging their own freedom.”

This event and exhibition is in collaboration with and will be on view until December 20th. All our talks/events for this show have been live streamed and can be found on our social media!

Overlap

01/25/2026

01/23/2026

01/08/2026

01/08/2026

12/20/2025

12/18/2025

12/16/2025

12/13/2025

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12/12/2025

12/11/2025

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Wednesday	11am - 6pm
Thursday	11am - 6pm
Friday	11am - 6pm
Saturday	12pm - 4pm