If you’ve ever visited Buckman neighborhood gallery shop Nationale, you’ve likely seen Gabi Villaseñor’s work before. The Portland-based artist and Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) graduate is co-owner of Mixed Needs, a ceramics project whose eclectic housewares have frequently appeared for sale there. Currently on display through November 21, Villaseñor’s solo show We Found a Freshwater Spring While You Were Sleeping expands on her multimedia sensibility, presenting ceramics adorned with painterly glaze and paintings embellished with sculptural elements.
The show draws inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, a writing craft essay which argues that humanity’s first invention wasn’t a weapon, but a bag—a tool meant to gather and hold. Villaseñor translates this idea with paintings and ceramics that accumulate and exchange elements. Glazed stoneware vases and bowls sport unexpected, vine-like appendages, while lush paintings swarm with natural motifs and touches of surrealism. Across the show, artworks expand and collect things; paintings hold objects, and sculptures stretch beyond their conventional boundaries. The effect feels like a gentle, joyful meditation on gathering as an artistic practice.
Villaseñor’s “Giving Him the Moon” offers an especially compelling example of the show’s ideas. Two figures appear in the oil, acrylic, and pastel painting—one, a crouching child, is absorbed by an insect, while the other appears to gather and hold the world around them. This central figure twists in a wide-armed stance. A shell and a butterfly tumble from one of their palms; a hand mirror balances in the other. The figure’s round, moon-like face is bordered by an abstract design resembling a dinner plate. The central figure seems to be responsible for the whole environment, while the child is free to concentrate on one tiny thing.
But the most curious elements of “Giving Him the Moon” exist outside the frame. Resting on top of the painting, two small ceramic sculptures—one a green sphere, the other evoking abstract flora—extend Villaseñor’s logic of noticing and gathering. “Giving Him the Moon” becomes a carrier for these curiosities, its frame transformed into a narrow surface for holding. One could imagine either the painting’s central figure or the child having gathered the objects, maybe adding them to a growing collection of tiny, special things worthy of further attention.
The show’s title, We Found a Freshwater Spring While You Were Sleeping, suggests a discovery made amid life’s everyday rhythms. It also speaks to the tension present in “Giving Him the Moon.” While the child looks intently at the insect, the older figure gathers and notices their surroundings. There is tenderness in this dynamic and labor. Deeper messages emerge—attention is a form of artistic care, and creativity can be found in the work required to beautify the world.
The parental figure in “Giving Him the Moon” may be offering the child something grand, like a celestial body. But the painting’s small sculptures serve as a reminder that far less conspicuous gestures of creativity are also worth holding onto.
Gabi Villaseñor’s We Found a Freshwater Spring While You Were Sleeping is on view at Nationale, 15 SE 22nd, Mon and Thurs-Sat 12-6 pm, most Sun 12-5 pm, through November 21, FREE, hours and more info at nationale.us.
