OPEN CENTER: Artists & Community
April 9 - May 9, 2026
Artists-in-residence (AIR): Jillian Crochet, Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh, Natalie Palms, and Sabina Shanti Kariat
In April, BAC will launch the Open Center, expanding how we use our space beyond traditional gallery exhibitions. The Open Center will serve as a hub where ideas, artists, and community intersect, offering opportunities for interdisciplinary, intercultural, and inter-philosophical dialogue, reflection, and activation.
Throughout the month, the gallery will transform into a communal workspace for artists and community gatherings. BAC artists working across a variety of media are invited to explore the multifaceted relationships between art, nature, culture, and site. They will be encouraged to expand their creative practices by using BAC’s spaces and resources and drawing inspiration from the natural environment. The gallery will also serve as a laboratory for developing new forms of engagement and activation. Artists will have opportunities to share their creative work and processes through public programs such as artist talks or workshops.
We will also invite community partners to use the space and connect, bringing together diverse audiences for thoughtful, relevant activities. We envision a place for the community to gather, with art at the center as a catalyst for social change, healing, and imagination during uncertain times. With spring comes hope and renewal, and a time to gather, create, share, listen, and learn. These gatherings will draw on artists' creativity and networks to explore new possibilities for community engagement within an institutional setting, while amplifying the work and voices of marginalized and vulnerable communities.
As BAC approaches its 60th anniversary in 2027, we are reflecting on our roles as a contemporary art gallery, a community gathering place, and a resource for emerging Bay Area artists. We recognize a significant opportunity to work more expansively with artists and to better support their visions, processes, and projects in community settings.
ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
Jillian Crochet
Jillian Crochet is a disabled interdisciplinary artist based in the Bay Area working in interactive sculpture, video, and performance to engage embodied perception and challenge inaccessibility. Her work confronts preconceived expectations for how we interact with the world - revealing the inherent ableism of our built environment and social structures. She asks: What is natural/unnatural? What bodies are included/excluded -- important? This work seeks to open up what could be possible in a more inclusive world.
Jillian is a 2026 Eureka Fellow, Fleishhacker Foundation, and a 2025 Center for Craft Teaching Artist Cohort Award recipient. She was a 2020-21 Artist in Residence at Art Beyond Sight and Graduate Fellow at Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2021, she was awarded an Emerging Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally, at YBCA’s Bay Area Now Triennial in San Francisco, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. She has work published in RACAR in Canada, Feral Fabric, and The Journal of Arts and Communities in the UK. She earned her BFA from the University of Alabama in 2007 and an MFA in Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in 2020. Website: https://jilliancrochet.com/
Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh
Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh is an Oakland-based visual and teaching artist. Her mixed media artwork is inspired by memory, family stories, her cultural Afro-Caribbean heritage in the Diaspora, and the natural world, as well as the shifting urban landscape. Dawline-Jane pulls images from self-constructed archives and combines printmaking, painting, and drawing to tell stories of the world as she experiences it. While at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, she exhibited her work in spaces across the US and internationally. Her illustrations have been featured in The LA Times, Science Friday, ProPublica, and Teen Vogue. Website: https://www.dawlinejaneart.com/
Natalie Palms
Natalie Palms (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, working primarily in textiles. She studied Art and Social Behavioral Studies in her hometown of Los Angeles before moving to Oakland. She received her BFA in Individualized Studies at California College of the Arts in 2015. Upon graduating, she began teaching K-8th art in numerous schools throughout the Bay Area, including her alma mater, California College of the Arts, and Kala Art Institute. As a multiracial woman, creating a classroom environment focused on social-emotional learning, anti-racism, and sharing culturally diverse artists is important to her. She has her own business, Natalie Rose Textiles, creating accessories she hand-dyes using natural pigments and prints, while curating and leading textile-focused workshops for children and adults throughout the Bay Area, to share knowledge, build community, and inspire. Natalie currently teaches at Kala’s After School Studio program. Website: https://www.nataliepalms.com/
Sabina Shanti Kariat
Sabina Shanti Kariat is an SF-based Indian-American animator, muralist, and cultural worker. Sabina creates animations for documentary films about diasporic narratives and historical activist movements that remain relevant today. She has worked as a teaching artist throughout San Francisco and Oakland and led co-creation workshops in India, as a Brown University Social Innovation Fellow, and in Turkey as a Fulbright Independent Research Fellow. Her work explores placemaking, collective memory, and the radical visibility offered by nonfiction storytelling. She manages public arts programs at ARTogether, an organization that creates arts-based support systems for immigrant and refugee communities. Website: https://www.sabinakariatart.com/