“Finding the Words,” the spring 2024 art exhibition at Jamestown Community College, begins with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Feb. 8 in the Weeks Gallery located on the college’s Jamestown Campus.

The group exhibition is curated by JCC’s visiting curator, Erika Diamond, who is also associate director of Chautauqua Visual Arts Galleries at Chautauqua Institution. Her choices explore the connections between words, coping, memory, and loss through works that use text in various media and languages. Diamond explained the process of curation is one that is continually evolving over the course of a lifetime.

“At this point I’m drawing from artists whose works I’ve seen many years ago,” Diamond said. “Usually I have something brewing in my mind, and there’s a thread I want to pull from another show I’ve just finished but I’m not done with the idea.”

The seven artists chosen for this exhibition use text in the form of lists, poetry, prose, and protest in an attempt to heal and connect.

Indira Allegra gives viewers the tools to put shared experiences into words through their interactive website, the Grammar of Grief Handbook. Valaria Tatera uses cascading ribbon installations, minimal color, and text to call attention to unanswered violence against indigenous women and the earth. Raheleh Filsoofi questions the idea of home and homeland through the dissonant stories of migrant women. Mercedes Jelinek’s mixed media photography installation immerses the viewer in the feeling of alienation that occurs when words get lost in translation as a foreigner.

Marisa Finos gives ceramic form to lost-then-found grocery lists, while SaraBeth Post Eskuche’s cast glass word jumbles evoke childlike innocence steeped in longing. Aram Han Sifuentes uses community-based workshops to help others use their words and the clothes on their backs to create urgent, subversive, and portable calls to justice.

“It’s a common experience to pick up a lost grocery list and wonder what that person is like,” Diamond shared. “Why did they only want a plant and Greek yogurt? I’ve been thinking about this aspect of Marisa Finos’ work for a long time and then saw some of SaraBeth’s work and noticed they’re coming from very different places, and yet they’re both expressing the need for finding the right words. That stayed with me.”

Diamond is a textile-focused artist, curator, and educator. She holds degrees from Rhode Island School of Design and Virginia Commonwealth University. She has exhibited nationally and abroad in such venues as Contemporary Craft, Dinner Gallery, Form and Concept Gallery, and Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work is included in the collections of San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and Ally Bank. Her residencies and grants include the McColl Center, Platte Forum, and UNCA STEAM Studio.

Colin Shaffer, managing director of Galleries for JCC, said he is thrilled to have Diamond returning as curator to the gallery. Her curatorial debut at JCC, “Reiterations in Glass,” showcased Diamond’s ability to find threads of commonality in vastly different artistic styles. Shaffer anticipates her uncanny eye will soon create more intrigue for the JCC community.

“Erika is exploring how hard it can be to communicate our deepest emotions in the most difficult or sublime of moments,” Shaffer said. “These experiences are often rooted in or worn by the body, and they need catharsis. The artists and pieces Erika selected use text in the form of lists, poetry, prose, and protest in an attempt to heal, connect and… find the words.”

The exhibition is free and open to the public and will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays from Feb. 8 through March 21. The gallery is closed for all college holidays and weather events that close campus.

For more information, visit sunyjcc.edu/galleries.