OPEN
Launched by interdisciplinary artist James Williams III, OPEN is an evolving entity dedicated to developing solutions that contribute to humanity through objects, products, and services. Whether through art-making, design, or creative strategy, OPEN functions as a platform where Williams can conceptualize and actualize under a code of principles centering wellness, community, and sustainability.
by James Williams III
“..Whole, within.”
ABOUT
James Williams III (b. 1992, Virginia) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Operating at the intersection of art and design, his work centers on addressing deep-seated issues related to the human experience in ways that are both personal and collective. His work spans painting, performance, decorative arts, and spatial design with an emphasis on process and materiality. Williams has exhibited work at institutions and galleries including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Atlanta Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and 1708 Gallery in Richmond. In addition to solo and group exhibitions, he has led participatory art projects and has advocated for the cultural value in sustainability at design festivals across the United States. Williams has completed a design residency with Lichen NYC (2022) and has presented work at ICFF and WantedDesign in New York (2023 & 2025). During the course of his practice, his work has been featured in publications including Architectural Digest, GQ, and POPEYE Magazine. Williams is currently enrolled at the Savannah College of Art and Design to pursue his B.F.A. in Industrial Design with a minor in Service Design.
STATEMENT
My practice operates as a natural extension of my life practice, where process functions as a way of thinking through how we traverse emotion, space, and time alike. My work engages making as a meditative mode to contemplate the tension between navigating the internal and external structures that shape us. I am drawn to cosmic metaphors of travel and navigation not as spectacle, but as frameworks to draw parallels between the cosmos and the emotion-scape. I employ abstraction strategically, not to simplify the human experience, but to address complex social, material, and historical conditions without reliance on representation.
I approach painting, performance, and installation as a practice of embodiment in which the body and tool move as one. Much of my mark-making is performed blindly, allowing the work to pass through me, positioning my body as a vessel and instrument simultaneously. This approach is deeply spiritual and central to the practice of liberating the Black body and reconstructing narratives around its historical bounding and constriction. Layered oil and acrylic pigments, charged materials, and remnants of previous works, function as terrain and testimony, recording accumulation, erosion, ancestral information, and time. I choose to embrace processes beyond my control, allowing material behavior to shape the work while reflecting the tumultuous yet poetic cadence of lived experience. Rather than offering conclusions, my work creates conditions for exploration, liberation, and the quiet signals that emerge when familiar structures fade.