Artist Liv Hebert Watkins celebrates the act of gathering in Terrain’s ‘The Table is Set’

Growing up, artist Liv Hebert Watkins saw the dinner table as a holy space, a place of community. Her parents, both artists, were inclusive and inviting, so there were often people Hebert Watkins didn’t know seated around the table, transforming a simple piece of furniture into a symbol of openness and sharing.

“It was definitely imprinted on me from a young age that this was, in most cases, a really safe place to gather and a beautiful place,” she said.

As she got older, the table became a place to have hard conversations, celebrate good news and take a load off in the afternoon. It leveled the playing field, bringing a casual beauty, or a beautiful casualness, to the act of eating and spending time with someone.

For her show, “The Table is Set,” on view at the Terrain Gallery through May 30, Hebert Watkins drew from experiences gained from childhood and while studying abroad in Costa Rica to celebrate all that happens at the dinner table.

In the center of the gallery is a table featuring five place settings, complete with whimsical silverware that Hebert Watkins, who is also a jewelrymaker, crafted herself. No two plates or mugs are the same.

Many of the plates have a yellow brick road-like winding path, only here it’s in black and white, that guide the viewer’s eyes to a singular image. On one plate, that image is a table, on another, it’s a chair, on yet another, it’s a small home.

Smaller plates, also black and white, feature images of a sofa, a person with two chairs in what look to be thought bubbles on either side of their head, and the bust of a woman positioned in front of a loaf of bread, already split in half and ready to share.

The table also features a traditional Costa Rican coffee pot called a vandola that Hebert Watkins used while studying abroad for three months in college. It was during this trip that the idea for “The Table is Set” began to take shape.

While in Costa Rica she felt welcome and safe but also lonely and depressed. She knows those feelings are not unique to her and found that knowledge to be a unifying experience.

“The Table is Set” features a series of portraits of several women, including her host mother in Costa Rica and Ms. Claire, who acted as an artistic mentor for Hebert Watkins.

There is also a ceramic table affixed to a gallery wall surrounded by large chair stickers, two lamps with multimedia elements and two mobile-like displays of larger-than-life carrots, both called “Las Zanahorias (The Carrots).”

The exhibition features three paintings of tables of different shapes and sizes, all seemingly inviting the viewer to pull up a chair and enjoy the snacks, coffee, games and books on each table.

“It helps you to relate to others, maybe when you weren’t even expecting it,” Hebert Watkins said of gathering at a table. “That’s a good thing for us right now in this day and age to have moments where we’re forced to relate to people, even if we didn’t see that coming.”

Hebert Watkins said her artistic abilities were innate and nurtured. She was surrounded by creativity growing up with an art teacher mother, a father who runs a youth ministry art program, a creative sister and a brother who now works in graphic design.

Hebert Watkins worked with clay at a young age, but only briefly. She had the opportunity to experiment with a variety of mediums, everything from pastels to paint and pen and ink, through classes with Ms. Claire, and spent several years focused on painting and drawing.

It wasn’t until her freshman year at the University of Minnesota Duluth that Hebert Watkins took a clay class and realized ceramics was the medium for her. Though there wasn’t a ceramics degree available, she made it her “unofficial emphasis,” shifting her coursework so she could take as many ceramics courses as she could.

It started with foundational courses, then upper level wheel-throwing classes then independent study work, where she developed the bulk of the work in “The Table is Set,” which was originally displayed at the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth for her senior solo exhibition.

While “The Table is Set” is a show from then, Hebert Watkins said it’s also a show from now. When revisiting the work as she applied to Terrain Galley, she enjoyed thinking about how she could bring the show to life in a new way.

“It was fun to be able to open up that conceptual artistic space and think about, ‘OK, this is what I was thinking about then. What can I add to it now?…’ ” she said. “That was really fun to get to dig into that again in a new season and be like, ‘Oh, I’m proud of this work then, but there’s maybe a little more I can do, and let’s show this again to a new space and audience.’ ”

The Terrain Gallery edition of “The Table is Set” features some pieces that weren’t part of her senior exhibition, like a collection of candle holders, complete with lit candles, mixed media lamps and the silverware on the table.

The time between her senior show and now has allowed Hebert Watkins to become less emotionally attached to the pieces. She recalls the hard work, deadlines and actual blood, sweat and tears that surrounded the creation of “The Table is Set” and remembers not wanting to sell any of the work.

Now, she is still proud of the pieces but feels more able to let them go and ready to develop other projects. She has found herself at an artistic crossroads, wanting to put more effort into her jewelry business while also still looking for a way to keep clay relevant in her life.

“As an artist, when you stop creating, you stop getting inspired or motivated,” she said. “I’m at a point right now where I’m trying to figure out, curating a show like this that’s cohesive and multifaceted, how does that fit in with this aspect of creatively working with jewelry? I’m still figuring that out.

“Do I ideally do both? Do I keep pursuing jewelry more? Do I keep pursuing clay more? I think, in an ideal world, I see myself doing both.”