The Lovebugs is Amelia C. Williams' original mixed media art party series.
The Lovebugs x Rewind Kingston installation
Collaboration
The collab with Rewind came together naturally — an organic extension of the original *dream* behind The Lovebugs: bringing art into unexpected places to make people feel a little less alone.
When I started the project a few years ago, the goal was always to move beyond traditional gallery walls and into spaces that value creativity, authenticity, and full expression — no pretense, just art in its rawest form.
Rewind Kingston and I share the same belief — that art should feel like connection, that spreading positive messages matters, and that open conversations around mental health are essential.
The installation can be viewed during Rewind Kingston’s business hours, when the light catches the work differently throughout the day, reflecting the rhythm of the space itself.
Location:
Rewind Kingston | 612 Broadway, Kingston, NY 12401
Viewing hours:
Wednesday 3–7 PM
Thursday 3–6 PM
Friday 3–7 PM
Saturday 12–5 PM
Sunday 12–5 PM
Exhibition runs through mid-november
Artist Information
Amelia C. Williams is a mixed media artist and director known for raw, emotionally charged work expressed through bold, minimalist imagery. After years in Los Angeles immersed in the city’s vibrant street art scene, she returned to her native New York, drawing influence from East Coast pop icons like Basquiat, Warhol, and Barbara Kruger. Her work has been featured at Upstate Art Weekend, Basel at Night, and shown at Fahrenheit 451, The Black Library, LotusWorks, Camp Kingston Gallery, and Blooming Hearts Studio.
Williams intertwines the highs and lows of early 2000s emo culture with pop culture references such as song lyrics or movie quotes, combining abstract, lifesize doodles, magazine clippings, self-written poetry, photos, and succinct text. As an advocate for mental health—and someone who has personally navigated its complexities—her work captures the unfiltered realities and honest perspectives of those who grapple with it. Often touching on deeply buried pain, her themes resonate intensely, uncovering our darkest thoughts and moments as a pathway to connection and healing. Each project feels like ripping a page from her diary.
Her ongoing series, The Lovebugs, continues this mission—appearing in unexpected places to meet people where they are, to spark connection, and to remind them they’re not alone. Every installation acts as a living moodboard, telling a new story each time, it connects the dots and throughlines of Williams’ core focus: mental health, identity, and reflections on social issues.
About Rewind Kingston
Rewind Kingston is a community-driven thrift and vintage shop rooted in creativity, compassion, and connection. Founded by a local Kingston family, Rewind blends secondhand treasures, used books, and local history with a deeper purpose—advocating for mental health and offering support to those still finding their way.
Their community events often feature art-based activities like crafting and collaging, intimate live music shows, and collaborations with local businesses to raise awareness and funds for mental health organizations. Rewind Kingston continues to uplift local creators, projects, and small businesses, creating a space where people can feel seen, inspired, and at home.
Featured pieces
Artist Statement
Dream a Little Dream is a reflection on the tension between longing and release — the ache of dreams that hover just out of reach, whether for love, purpose, or peace. It speaks to the quiet madness that can build in that space between wanting and having, between vision and reality. The installation bridges the intimate and the imagined, transforming the storefront into a living diary where desire, disappointment, and hope coexist in fragile balance.
The title of the series carries a subtle, sarcastic commentary on how the American ideal of “dreaming” often excludes those it claims to uplift — a reflection on how systemic inequity, economic instability, and the current social climate continue to diminish and distort the dreams of marginalized communities.
The two windows serve as emotional counterparts. One embodies the act of dreaming — that intoxicating, restless pursuit of love and meaning that often slips away just as you reach for it. The other, a softer reckoning, explores letting go. Oversized notebook pages crumpled below flowers never received — artifacts of affection and absence — forming a dialogue between grief and acceptance. Each letter is a play on the traditional Dear John letter, addressed to two versions of “John,” — the “H” intentionally scribbled out to separate and connect them at once. The former reflects romantic loss; the latter, the origin of my anxious attachment. Though written to my father, it represents the three father figures who shaped my understanding of love and safety. What emerges is a visual and emotional collage of inherited patterns, love deferred, and the quiet aftermath of longing.
Through mixed media — records, paintings, fluorescent LED rope, disco lighters, and mirrored reflections — the installation merges nostalgia and confrontation. It celebrates beauty in heartbreak and humor in despair, reminding us that sometimes the only way to heal is to turn our pain into spectacle, to illuminate what we once tried to hide. Dream a Little Dream becomes both an elegy and an awakening — a love letter to what was lost, and a surrender to what remains. The flowers, suspended between remembrance and renewal, quietly hint at what’s to come — a subtle bridge to the next body of work. 👀
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